Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Valentine's Bouquet

I am SOOO proud of my latest design, and I'm so happy to be able to share it with you! On Valentine's Day, my SO had a lovely bouquet of flowers delivered to my office...how sweet!?! The flowers were so gorgeous, and the color combination was so intriguing, I knew immediately that I had to make some jewelry to match! After work, I stopped at the local bead store where I picked up a nice selection of pearls and glass beads....okay, okay....so I picked up more stuff than what I needed for the bouquet design, but those are going to be put together in the upcoming weeks. Back to the bouquet.....I never really laid out an exact design for this necklace. I decided that I'd start with the focal point - a large, flat shell bead with a pretty, iridescent coating. I wire-wrapped the focal bead to the center of sterling silver chain. After that, I decided to give the necklace an asymmetrical look - I wanted to mimic the random placement often found in flower bouquets! It turned out to be a great technique to give this necklace a fantastic look that is guaranteed to be one-of-a-kind! Here's the finished design next to the actual bouquet:



Valentine's Bouquet
Valentine's Bouquet (Design not on site yet)



I used the focal bead with fuchsia-mauve-colored freshwater, coin pearls to mimic the main flowers in the bouquet - STARGAZERS! I put small light green freshwater in small bunches to represent the baby's breath in the flower arrangement. The wavy, green glass beads are similar to the long green leaves sparsely placed in the vase. White button freshwater pearls and rose colored Swarovski crystal bicones are representative of the roses in the bouquet, while small, round amethyst beads mimic the small purple flowers. Here's a more detailed picture of the final result:



Valentine's Bouquet
Valentine's Bouquet (Design not on site yet)



I love the way this asymmetrical design turned out! The "Valentine's Bouquet" necklace is a veritable wearable bouquet! It's certainly one-of-a-kind! How cool?! :-)

Cheers!

Diana

1 comment:

Mensch said...

Here's another great tip -

How to Shop Fair Trade for Valentine's Day

http://www.ehow.com/how_4769040_shop-fair-trade-valentines-day.html