October Jewelry Challenges

With September's challenges under my belt, I felt a little more relaxed going into October's ... I don't know, but it seemed like while I had more ideas for these ones, they were harder to actually get to where I was happy with them!

The Art Bead Scene Studio bead challenge was the one I had the hardest time coming up with an idea for - and I even had a head start as the artwork for October was posted in September.  Roccoco is not a style I typically use.  It's a 17th century design movement that is intricate, elegant, and ornate.  There was a lot of use of plant and flower motifs, though, and that does sound like me!

The inspiration artwork was Francois Boucher's 1756 painting, Madame De Pompadour.  Madame De Pompadour was the mistress of King Louis XV and the patroness of Boucher - he painted many portraits of her.  I love the rich colors of this painting, so I decided to take the apricot roses and the teal silk and come up with a bead.  It didn't sound hard, as I had made a few red rose beads for my Day of the Dead update - those were painted with stains on a surface of stain, though, and I wanted to use something along the lines of a majolica technique to get that silkiness.  Long story short, these are try number three and the ones I entered.  It's terra cotta clay under a satin white glaze that I used stains on top of to get color and the roses.

You can see all the jewelry and beads created for October's challenge here.  And when you go look at them, be sure to check out the ads on the right-hand side.  Yep!  One of them is mine - I was actually chosen in a drawing for a free month of advertising!  I don't usually have beginner's luck - thank you ABS!

On to the second challenge.  Erin Prais-Hintz's theme for this month's We're All Ears challenge on Earrings Everyday was .... the harvest moon!  Read about it here.  I thought this one would be easy as last month I made harvest moon pendants and then a handful of small charms to go with them, but I still had to decide on a design.

Actually, I thought that September's full moon was always called the harvest moon, but nope, I was wrong.  It's usually in September but it's the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, so this year October's full moon fit the bill.  I wear my harvest moon pendant all the time, but hadn't done anything with the charms.  After going through several tries with different beads, I decided I liked them paired with my gourd inspired beads and shell stars, bringing in two of my favorite things about October - it gets dark earlier so you can see more stars and the ripening pumpkins and gourds.  And after several versions that kept getting shorter and shorter ( I apparently do not have a long enough neck to wear the long, dramatic earrings that I love), I decided on this design. 

You can see everyone's harvest moon inspired earrings here.

On to SJDesigns challenge!  Sarajo's husband, Eric, gives her a challenge each month and this month's was a photograph he took of a painted lady butterfly.  We have a lot of them around here during the summer and they're one of my favorites!  You can read about the challenge on her website here.  

Eric Wentling

This is the challenge that stretched my creative thinking the most this month!  It's a gorgeous photo, but after working on butterfly wing shapes last month for the ABS bead challenge, I didn't feel like returning to them.  So I decided to go with the orange and black color scheme.

I've been playing around with some crawling and lichen glazes and there's a black one that's working particularly well - so I used pigments to color a couple of discs and some odd spiral twist beads I made for fun and then glazed them with the crawling black.  

At first I thought, oh my gosh - what am I going to do with these?  They turned out looking so bold - I usually work in the more subtle range and these scream!  And screaming reminds me of Halloween, so I made a dramatic Halloween necklace.  It's sooo different from any other piece of jewelry I own and I love it!!  I used one of the spiral beads, the two ceramic discs, large black crystals, black glass beads, and some rust colored pearls that have been sitting around for a few years.  

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Check out others interpreted the challenge on Sarajo's site here.

The rectangular rose beads are up in the shop, there are a few harvest moon charms and gourd-inspired beads left, and I did not make more of the orange/black crawl beads but have a listing in the shop for them as Made To Order.

Happy Creating!  Deborah