Grand Poppies Collaboration Project

About a month ago, Melanie from Earthenwood Studio contacted me about participating in collaboration project. She wanted to send me one of three matching sets of beads (in a poppy theme, purples, reds and black! Yay!), have me make three sets of my own poppy theme beads and send one set to her and one to another jewelry designer (AJ Reardon), and then all three of us would create something from the two sets. OK! I jumped on it, it sounded so fun! Just like in the beading magazine where they give three sets of matching beads to the designers and they each come up with something spectacular - too cool! Right?

Well oh my, let me just say, I have never made a matching set, never mind THREE matching sets. But ok, I could do this... it would be a great challenge, and I knew I could do this. After all, I love poppies. And purple and red and black. How hard could it be? Then Melanie sent me her beads, so I could see the colors for reference...and oh, they were SO beautiful! And intricate! Just lovely all by themselves. Here they are:



But... oh no, SO not my chunky, folk arty kind of beads.... what was I going to do? Well I got to work. First I started by trying to make sets of lentils, thinking the shape would compliment Melanie's beads... even though lentils are something I have not yet mastered, but hey, what better time to learn, right? But that didn't go over so well, especially when I tried to add designs to them. Sigh. And then I made some barrels. That looked kind of nice, though way too wonky for Melanie's perfect beads. Shoot, what was I going to make to match her beads? Well, that's when I got the bright idea to STOP trying to match her beads... stopped thinking like a designer and put my bead maker's hat on instead and reminded myself that I like poppies, and red and purple and black... and made some of my groovy flower beads, beads I know and love. In purple and red and black. And then I made some leaves. And some spacer beads to go with... and there you have it, some Pam beads:



So now, to design something, and hope that the other two designers could design something with them as well. The rule is, you have to use at least one bead from each bead maker. Not really a problem, there were so many beads, I think I could make five pieces of jewelry from all the beads! But here is the one I made, a bracelet using one of my lampwork poppies as a clasp and three of Melanie's adorable porcelain beads in the body, and a bunch of my lampwork spacers as dangles and such. Some faceted beads thrown in for sparkle. I like it, it's very Poppy. I particularly like the fringe on the poppy clasp - I wired the clasp bead on with an eye pin, then sewed (with Fireline) the black beads to the eye pin to look like the center of a poppy.



Now, go check out what Melanie and AJ made - I can't wait to go look myself!