Gaea's Copy Me Challenge

Gaea decided to challenge us,  and requested that we take inspiration from this bracelet and reinterpret it in our own way. You can read her original post here.  I was one of the lucky ones picked to create a piece for the challenge.  The others that were chosen at random were:

 Michelle
Erin
For My Sweet Daughter
SueBeads
Spirited Earth


At first, I was a bit stumped. The "Copy Me" challenge was taken a bit too literally and I started out creating a bracelet that looked scarily too much like this original. So I revamped my piece into a more "lorelei" style and ended up with a necklace in the end.

The focal on my necklace is a pewter heart lock from Lynn Davis. I hoard many of Lynn's pieces, but was finally willing to let this one go. I tend to really really love each design that features one of her pendants. Some people are just SO TALENTED. seriously.

I dispersed the Mermaid rounds that Gaea sent to all of the participants, in between some cranberry glass rounds, and chain, in darkened silver tone, and brass. Mixing metals is always a great way to create a true vintage inspired piece of jewelry- but it modernizes it just enough.

I wire wrapped a couple of garnets by the LOVE focal, which plays off of the garnets used in Gaea's original bracelet design. The stamped Love focal is actually from Jeanette Blix of Fundametals.
This was another of my totally random beading projects where I didn't lay out the final design but instead just grabbed beads and and components and put them together randomly.

I really loved this challenge and hope that Gaea hosts something like this again soon. It's a great exercise to stretch your imagination and creativeness and teaches you how to be inspired by the overall design without completely replicating the piece of jewelry bead for bead. I hope that the people who struggle with this task, learn something great from this post.