Echo Creative Club: Dragonfly Rising

Hello!

If you read my post on Facebook last night you will know that I spent 13 hours at the State Boys 8th Grade Basketball tournament. I got home around 10pm. Before I left in the morning I set out my Gin Blossom from Jeannie Dukic, because I realized that I need to create something for her Echo Creative Club that I signed up for. I love a good challenge, and despite the fact that it was after 11pm when I started to put it all together, it came together pretty easily because I left out the beads that I wanted to use in a bit of a configuration that mostly turned out as I had originally envisioned.

 Jeannie makes these wonderful polymer clay creations. Her creativity knows no limits! I am always loving each new thing that she makes. She sent me this beautiful Gin Blossom focal in a deep chocolate brown with turquoise accents. That is one of my favorite color combinations so I knew that I would have the right beads on hand for this challenge.

For the browns I pulled out my very favorite faceted oval rectangles in smoky quartz. I just love the color of this bead, and the cut and size on these are my favorite. In fact, I used up almost all that I had, so I will be looking for more like this because they are so versatile.

I had not yet found a use for the Amazing Mystic Blue Labradorite briolettes that I splurged on last year from Norah62 on Etsy. Until now. I love all the gems I have received from Norah. I love, LOVE labradorite with its secret flash of blue, but whatever they do to make it 'mystic' pumps it up about 100 notches. This is just such a pretty stone and my shoddy camera work at 1:30am leaves a lot to be desired. I thought it needed just one more color to make it come alive, and I found these pretty Czech pressed glass leaves in a frosty mint color. Mint is the perfect foil to the turquoise and the brown.

I knew that I wanted it to be a bit asymmetrical, so I put the briolettes off from each other. The trick to this being balanced is that I used the same amount of beads on each side, just configured them differently. It creates a bit of a triangle... your eye wants to travel from the pendant, to which I wired two copper leaves and a Vintaj brass dradonfly, to each of the little clusters. That is what makes it more interesting to look at than if I had made them at the same spot.

I knew I didn't have enough time to fully bead the necklace, plus I was running out of the smoky quartz, so I opted to finish it with three fiber strands: one silk cord from Marsha Neal, one satin gimp cord in ombre from Ornamentea and one aqua suede leather cord. I finished it off with a Vintaj leaf clasp and hook.

I call this 'Dragonfly Rising.' 

I am off to enjoy the remaining games of the basketball tournament. Please go to Jeannie's Blog to see the other participants in this month's Echo Creative Club and spread some love their direction!