Floral WIP and Travel Notice

It's been a while since I've posted anything new; moving and traveling has eaten up most of my time over the past month. I did however manage to get started on my project for the next round of the Artbeads.com blogger program. The theme is "What's Old is New Again," and the idea is to take an old or vintage element and incorporate it into a new piece. I chose this blue floral cloisonné necklace that I received from my grandmother a few years ago, after she had it in her collection for many years.

I like the little pink, blue, and green flowers on each bead:

My original idea for this project involved Swarovski bicone pendants in beaded beads, but after Gwen figured out how to incorporate them into the Sakura Charm pattern, I just had to try this as well. While Gwen's final result is a 7-fold variation, I wanted to stay with the original 5-fold flower of the pattern to match the flowers on the cloisonné beads. It took me five attempts to arrive at something I was satisfied with. You can see my attempts in this photo, starting at the left and continuing clockwise to arrive at the charm in the center:

I found that to get a 5-fold flower to work with bicone pendants, I had to work with progressively smaller seed beads to get them to fit without being wobbly. The back of the charm also ended up somewhat different than the original; the weave and bead counts are slightly different, and the bail is rotated to straddle one of the bicones, instead of sitting between two of the petal beads.

I tried to match the colors to that of the flowers in the cloisonné beads. Do you think it's a good match?


Finally, I'll be traveling internationally for the next three weeks to spend some time with my husband as he participates in the San Francisco Symphony 2011 European Tour, so any jewelry orders placed from now until June 9 from either my Etsy or Artfire shops will ship on June 10. I will have some e-mail access on my trip, so I will still send out tutorial orders, but these orders might experience a delivery delay of up to 48 hours.

In the meantime, the Sakura Charm pattern, as well as the Circle Starburst and Balloon Box patterns, are available at beAd Infinitum 24/7.

Bon voyage!