Oil On Canvas color challenge

 Beading along with Marcie's color challenge over onLaBellaJoya blog, the theme was oil paintings. The first one I worked on had a palette of golden orange with hints of beige and muted plum.   

I started with a base of right-angle weave using the last of my copper-lined amethyst AB size 6 seed beads, embellished on the edge with loops of frosted silver-lined golden orange 11s, with a pair of light orange opaque Delicas flanking topaz AB Swarovski crystals. I also embellished the base itself with more topaz crystals, frosted orange and tiny bronze seed beads. Hidden at the base of each fringe loop are bronze and metallic dark raspberry seed beads.

 

I finished the necklace with loops of bronze and a gunmetal chain.

 The second challenge palette was for this, the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. (No, I didn't see the movie.)

 I had a bottle with a slight neck that just begged for a beaded collar. I've been doing multiple versions of a modified 'Collier du Soleil' by Anna Elizabeth Draeger, made into a bracelet, which lent itself great to a collar.

 

I used frosted black 8s, bronze and opaque blue 11s, cream AB Delicas, light colorado topaz Swarovskis and my remaining tiny blue pearl drops from the 2009 Bead & Button show. 

 

I had only two pearls left, so I made my own pair of pearl earrings with a few bronze 11s and black 3mm firepolished beads.

I'm clearing out space in my studio, so for a limited time these pieces are up in my Listia account, a place to get free stuff. Please register through this link http://www.listia.com/signup/341959 as it gives me referral points. :D

Double Color Challenge

Having neglected to post my color challenge entries for Marcie's 'Margie & Me' color challenge for last month, I shall post last month's with this month's.

 

This is the first one, inspired by a photo of a green jungle stream. Greens dominate, set off by bits of brown, so I used shades of peridot and bronze in this simple necklace. It looks a bit like a caterpillar.

 

Second is this rectangular centerpiece, inspired by the photo of a turquoise door in Mexico. The neckchain is embellished with a few jumprings with blue beads, and stamped metal cylinders.

Now it's on to February's challenge.

  

 A photo of a yellow apartment building inspired this bracelet in crystal, dark cobalt blue and hematite silver/black, with a hint of light gray.

 

Finally is this pair of earrings, inspired by the sense of movement in the modern painting. 

Color challenge finals: Winged Lions of the Ishtar Gate

The final challenge was using the colors of the Ishtar Gate, one of the wonders of ancient Mesopotamia. With its rich blues and golds, this was possibly my favourite color palette to work with, and so I gathered all the true blues from my bead drawer.

 

Another part of the gate contains lighter, more turquoise blues, and winged figures, so I also took out turquoises, and found an old wing charm. The charm was copper, but I transformed it with the simple application of fine gold paint.

A tube of brick stitch at each end provides the base, connected by many strands of the blue beads, interspersed with glinting gold. A glittering gold chain around the neck finishes the necklace.

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.

Color challenge finals: The Pink Tablecloth

 

The Pink Tablecloth was tough in terms of colors--I had almost no colors in peach, light teal or gray, but I managed to scrounge up some materials without buying anything especially for the piece.

I started the design process by thinking about the lines of the painting--clean lines, some curved, some straight. I decided to model the piece after an old necklace design featuring a pendant inside a round wire frame, suspended from ribbons.

 

I dug out some fibers: light yellow chenille and fuzzy gray yarn, plus a strand of sky blue 11s spaced with 3mm amber glass beads, and a gray silk ribbon. Now for the fun part. I had a silver double-sided pendant bezel into which I glued a tiny round section of bead embroidery, done in blue, cream, charcoal and mustard seed beads, with a few milky yellow teardrops for textural interest.

 

On the other side, I put in a peach shimmerstone! Instead of a round wire frame, I made it rectangular to balance the flowing curves of the fibers. On the bottom I wrapped some pale pink chalcedony beads, and I connected the frame to the fibers with diamond-shaped links, from which hung sky blue crystal rivoli drops.

Finals color challenge: Titian's 'Venus of Urbino'

The second piece for the Margie & Me finals uses the colors from Titian's 'Venus of Urbino'.

