From the beginning, I knew I wanted to make a long wire wrapped necklace using the vintage crackle glass beads and the striped 1980s furnace glass beads. I looked at the colors in the striped glass beads as inspiration for what else to use in the necklace - black, blue, orange, light rose and yellow.
Adding black seemed too harsh, light rose just seemed to not belong and I'm not a big fan of yellow. I decided to use some blue and its complement orange to add more color to the piece. I am madly in love with cobalt blue glass and had some long vintage tube beads in my hoarded stash (not knowing what to do with them yet) so I decided to work with some vintage cobalt glass and Swarovski crystals from my stash and then added the orange with carnelian, dyed shell and Swarovski crystals - as an accent.
I played with the sequence of the beads for quite awhile. Adding in some silver rounds and taking them out. Adding in some lapis and taking it out. Thinking about where the orange needed to go, I moved them around some. I started the wire wrapping and stopped to shuffle the beads around a few more times. What I ended up with is this mostly symmetrical design but I threw in a few asymmetrical surprises as well. I think it's an easy to wear necklace with a clean, crisp, modern look that will be great in the summer, especially when worn with white.
After finishing the long necklace, I also wanted to use the vintage green glass beads that Carla sent me in a design and knew they just had to be earrings. So, I dropped them below a filigree diamond shaped vermeil post that just seemed to match and added emeralds - the exact same shade of green - dangling below. Viola! Statement earrings!
I have a design already in my mind to use with the enameled pendant and the Wonderstone pendant that Carla sent but haven't had a chance to work with them yet. I will have to reveal them at a later date.
I loved the challenge and had a lot of fun coming up with the designs. I hope you like them too :)
If you are curious what designs the other artists came up with you can click through this list of the participants with links to their blog or Pinterest page here -
Lori Anderson :: Hostess
Elizabeth Bunn
Marianna DeLuca Wehner
Kathy Lindemer
Kathleen A Breeding
Maria Rosa Sharrow
Therese Frank
Ann Marie Hodrick - you are here :)
Maria Rios
Babette Cox
Natalie Davidson
Brenda Ballou
Christina Hickman
Heather Gunther
