Tags
Allegory Gallery, Andrew Thornton: Project Destash, art abandonment, artist trading cards, Bead in the New Year with Allegory Gallery, Crafty Hope, Hope Smitherman, One Piece at a Time, Vintage Bead Vault, Who Knows What
As I typed that title, I realized I don’t have full weeks in my wrap ups necessarily, so there will be five weeks this month. 🙂 On to the Allegory Gallery prompts!
Day 21 – Get together with some friends to create
My mom is my favorite beading buddy. This is at her house last weekend. It’s nice to have someone else’s opinion and exchange materials. She also pushes me to try new things by proposing dates to use patinas or finally try epoxy clay. Thanks, mom!
Day 22 – Construct a non-jewelry piece using beads
Many moons ago, I got a pack of artist trading cards from Andrew Thornton’s destash as a prize. I had never heard of such a thing, but when I read up on them, I thought it was cool. I had done some paper crafts (cards, scrapbooks) back in the day. Fast forward to me enjoying art journaling and other paper arts that Crafty Hope posts about on her blog. Combine those two things with this prompt, and I give you my project using some vintage charms. I look forward to doing more elaborate non-jewelry projects.
Day 23 – Do a random act of (bead) kindness
My intention was to do art abandonment with these earrings. I used to do it more often, but I’ve gotten away from it. Honestly, I don’t get to that many places, and I can’t always find a good place to drop. There was a big snowfall on this day, so I ended up giving the earrings to a co-worker who happened into my office. That was random!
Day 24 – Create a piece using vintage materials 
I enjoyed making this piece quite a bit. I used a vintage brass piece as a starting point. The vintage  glass drop (that has a nice purple cast you can’t totally see) and those perfect wedding cake beads are from the Vintage Bead Vault. I got the vintage purple glass pearls from Who Knows What, a treasure of a shop, and the green glass from One Piece At a Time, also a favorite.
Day 25 – Put together a piece using seed beads
I use seed beads mostly as spacers. I wanted to do something a bit different, but I wasn’t about to do any bead weaving. That requires a whole day set up with moral support. But I had gotten the Allegory Gallery Design Challenge Day of the Dead kit. It came with a great sugar skull wooden pendant that had an open weave at the top as well as a tube of really pretty colorful seed beads. I imagined using wire to weave those beads at the top of the pendant. That is one of the things I love about these prompts; it gives some of us to time (or the understanding that we already have the time) to do things we’ve been thinking about. Now if I could only find the strand of beads that came in this kit that I wanted to use for a necklace with this. I’m sure I put them “someplace safe.”
Day 26 – Use a color that you don’t normally use
I don’t think there are a lot of colors I don’t use. I love brights, neutrals, pastels, metallics, etc. The one color I think I use less frequently is blue. But I do have a blue and turquoise box (I separate some beads by color). I looked in there and came up with a design I really like!
I feel like this had the added benefit of helping use those very cute dotty beads I’ve had for years. I tend to shy away from color combinations that are associated with something specific: red, white and blue, green and red, sports team colors, etc. Now to me they just look cute!
I think I’ve been doing Monday through Sunday recaps, but I’m going to post this now and leave the last five days of this challenge for one last recap. Thanks for reading! I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am.
Bead Love 