Blu Mudd challenge – beadrecipes

I recently took part in Blu Mudd‘s design challenge. Moriah isn’t making beads regularly anymore (she’s concentrating on her soap business) but she is still running regular challenges, which is fun! Now that the competition part is over, I can show you what I made.

The theme this time was Southwestern, with a big bear pendant done in Zuni style, a connector with a pawprint and a feather connector too. To me, the first two components worked well together and the feather, with slightly different colours, stood out as a separate piece. I didn’t take a pic, so here is Moriah’s picture.

I started with the feather. With its little turquoise stripe, I decided to pull out some turquoise nuggets and make a long necklace with the turquoise dangling along a length of black deer hide leather thonging. It’s simple, but it looks effective.

The bear presented me with a challenge—to balance the large size of the pendant with enough weight in the supporting necklace. I ended up knotting half a dozen strands of waxed linen on each side, with sections of seed beads in southwestern colours strung onto each strand. I used a similar strategy to make a coordinating bracelet with the pawprint connector. I’m happy with the results, the pieces have visual weight without actually being heavy.

Thanks again Moriah for the challenge, it’s always fun to work with your pieces! I’ll look forward to the next one!

You can see what others made here.

If, like me, you are still working your way through BSBP8, click here for my blog post!

A bit over a month ago, I was lucky enough to sign up for Blu Mudd challenge number 4. These challenges are hosted by Moriah Betterly, the ceramic artist behind Blu Mudd, a source of delightful pendants, beads, bracelet bars and toggles. The challenge is simple: to design a piece with the kit sent out by Moriah, using all of the components supplied. Today, pieces by 28 designers went up on Facebook, so now we can look at all the designs and vote for our favourites—the designer with the most votes will receive a $50 Blu Mudd gift certificate!

Moriah sent each participant the same pack: a pendant featuring a pale blue bird perched on a branch, a toggle clasp in the same oatmeal glaze as the bird branch, and four coordinating blue beads. The blue is more of a pale aqua, robin’s egg blue.

I toyed with the idea of doing two necklaces, using the toggle as a focal for the second, with the idea that they could be layered. But in the end I went for the simpler option, and kept all the beads in one design. I added some large Czech faceted rounds, in a Picasso finish natural colour, as well as a solid and translucent aqua to intersperse with the lovely tubular ceramic beads. I strung these on waxed linen in a natural colour, with three strands of Picasso aqua-green seed beads between each larger bead. No wire was harmed in the making of this necklace!!!

Now, if you’re on Facebook, please take a moment to go there and vote for my design by clicking LIKE. You can leave a comment there too, but only the LIKES determine the vote. This link will take you to the main album, while this link takes you directly to my picture! You can vote for more than one design, but only once on each design! Thank you!