Genea Beads- Artbeads.com "Colors of Fall" Bead Review

 Hello friends!

I am excited to have completed my "Colors of Fall" blog for Artbeads!

I must admit I got in a little over my head this time around! We got to choose items by color instead of by category. I am a pretty thrifty shopper so I got LOTS of items for our blog budget! You all know how much I LOVE color so I tried to use almost ALL of the fall colors in Pantone's palette.

Well all the bright ones anyways ;)

So here you can see my doodles with my ideas for design and my chicken scratch handwriting. Yes, it really IS that bad :( Thank God blogs are typed, right?! ;D

Now because I am a horrible tease you will have to wait to see "the best for last". Now that doesn't mean the other designs aren't amazing, it's just how I roll. I always like to show the designs up to the most intricate and complex design :)

So not surprisingly I have TONS of ideas for earrings. I don't know why, but I always have ideas for funky long dangly ones :D I even incorporated some of my lampwork glass headpins!

 

Here were the first pair I put together. I just LOVED these resin rings!  I love to use negative space in my designs for interest. I used Pumpkin resin rings  along with my lampwork glass headpins, spotty spacer and some Swarovski crystals. This was the very first design I used these really nifty aluminum rings as well. They are really awesome because they are light weight, very strong, stay "silver" colored, and are very inexpensive!

Next I used the Salmon resin rings for this super loopy tear drop dangle pair of earrings. I love everything about this design! The earrings are so light it hardly feels like they are in your ears.  Instead of using the rings at the top of the design I put them at the bottom for some interest :) I used Ruby and Burgundy Swarovski crystals  for some sparkle along with some colored leather, electroplated chain, my lampwork spacers and my very favorite sterling silver ball earwires :)

Originally I had ordered the resin rings to go along with my design, but I had so many ideas for earrings. I ordered 3 of each color since I didn't have  plan for them. Since I had 1 of each color left I decided to turn them into these funky asymmetrical earrings. I paired the rings with some rubber o's(My ELEMENTS) , aluminum rings, waxed linen and my wing ding style beads.

Since I wasn't sure what I was going to need for my sketch book drawing I got many different components in different colors so I had lots to choose from. I decided to use the Blue Zircon and Light Emerald Swarovski cyrstals for this funky eye bead lampwork keychain.

As you can see I was having a bit of a hard time dreaming my design into life so meanwhile more ideas came for different pieces of jewelry!

I had this soldered pendant with the daisy from awhile back when I first learned to make soldered charms. I had since learned to solder much better so I pulled the charm out and touched things up. The olive leather I chose was just PERFECT with the color scheme and it inspired me to make up this mixed-media necklace design. I used my soldered charm, lampwork beads, lampwork glass headpin, rubber o's, pixies,  colored leather, swarovski crystals, silk and suede cording, with a Hilltribe silver toggle.

I also used it for this bracelet design that turns into a necklace by using the cord included!

Pretty sweet, eh?!

Ok so are you ready for the finale?

 In this piece I used a bulk of my items ordered. I used Red, Orange and Yellow felted cones, lime green large fancy satin silk string, Indian Red Swarovski crystals, TOHO Earth Tone bead mix, basket, and cocoa glazed porcelain roundels. I added some other beads from my collection including: Czech glass leaves, and lucite flowers.

 Here you can see a close up design of the cones with their dangles. They don't look like it, but it took 30 minutes each to assemble each cone. Inside there is a wire wrapped coil squiggle with my lampwork glass raku dotted horn headpin, and knotted c-lon cording with Swarovski crystals.  I sewed the cones and all of the beads to the thick silk cording.

 Here is a little bit more detailed shot of the sewn on beads. See why it took me so long to complete this design? I had to think about how I was going to make my design work out with my materials and beading techniques.

Like I said I got SO many great beads! Here were some that didn't end up working into a design.

 
As you know inspiration is a crazy thing. When dreaming up my design I wasn't sure how many materials I would need and just exactly what I would need to create my design. As you can see above I didn't get a chance to use: Dark Lavender, Light Turquoise, Dark Pink felted cones, Poppy leather, Spanish Moss porcelain roundeles or the matte Lemon/Lime flat squares.

 I did realize this very interesting thing about the cones though. I flipped them in on themselves to open up the bottom a little more so I could sew my dangles inside for the necklace. While flipping them like this I realized that they would probably look pretty sweet sewn to something like this with some embellished seed beads on the pointy part sticking out of the center!

 Well I hope you had fun designing this year for fall and I hope my designs inspire you do create some master pieces of your own! Hop on over to Artbeads and  make something pretty for all of the "good" girls and boys on your list this holiday season!

Happy Creating!

Much love,

Genea

**Disclaimer** Genea Beads has received these products free of charge from artbeads.com. Our review of these items is our honest opinion. We have not been paid an  endorsement as it pertains to the products received.**