The long awaited reveal date is finally here!! I have to admit I thought I had a lot of time but as it got closer to the reveal date, I started to panic as usual. I was paired this year with a talented lamp work artist, Laurie Ament of Isinglass, who sent me her amazing beads, hand spun yarn and findings. I just love the color scheme and loved everything she sent me! I'm one lucky gal to get paired with another amazing artist and incredible person once again this year!So many design ideas were swimming in my head. I just purchased Cindy Whimmer's The Missing Link and been dying to try some of her links from the book so I decided to include them in the designs. I highly recommend Cindy's book! It's packed with so many links that can be incorporated into beautiful designs. Click on the link to the right of this post to get your book!
First, I started working on the necklace with the gorgeous heart focal. The focal has a hole going through horizontally and it took me several tries to come up with something that allowed movement but kept the focal from sliding side to side. I used a 12g copper wire, hammered it flat and used one of the metal stamps and added texture. I carefully bent the wire (talk about nerve wrecking!) and looped the ends. To incorporate the beautiful hand spun yarn, I wrapped the yarn with 24g wire and made beads. To keep the yarn theme, I made wire Yarn Balls from Cindy Wimmer's book as connecting links. The other side of the necklace was made with wire wrapped lamp work beads with single Beehive links from the Missing Link. The long necklace measures 33 inch in length.
Next I used the smaller heart beads to make earrings to compliment the necklace. Again I wanted to have movement to the hearts so I threaded the wire and wrapped twisted wire in the mid section for added accents. Topped off with the lamp work beads and made a loop to attach the ear wires.
I fell in love with one of the necklace that was featured in Cindy Wimmer's the Missing Link book and I just had to make my own version of it! I soldered a copper wire into a ring, textured portion of it and attached the lightbulb links. The waxed cords were accented with copper spacers and hearts and finished with the swirl clasp I got from Laurie. The gorgeous headpin beads were hung on the ring and threaded glass seed beads for the stem. I made the earrings using the light bulb links and kept the design simple to show off the beautiful lamp work beads.
The next earrings were made using Laurie's head pin beads. Again added glass seed beads to the stems to bring out the gorgeous colors. I wanted to create an outlining shape with copper wire to accentuate the shape of the head pin beads. The wires were shaped and textured, then I hung the head pin and the wires into a jump ring so that the head pins can swing. I definitely need to get more of these head pin beads from Laurie!!
My final project was the bracelet. I wanted to make a bracelet that would compliment both of the necklaces and earrings so I incorporated Laurie's lamp work beads, the hand spun yarn beads and added Cindy Wimmer's Yarn Ball links. I enameled the clasp and pulled the colors from Laurie's beads to tie it all together. It was one of those a little bit of this and a little bit of that color combination and it took 4 layers of enamel to get the look I wanted. When the piece cooled off and the color emerged, I was pretty pleased with how the colors complimented Laurie's beads. Textured copper toggle was used to keep the theme of the design.
Thank you Lori Anderson for putting together another amazing experience for us! I was so lucky to be paired with such a talented lamp work artist, Laurie Ament. Please visit Laurie's Etsy Shop and be in awe with her amazing work! Please hop over to Laurie's Blog and check out what she created with what I sent her! I'm so honored to have a talented artist like Laurie as my new friend!
Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and hop on over to all the other participants and check out their amazing creations! 8th Annual Bead Soup Blog Party Participant List!
Mahalo for visiting!
Kumi ♥
