AJE Theme Challenge Reveal - Summer

This months AJE design challenge is inspired by the theme of summer - something that is sadly lacking here in the UK as I sit here in a fleece at the end of June! However, my garden is still managing to live up to expectations and that's where I've chosen to draw my inspiration from. I love that time in the garden when most of the hard work is done and you can sit back and enjoy the abundance of your labours...for a couple of months At least.

I decided to go with a beading project this month and since I was short on time I just went with the flow and let the beads take me where they would. I started with one of my own cabochons with a floral motif and created a bead bezel in matching colours. From there I added Czech glass flower and leaf beads and I was thinking at this point it might turn into a brooch. But as the shape developed I started to think more in terms of a pendant so I added some loops to the edging.

This was all feeling a bit heavy and solid so i added some fringing along the bottom edge to give some sense of movement and airiness...much better I think.

As the bead work is so detailed I've kept the necklace part very simple with watercolour chiffon silk ribbon and the final result is this necklace which I've called "Garden Party". Quite a different style for me but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Please use the links below to see how our summer themed challenge inspired the other participants.

Guests

Rosantia Petkova
Melissa Trudinger

Alice Peterson

Tammy Adams

Shaiha's Ramblings

Betony Maiden
Sarajo Wentling

AJE team
Jen Cameron

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Niky Sayers

Caroline Dewison

Susan Kennedy
Lesley Watt

Lesley

AJE Themed Design Challenge - Fireflies

Today is the reveal of the second AJE themed design challenges and this months event is hosted by Jen Cameron and the theme she chose was fireflies.  This did turn out to be quite challenging for me since the last tie I saw a firefly was probably way back in my childhood. We do have them in the UK but more in rural areas that I don't tend to frequent after dark!

So I had to turn to Jen's photographic images for my inspiration and it took me a while to come up with a plan.

I was struggling to come up with a way to capture these masses fireflies in ceramic that was different from the other teams ideas so I decided to for silver clay instead. I used a stamp to create a grass design and then set lots of tiny 2mm cubic citrine zirconium into the clay - a bit of a race against time to do before the clay dried out. Once the piece was fired I gave it a heavy LOS patina to help the CZS stand out...it's a bit of a pig to photograph so apologies for the less than brilliant image.

I've not yet had time to make this up into a piece of jewellery but I have an idea in my head to rivet it to a copper back plate that will be etched with the legend 'fireflies dance'. I'm thinking a chain of hand coiled links interspersed with citrine or yellow quartz beads to pick up the stones on the pendant but knowing me that may well change.

Then last week I was finishing up a clay session and decided to have a go at doing an individual firefly like this little chap...

It got a bit tricky when it came to the legs and antennae so I decided to use nichrome wore for these instead of clay...not exactly the elegant creature I had in the back of my head but a bit of fun none-the-less!

So there you have my attempts at creating fire flies and if they've sparked a flame (sorry!) for me then you can see what out guest designers and the rest of the AJE team created using the links below:

Guest Designers:

• Melissa Trudinger 
• Mary Detray 
• Keren Panthaki
• Tammy Adams
• Veralynne Malone
• Terri Del Signore
• Heather Powers
• Susan Delphine Delaney

AJE Team

• Jenny Davies-Reazor
• Lesley Watt
• Niky Sayers
• Caroline Dewison 
• Jen Cameron