AJE Firefly Challenge reveal

Last month I won one of Jen Cameron ‘s Firefly beads as part of the Art Jewelry Elements quarterly theme challenge. Today is the day to reveal my design, and in typical fashion, I have waited until the very last minute to make something (in my defence, it’s been a busy month, and my weekend was filled with dance and gymnastics competitions—not me, my daughters!—and now it’s school holidays).

Anyway, Jen’s beads look like this (I borrowed Jen’s photo, thank you!).

Fireflies, are found in parts of the USA, as well as other places around the world, and tend to appear on warm summer nights. I once saw fireflies in Nebraska when I was visiting a friend and her family (we drove her car back to California where we were both at grad school). Alas, here in this part of Australia we don’t have fireflies, although we do have glowworms, which I have seen in the Victorian bush. One of my daughters said the bead looked like the Van Gogh painting Starry Starry Night, which it definitely does.

It’s a big bead too, a couple of inches long, and quite fat, so it was destined to go into a necklace. I knew it would need to be balanced by the rest of the design, so I thought I would do a multi-strand necklace and braid the strands together to give each side some visual weight. I chose a combination of some deep blue seed beads surrounding a variety of golden yellow Czech glass flowers, pale translucent yellow beads interspersed with blue rondelles, and after some thought, a strand of mixed seed beads in greens, blues and purples with some pops of yellow.

Last but not least, I added a tassel underneath the bead. I wanted a yellow tassel but could only get blue and green, so I went with green. I tried to age the shiny golden cap but alas it is plastic, so I need to think of the best way to do that—clearly gilder’s paste is unlikely to work. Although, now that the necklace is assembled, it doesn’t look too out of place with the golden yellow beads.

(Apologies for the picture—which is not the best as it was taken at night under lights. I may replace it tomorrow if I can get a better one.)

Anyway, thank you Jen for the fabulous bead, and thank you AJE for the challenge! I’ve listed the other participants below, make sure you go and check out their creations.

Guest Designers:

Melissa Trudinger – https://beadrecipes.wordpress.com <– YOU ARE HERE!!

Mary Detray – http://www.brassrabbitstudio.com/blog

Keren Panthaki – https://vasdea.wordpress.com

Tammy Adams – http://www.paisleylizard.com/blog/

Veralynne Malone – www.veradesigns.blogspot.com

Terri Del Signore – http://artisticaos.blogspot.com

Heather Powers – http://www.humblebeads.blogspot.com

Susan Delphine Delaney – https://susandolphindelaney.wordpress.com

 

AJE Team:

Jenny Davies-Reazor – http://www.jdaviesreazor.com/blog

Lesley Watt – http://www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.com

Niky Sayers – http://silverniknats.blogspot.co.uk

Caroline Dewison – http://blueberribeads.co.uk

Jen Cameron – http://www.glassaddictions.com/blog