Relaxed Simple Boho Hippie Style (& a little polymer jewelry tip)

Life has simply been hectic in the last couple months. It's generally no surprise for me to feel scattered this time of year... when the earth is awakening to it's fruitful seasons, life finds me  busy with garden chores and prepping the house for summer. But this spring, one of my dearest family members has been struggling with a combination of health issues. So with a few hospital stays, many doctors' visits and devoting more time to my beloved one, my crafting time is miniscule.

This month my guild's theme is Retro. This could be any design, color, pattern, etc. representing trends of by-gone decades. At first I had intended to do something 1950s, I've always love the 50s style and I have this cool pair of candlesticks that have a retro feel. But, as the clock ticked  and calendar pages fell away, I was left with just 2 days to complete a project. I knew I'd never have enough time to experiment with the candlesticks, so I decided to do something simple and quick.

For inspiration, I pulled from the 1960's Hippie style. Perhaps something Boho and definitely relaxed. Boy, do I need relaxed! ;)

I decided to do a macrame bracelet with polymer focal and accents. I hadn't made a macrame bracelet since my high school days, and I'd never tried one that had a wavy edge or pattern, so the non-polymer part of my project was the most challenging part of this project for me. I basically followed a tutorial that I found online which I altered a tiny bit to come up with the results above. I knew I wanted a natural bracelet and really wanted the polymer to be shades of white, blue and orange. This image (that I found via google) is the feel I was going for, both with the boho look of the bracelet and with the subtle orange and blue hues paired with natural beige:

I really wanted to play with the polymer to make a faux tie-dye pattern, but had to limit my time to an hour for the polymer part, and so didn't get the look I had originally intended. It's more of a faux lamp work/swirled feel, but I liked it enough and really didn't have time to experiment for anything else. I sandwiched the bracelet between the focal top and added a bottom to the underside of the bracelet, so the focal bead is baked right onto the macrame.

You can see the back side of the focal here in the distance of this image of the button closure:

For the button closure, I simply used a regular acrylic button and attached it to the bracelet, then I coated the button top with bonding agent and covered it with a slice of the polymer left over from my focal... that's my little polymer jewelry tip! I did the same thing with the 2 smaller accent beads, they are simple little acrylic buttons that were sewn onto the bracelet, coated with bonding agent and then covered with a sheet of the polymer. This little trick is great for applications such as this bracelet, but I've also used it to make these rings:

The blue base on the ring with the swirl is actually an acrylic button. The other ring has a clear button under the black polymer circle. This allows me to make a ring base from wire, feed the ends through the button holes and simply cover the wire ends with a decorative polymer piece. Simple, Easy ring base!

Because the macrame on this piece is sub-par, since it's my first one in a great long while and the first in this style, this bracelet won't be for sale, but I do hope to make similar pieces in the future for selling and gifting. I think it looks pretty happy (hippie) on my wrist! ;)

Let me know what you think in the comments! I'll try to remember to post a reminder when voting is open, as I'm sure you'll not want to miss all the great entries by my fellow guild mates! Voting is open on June 1st and will run through to June 7th at midnight!

8th Annual Bead Soup Blog Party Reveal

The day has finally come for the Bead Soup Blog Party (BSBP) Reveal.  I blogged about the BSBP when my soup arrived in the mail from my partner, and again when my partner got my soup.  You can find those posts here and here.  So, to recap, this is the soup I received:

I created a bunch of pieces, using most of the soup ingredients.  I started on the focal, the curved copper band with swirls and painted coloring.  As beautiful as this focal is, it proved a challenge for me to use it.  The reason for this is that I'm mostly a necklace girl.  This focal was simply made for being a bracelet.  I really tried hard to think of how I could make this into a necklace focal, but in the end I made it what it wanted to be, a bracelet.  I also incorporated the silk sari fabrics into this and 2 of the pink shell beads...  I had some vintage buttons that became the beads for the bracelet band.  Here are some shots of that piece:

 

I had this pink cord necklace that perfectly matched those pink shell beads... I also had a pendant that I had made out of polymer clay which had that same pink color, and those items were what created the second piece.  From the soup, the only items I used in this piece are the pink shell beads:

Next up, I had to use the clasp.  I didn't want to use the clasp in the same piece as the focal because I have an aversion to mixing metals.  The metals in the focal piece were copper and the clasp is silver tone.  The clasp also is in the whimsical shape of butterflies.  I decided to do a spring inspired piece using most of the multicolored crystal beads that were found in my soup, and I decided to make a butterfly pendant using my upcycled materials.  This butterfly pendant is created with fused plastic snack bags:

Next, I still had more of those fun, bright pink shell beads to use, so I decided to pair them with one of my dyed tyvek pendants as seen here:

The soup included a bunch of pearls, some glass ones and some freshwater pearls.  They were all in various shapes, sizes and colors... and some of them were drilled off center.  I decided to pair them with this great neutral variegated cording that I had.  I also decided to go for another bracelet design and earrings (another rarity for me).

Next I zeroed in on a small grouping of pale green cube beads (possibly fluorite).  I decided to do a boho look necklace with these pairing them with varying strands, disc beads from my stash and some garnet colored glass beads from my stash, and the focal is a multi-colored polymer clay bead:

There were 4 large moss agate (?) beads in my soup which I decided to pair with a polymer pendant that I made last year, which was sitting around waiting for inspiration.  The pendant was created while playing with Lynda Moseley's controlled marbling technique.  I pulled in some coral beads to draw on the orange tones in the pendant:

And finally, I wanted to use at least one of those metal sheets that I was sent in my soup.  Now, they were quite a challenge.  First, I'm no metalsmith... but I do like to play around and experiment with things.  These babies are big, about 3" by 4", and the metal is quite heavy.  I don't have any tools that can cut through that, nor do I have any great shaping tools.  But I do have a vice and decided today at the last minute to play with one of the plates to see what happens. I paired my bent up piece of metal with some thick grey knit cordage, its almost like a scarf necklace:

I still have some ingredients left over for further play! Plenty of the silk sari fabric, a couple more of the various colored crystal beads, the big green lampwork bead, and still a few more of the pink shell beads... oh, and the other 3 metal plates (though I think the one with the best impression will become a polymer clay texture plate). ;)

I had so much fun creating things with the soup.  It was a definite challenge for me, as all of the ingredients were items I wouldn't normally have acquired for my own supply, so it really pushed me to work with things out of my "norm".  I'm considering making 2 of the pieces part of my "permanent collection", so I think it's safe to say that I created pieces with which I'm quite pleased!  Please do have a look at my partner's blog to see what she did with the soup I sent her.  My partner is Arlene Dean from A Glass Bash, and you can find her reveal here.   Here is the soup that I sent to her:

Thank you Arlene!  There were close to 500 other participants in this blog party, please take some time to check out some of the other soups and reveals!  You can find the full list of participating artists, with hotlinks to their blogs here.  Many thanks to Lori Anderson for organizing everything!! Oh, and leave me a comment and let me know what you think about my creations! :)