Sand and Sea Blog Hop

Welcome to the My Bead Table Blog Hop II: Sand and Sea Edition

Lisa Lodge from Pine Ridge Treasures is the hostess of this blog hop.  Each member purchased either a "sand" kit with tans, creams, orange and brown tones or the "sea" kit which had blues, greens, and purple tons.  Each kit was different some containing art beads or components.  Each kit was also randomly assigned.

Sand and Sea Blog Hop

Placed on my bead tray is the components of the sand kit that I received.  There were many gemstones along with an assortment of glass, pearls, and metal components.  Also was an artistic focal bead made of poly clay.  In this picture the gemstones are actually glued to piece of Nicole's Bead Backing.

 I decided to add a little splash of color to the mix so I threw in an assortment of blue size 11 seed beads along with matching magatamas.  I also used tan and a light mat topaz seed beads from another project I had been working on.  I wound up with six separate components to work with, but I decided I definitely did night like the fleshy/apricot colored fire polish in three of the components.  So it all got ripped apart and started again.

To go along with the sea and sand theme, I decided to use a Greek pendent of matching colors with the yin/yang symbol.  But I still had the misshapen focal piece made of poly clay to work with.  It was lumpy and cracked and the colors just would not work at all with any combinations I worked with.  I put the project to the side for two weeks trying to figure out what I could do with the focal piece.  The splashes of accent paint on it distracted from everything else I could even imagine.  I even thought of repainting the piece just to get rid of the color scheme, but then I thought of actually caging the focal piece using RAW and embellishing it with the same color beads I used with the gemstones.

 

 

Before picture of the most challenging piece of the kit

I put this away for two weeks until I could wrap my brain around how to take this misshapen focal piece without repainting it so that I could use it in this challenge.  I decided to use the same beads I'd use with the other accent components and using three matt white fire polish pieces and two pearls to tone down the silver/blue/red/pink of the colors.  I can't tell you how many times, I even took this component apart unhappy with any result until I wound up with this.

This is a closer view of the focal poly clay bead after I've completed the embellishment adding the clear drop provided in the kit.  It does look better, but I still don't like the look.  I have to sincerely say here that this necklace is going to be taken apart .  I will not wear it in public as I do not like this focal bead even after I struggled for weeks trying to get it to look right.  I will remove the section with this focal piece and rip it all apart saving the beads for possibly some other gemstone.  I will use a piece  with the same dimensions so that I can have the same configuration of this design.  But with a more pleasing focal component for the eye to see first.

This section is probably my favorite part of this necklace.  I might, as I stated above, find some other stone or piece of glass that I could use for the center of the design.  All in all, this was probably one of the most difficult challenges I've had up to date.  Trying to find a design that had the flow of the waves crashing onto the shore was the first step, and then incorporating pieces and colors into the design that would mesh well together .  My biggest challenge was using the poly clay bead and fitting it into a pleasing flow of the piece.  I have to admit that I failed in that aspect of the challenge.  But at least I did try which is the best way to experiment and learn.  

We learn by failing and  admitting defeat more than if we scream defeat before we even make any attempts.