June ABS Challenge Piece - By the Sea Side

Jackknife Village, 1926

Franklin Carmichael

Watercolor on Paper

(Please note this art is copyrighted and is to be used only as inspiration.)

Surprise, surprise, surprise - mom and I actually finished a challenge piece before the end of the month :)  I think it is because this weekend we pick the kids (niece/nephew) up from my brother and they will be here for a two week visit.  Mom and I are trying to get things done before they are here since we know nothing art related will be done.

When I first see the challenge pieces on ABS I always send the link to mom to check it out.  A lot of the time it is mom who comes up with the idea for a pattern or sometimes it is a collaborative effort.  The idea for the lampwork beads is usually me - and boy did I have an idea this time. This is the pattern mom and I ended up using to saw out the pendant.  Mom did have two houses in the pattern but decided she didn't like it.  I think I like the abstract pattern because I really wanted to focus on the colors this month - love the colors and this is totally different from our usually color pallet - something new!

By the Sea Side

I seriously love how this piece turned out.  It is long enough to just slip over your head and I think it would look great with a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt.

A close up look at the pendant (oh, just so you know, we flipped the pendant when we made the bail and didn't realize it until we started enameling, it is showing the wrong side - but hey - it is abstract!).  I really like how the pendant looks - with the rocky ground below, with the water between and grassy hills and a blue sky above.

I ended up making the beads first - usually I make the beads after I have enameled the pendant so I know what colors to use.  I just loved the white, blues, greens, browns and gray in the painting - I found some frit that matched the colors and used white glass to make the beads.  Mom and I used Sodalite as accents with gunmetal spacers and gunmetal circles.

When I sketched out the idea for the necklace I knew I wanted a two strand of the lampwork beads but I had no idea what to do for the top.  Thank goodness for mom - she found some torch fired enameled beads I made and then finished it off with the Sodalite beads for accents and the gunmetal spacers.



By the Sea Side

So, that is how our necklace piece came together for this month's Challenge.  To see other pieces for this month's challenge head on over to the Flickr Group.