I feel so honored and blessed to have been contacted by the lovely Jeannie Dukic to participate in her Echo Creative Club for the month of July! Jeannie sends the participant one focal or a set of her gorgeous polymer clay art beads that she has created and hopefully a pleasing design will follow! :)
As a reminder, these are stunners that I received - I even love the name - Fractured Beads:
I have been playing with my torch of late - even though as I write this post, we are on day 5 of an excessive heat wave, like most of the country. As soon as I touched the beads, the design began!
Lots and lots of 14 gauge silver adorn this focal. The circles are made from 12 gauge silver - very organic in shape and like the beads, I wanted them to be "fractured" just a bit, so they are not perfectly round . After forging, I soldered them together and went to work with my hammers to create texture. I wanted the appearance of fringe and I wanted a bib-type style necklace. So, I just kept making quasi-paddles, also heavily textured, and they are attached to each of the circles.
In addition to the organic nature of the beads and their fabulous color, I was so happy that I could fit 14 gauge silver wire through the hole! I have made many designs in the past - mostly with gemstones - where heavy gauge wire just would not work with the beads.
The chain is made from 16 gauge wire. I made tons of tiny infinity links, which I connected with two small hand-cut jump rings. I love the style of this chain with this necklace.
The addition of three of Jeannie's beads to the focal was perfect for me - not too little, not too much - just the right size bead with the pop of color it needed.
Why, yes, I did make matching earrings!
Where my home is situated, I am plagued with bright sunshine pretty much throughout the entire day - sunrise to sunset. Not great for taking pictures of jewelry. I have to use a photo booth setup indoors, and a jewelry bust in this little booth just does not work for me. But, I wanted a picture to show how perfectly the necklace lays when worn. So, this was taken at about 7:30 am before the sun hit my backyard - the lighting is not good, but you can get the gist!
My quest of late is to find a mannequin whereby she can model my necklaces for me.
Jeannie - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for including me this month! This was so much fun for me, and I am so honored! :)
Please be sure to give some love to the other participants of this fabulous hop:
Alicia Marinache http://www.allprettythings.ca/
Charlie Jacka http://clay-space.com/
Jeannie K Dukic http://site.jkdjewelry.com/blog
Kristen Stevens http://kristen-beadjourney.blogspot.com/
Maureen Connolly http://mrsbeadsley.blogspot.com/
Patti Vanderbloemen http://www.myaddictionshandcrafted.blogspot.com/
Thank you so much for stopping by! Have a great day!
Patti
