Lindy's Designs: bead challenge

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Suddenly it's Spring Challenge

Spring is certainly in the air. The temperatures are getting warmer each day and the flowers are starting to bud in my backyard. As a welcome to spring Michelle Mach hosted a Suddenly Spring Challenge and today is the big reveal. Twenty Two people are participating in this challenge. Each person was given the opportunity to purchase a pre-strung bracelet of aqua crystal beads and sparkly crystal rondelles and to turn it into something spring.

I certainly could have worn the bracelet as is, it was quite sparkly and the color a very pretty icy aqua blue. But since we were challenged to re purpose the beads, I had to come up with something different. My dilemma was whether to stay with something familiar or to go for something different. I decided that I should probably should go the something different route. I made two bracelets from the aqua crystals in this bracelet and saved the rondelles for another project. One of the things that I wanted to accomplish was to add fibers to my pieces. I had purchase some Sari silk back in the winter but had not yet used it in a jewelry piece. The colors in the silk screamed spring to me. I decided to crochet a base out of the Sari silk for the first piece. I rounded up some flowers and leaves that I had in my stash in the same aqua color. I added them to the base with some artistic wire, added a cute button and immediately had a spring time bracelet.