Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly

 

Playing along with La Bella Joya's April's Color Challenge gave me not one but two challenges. The first was to use Andy Warhol's depiction of Marilyn Monroe as my color palette. I chose cyan, scarlet, yellow, peach and hints of black, starting with a nicely-shaped glass bottle that once held tequila. It had a nice cyan shade. Then I embellished the neck of the bottle with beaded rings in the rest of the shades.

 

The second challenge colors were inspired by an elegant photo of Grace Kelly. The palette of pale blue, cream, pink and burgundy were very appealing to me. I chose to make a variation on one of my signature beaded ball beads, starting with pale blue and gilt-lined opal seed beads (which appear blue next to blue beads). I then trimmed the bead with matte AB cream Delicas, pink-lined 11s and garnet AB Czech 11s, and paired the bead with a custom-dyed burgundy ribbon which exactly matches my new hair color.

Color challenge finals: Lilies Fresco

 

This is part of a fresco on some island, probably in Greece or Mesopotamia. I worked on designs for other palettes first, as this color scheme and the art itself was rather unexciting to me. Not to mention I don't have many rusts, mustards, creams or that indeterminate gray-green. But when I stopped thinking about what I thought I saw in the colors, and looked really hard to see what was actually there in the palette, I saw more to work with. Grays and oranges, ideas of natural themes and sedimentary layers began forming, and, as I always do, I remembered some things that 'had been sitting around a while' in the palette. I pulled out some taupe faux suede lacing, copper-lined seed beads, a finely-carved serpentine leaf, a smooth river pebble, banded orange agate drops, dull gold silk... But when I found the champagne-colored, double-drilled mother of pearl stick, I was reminded of Marcie Abney's 'Snowy Peaks' design (featured in the latest issue of Stringing magazine) and knew I had a good start. 

 

Her necklace features a single pendant suspended from a double-drilled bar, connected with wire to multiple strands of seed beads. My design would need more than one pendant to include all the important colours, so I arranged several elements into a harmonious-looking collage, and beaded them together. I bezeled the river rock first with copper 11s, then attached the leaf and the agate teardrop to it. Next, I ran a strand of 11s from the top of the bezeled stone into each of the bar's holes, making a loop of seed beads to capture the pale honey and striped agate marquise drops to either side. Lastly, I made copper loops to suspend the whole assembly from a strap made of the faux suede lacing and gold silk, knotted, intertwined, and finished with a silver toggle studded with tiny green crystals.