 

  The painting features rich reds, pale flesh and linen tones, set against rich browns and blacks. Though the palette emphanizes the reds, I chose a different route, focusing on the contrast of the pales against the darker hues, resulting in this necklace.
 

.

I started with some transparent frosted pale pink glass hoops, linked with handmade ivory glass beads and silverlined brown Delicas. It was tricky making the links--the Delicas kept falling through the large holes of the rondelles as I tried to square-stitch them.  I pulled out a chocolate brown beaded bead out of my stash for one side of the glass chain, and stitched a black toggle bar for the other side.

 

My favourite part of this piece is the woven rope here. It's right angle weave done with long frosted black bugles and size 8s, embellished on both sides with a 4.5mm pearls, silver-lined brown Delicas, frosted dark pink Delicas and copper-lined 11s.

 

Color Challenge Finals: The Lady & the Unicorn

 

As promised, here is the first of the five pieces I created for the Margie & Me Finals.

The first piece from which I decided to take my color cues was the tapestry 'The Lady & the Unicorn', with its rich rust, lapis blue, gold and pine green palette. This was immediately a challenge, as I had few rust reds/oranges in my bead collection, but I solved it by thinking beyond beads, instead selecting a carved red agate flower as the focal, allowing me to need only a few actual beads in similar hues.

Bead embroidery was clearly the way to go. Not only did it afford me a lot of flexibility in bead use, the densely stitched nature visually related to the needleweaving of the tapestry itself.
For the pendant I used a few brown goldstone beads, a small quantity of frosted silverlined rust orange 11s,  several intense orange-red faceted carnelian coins, 2mm lapis rounds, gold 11s, and frosted/silverlined and transparent 11s in jade green. I stitched them in more or less a structured pattern, endeavoring to mirror the overall shapes similar on each side without putting too much pressure on myself to make them 'identical'. After all, the tapestry isn't mirror-identical on each side either.
I finished the piece by stitching a gold right-angle-weave tube bail, edged with the last of the frosted orange 11s, and made a simple neck strap of citrine chips and rectangles spaced with gold 11s, interspersed with the remaining goldstone beads. I punched another set of holes in a pair of enamelled-blue copper drops, and used them as 'caps' to the strap, a nod to the blue tent in the tapestry.

My Marcie, Margie & Me Finals Color Throwdown

I've been so enjoying participating in Marcie's 'Margie & Me' color challenges, so when the most recent one was announced as a Finals challenge of sorts, with prizes even, I was so excited! The gist of it was, instead of having two weeks to make a piece or two from one palette, those of us who chose to participate had a choice of FIVE palettes, with four weeks to design and make a piece using one of the palettes. You can read the original post here.

Well, I usually make two pieces for the two-week challenges and still can hardly wait for the 'big reveal', so I made it a goal to make FIVE pieces--one per palette, and choose the best one to submit to the contest. (The rules were later amended to allow multiple entries/palettes per person.) I dallied around (er, I mean, tried to design) for the remainder of the week, and got to actually beading when I had about two weeks left.

The rules were to use the palettes prescribed, but I added some guidelines of my own: try to reflect some of the visual ideas of the art providing the palette, and use supplies I already own. Let me tell you, I'm not always that great at designing around a color AND imagery theme on a deadline, and with two weeks to design and finish FIVE pieces, no less. But I finished the last of the pieces with a few days to spare! No late-night beading sessions to make the deadline! I felt almost like I had completed a college assignment.

The Big Reveal is tomorrow. At that time, I shall dedicate a post to each piece. In the meantime, here's a little piece made in the Ishtar Gate challenge palette. It's not one of the entries, just a little ring I made while messing around with Marcie's 'Solstice' pattern published in the current issue of Beadwork.

