Nancy and Lorelei's Challenge

Last Sunday Nancy came up for the day and after we stuffed ourselves with steak, eggs, greens, and homefries, we enjoyed a shopping trip at Michaels. While checking out their bead section, we stumbled on a fabulous idea to have a bit of a challenge.  We each bought a handful of the same beads, and the goal is to make a necklace, with any pendant of our choice, a handmade clasp, and only 2 or 3 additional items besides the beads we bought that day. 

Here is the shot of the beads we got:

My necklace went together lickety split. I was talking to Nancy about her design technique, and it took her a few days to get her design just right. I sat down last night, and it went something like this:

Michael Jackson Tunes came on. Beebopping around the room, I cut all the beads off of their little strands and piled them up in front of me. I cut the beading wire, and started stringing the beads, before I had even come up with a plan on a focal.  Once I got to the front of the necklace, I picked out this cute Joan Miller porcelain Owls pendant. 

It's perfect, if not only because it symbolizes my friendship with Nancy- two owls- two friends, sharing a love of the same thing. I value our friendship so much, I can't tell you how awesome it is just to be able to share an interest with someone. 

 And we also share the same love of the 80s,  and porcelain, and I could definitely see myself with a rabbit, if I didn't have Marley, the psycho cat.

The little pewter oak leaf charm seemed to be a great addition, and I strung it onto the wire a bead away from the focal for a nice asymmetrical accent. I used small burgundy one cut charlotte seed beads in between my beads, and did different beading patterns on each side of the necklace.

Creating my own clasp- the idea scared me a bit,  so I reverted back to one of my button clasps- it speaks well to my design, and also seems to add to my beading style, keeping true to myself.  I had visions at first, of coming up with this crazy artsy fartsy art jewelry necklace- but these ideas were quickly abandoned when I got lost in the Michael Jackson beading groove.

I dangled a small ceramic leaf charm from Erin (Every Heart Crafts) buy the clasp. Overall, I am quite happy with how this turned out! I hope you have enjoyed our little challenge. Check out Nancy's blog to see what she's done with the same beads!

I have thoughts of doing this again but on a larger scale- maybe pick out beads from Michaels and then anyone that wants to participate, can make something with a handful of guidelines, and show them off on your blogs. A bit of a blog hop!?   Feel free to comment if you feel like that would be something fun.