Monday, July 12, 2010

Summer Fun: Catch of the Day

Eesh it's been a while. . . I've been so busy w/work that the majourity of my projects got put on hold but I'm getting them done. I've got some pretty exciting news too. A friend of mine, having seen the necklace that this post is about, commissioned me to do a similar piece for his mother!!! Another friend of mine wants me to do some jewelry for him too but he hasn't decided what he wants yet lol.

Now, lets get down to business, this was my artbeads.com summer themed project. We had to create a piece that was symbolic of "Summer Fun" to us. Well, for me, summer was always a beach vacation, swim team, picnics at the lake. My summers always revolved around water and being in the water, so I tried to keep that in mind when figuring out this design.

I knew I wanted a nautical design, and I knew I wanted it to be somewhat classical/vintage in appearance- dated but timeless, simple and elegant. Originally I was going to do something similar to my Poseidon design but I just wasn't feeling such a heavy design for such dainty beads and charms so I ended up going in a whole 'nother direction completely.



I started by making long sections of chain w/my 4mm glass druk beads in light amethyst, smoke topaz, rosaline, dark green, and light sapphire. I love my czech glass beads, and I especially love the druk beads, however, I wish I had gotten them in a bigger size, maybe 6 or 8mm b/c as pretty as the colours are, I found that these beads are so small, unless you string a bunch of them together, the colour pales and it's very hard to distinguish one from another, they tend to wash out on their own.

After I had created these long double chains (pictured above), I used several 3" long lengths of bright silver chain to create the full length of the necklace and connected them to the ship's wheel pendant which is by Jollee's Jewel's (available at Michael's). To the bottom of the large pendant I attached the antique pewter anchor and sail boat charms (Captain Ahab, anyone?).

I still felt like the necklace needed something. After all, there's more to the beach then sailboats and ships wheels. One of my favourite activities, even now as a grown up, is getting up w/the morning low tide to hunt for shells. I mean, it's nearly impossible to go to the beach and NOT find any sea shells- even at the lake I find all sorts of snail shells and other fresh water mollusks and lets face it, sometimes sea shells are just too tempting to walk away from!!!


And that temptation proved too great, I just had to include those sea shells in this summer themed piece. I finished the piece w/two large TierraCast Antique Silver spindle shell charms and two small TierraCast Antique Silver spindle shell charms. I attached them in such a way that they drape down the wearer's chest w/o getting in the way or catching on anything.

The finished product is roughly 22" from clasp to pendant and, while not exactly something that a tween or teen would wear is a lovely and elegant piece that can be dressed up or dressed down and definitely celebrates the calm, peace, and tranquility of the beach, as well as the romanticism associated w/a life at sea and exotic places.

Stay tuned for the accompanying charm bracelet as well :D

The bead products:
in light amethyst, smoke topaz,
rosaline, dark green, and light sapphire,
antique pewter sailboat and anchor
charms, and the TierraCast antique silver
spindle shell charms were provided
to me by artbeads.com free of charge.
I am part of their blogging project
and have not been paid for my use or
opinion of the above product(s).


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