January Art Bead Scene Challenge Piece Complete

Brown River by Wayne Thiebaud

Yes, I am shocked also.  Mom and I finished the Art Bead Scene challenge piece before the end of the month.  We are usually scrambling to finish the piece but this time we finished early.  The minute the challenge piece came out I sent it off to mom.  I knew I wanted to have the yellows and the browns in the piece but I was not sure what else to add.

Mom sent me her design ideas and we went from there.  We sawed out the pieces on Saturday and then I enameled them yesterday.  Only had two disasters where I had to discard two of the smaller wheat sheves, but I think that is pretty good.  Because of the cold, the yellow enamel is cracking when I am taking it out of the kiln.  Even with the space heater set up, to slowly cool the pieces, the yellow is still giving me fits.  I seriously can't wait for warmer weather!  While I was enameling, I sent mom off to our favorite bead store to buy Czech beads for the necklace, and I think she picked out some cool ones, though I think she missed me.  We ALWAYS go together when we bead shop.

Sketch of necklace

Mom had drawen a sketch for the layout of the necklace and of course once we started stringing the necklace the sketch went out the window.  We were going to have four strands of beads with six wheat sheaves connected to the strands, but we only ended up using two beaded strands and two wheat sheaves.  I think it turned out really well.



January ABS Challenge Piece - Muddy Waters

As you know mom and I live in Indiana, and we based the necklace off of the farmland around us and the Wabash River that runs through our town.  The Indians called the river Wabash meaning clear water, but of course, sad to say, the river is muddy brown now.  Because of the farmland, we based the pendants on the wheat fields found around the county.  We accented the necklace with Tiger Eye and blue Czech beads, and our own lampwork glass beads.  The two beads we have on the smaller pendants are called Mookaite which is a gorgeous deep red.  The Tiger eye Czech beads are varigated browns which relates well to Wayne Thiebaud's painting of the river.

I have posted more pictures out on our Flickr site if you want to see close ups of the pendants and the beads.