Islamic Architecture Inspirations

 Marcie Abney's latest 'Margie & Me' color challenge featured Islamic architecture as the inspiration for the participants. The colors were predominantly turquoise blues, accented with cream, cobalt, coral and lavender. For the first piece, I picked up some slightly dusky 6/o seed beads, square stitched them into a three-row strip, then sewed it into a three-sided rope. I gave it a natural curving shape around the wrist by stitching coral-colored size 11s between every other top bead, then accented the sides with a loop of cream and frosted cobalt beads. The bracelet is finished with a magnetic clasp (and safety chain).

 

The second piece, I decided to go brighter turquoise instead of the dusky blue. Some of the windows and scrollwork in the inspiration photos feature fancy diamond shapes, so it seemed fitting to brick stitch around one of my silver diamond shapes. I stitched a tiny line of black 15s as the 'core' row, then did cobalt, dusky lavender, turquoise 8/o hexes, and finished with my few remaining coral 11s. I ran a textured large jumpring through the space between the two sides of the turquoise hexes, and suspended the pendant from a neck strap made with leftover 6s and 8s, turning into a loop of cream Delicas.

I made another necklace in the last few days before the 'big reveal' date--a simple peyote/herringbone triangle done in turquoise, cobalt and cream seed beads, accented with a single hyacinth AB2X Swarovski bead. I used more of my diamond links at each corner, accenting the bottom one with a lavender crystal, and connecting others with scraps of cable chain for a minimal approach while remaining true to the challenge theme.

Inspired by 'Adoration of the Magi'

What was I going to do with Marcie's latest Margie & Me challenge? The artwork she posed to us as a challenge was the 'Adoration of the Magi', at left. Lots of golds and oranges with ultramarine and lighers blues, and optional green. She also said to 'think shiny'. So I dug out my metal-lined seed beads, deep blue pearls, and at last--those gold plated fancy beads i bought a  couple years ago, waiting for Project Right.

And what a project it was!
I had just gotten a silverplated 'pendant blank' waiting to be filled with whatever I wanted, so I decided to do a small piece of bead embroidery and set it into the blank. I need the practice, andd working with such a small space (instead of the usual majestic scale of most bead embroidery) frees me AND brings it down into doability at this stage. Setting a small piece of bead embroidery into a metal frame also sets the piece solidly as 'jewelry' rather than a piece of beadwork that the creator has made wearable. I prefer my jewelry to be jewelry first, beadwork second.
I chose to finish the necklace with a simple bead chain, using ornate gold beads and a touch of deep blue glass. The freeform nature (and all the shiny colours) of the bead embroidery conveys the exuberance of the original painting, while the metal setting and gold bead chain reference the time period's preference for fancy adornments. The ultramarine adds another touch of art history--the lapis lazuli stone used to be ground up to make the ultramarine pigments, resulting in the rich blues you see in paintings just like this.

My second challenge piece focused more on the golds. I square-stitched around a shimmerstone glass cabochon with size 6 blue beads, then added gold and frosted burnt orange seed beads, and a line of green just below the orange (you can see a touch of it in the photo). I sewed the cab onto a rubbery hair elastic.

Marcie, Margie & Me colour challenge

Having discovered Marcie Abney's blog, La Bella Joya and her ongoing Margie and Me color-themed challenge, I've been working with colours I would not have otherwise paired. The latest challenge was to be inspired by a Rococo church ceiling shown above, incorporating pale blues, pinks and golds.
I made two pieces. The first was this crystal pendant in mellow gold, with a royal blue peyote/herringbone bail accented with gold in its 'spine'. The pink came from a pair of faceted glass beads at the point of the bail, and the satin cord on which the pendant hangs.

I've been doing a lot of loop fringe lately, so I decided to make a loop fringe pendant in the challenge colours. Since my bead box has its limits, I used the colours I needed in the shapes I had: cubes, hexes, delicas and Czech size 11s.

I started with sea blue 6s, then added matte medium and sky blue cubes, medium blue AB 6s, pink hexes, a mix of pink Delicas, then gold Delicas and copper AB Czech 11s. I sewed a path of pink Delicas down the center, added a pink octagon Swarovski crystal, and finished the piece with a sky blue satin cord.
Thanks Marcie and Margie--this was a great exercise in creativity!