July design team reveal: the amazing purple donut transformed

It's the last Friday of the month, which means that it's time for Kristie's design team reveal!  I'm pushing back my Friday Feature and Saturday Link Lists posts this week so those will resume tomorrow.

I am honored that Kristie accepted me as a guest member of her design team.  This is the first time that I've participated.  For those who don't remember, this is the selection of ceramic donuts and buttons that we got to choose from.

I chose the middle purple donut.  I knew that I wanted to create a beaded bail for it with a beaded rope.  I chose two purple delicas for the bail and a champagne mix of delicas for the rope.

I started with the rope.  I still think that this would look awesome in a gray, but I couldn't pair my purples with something that I liked with the pictures online so I went with champagne.  I made this with tubular herringbone, which was something new for me.  In the future, I would make a rope with 6 beads around, not 8, but the thicker one works for this because I wanted more of a statement piece.

The herringbone was pretty fun.  It's a little tedious, but I think it may give me a new venue for some of the delica combinations I've been planning but simply cannot get excited about working in peyote right now.  Part of the tediousness of the rope came from the length.  A bracelet will work up much more quickly.

I made a really big bail because I was worried about the rope not fitting.  When I made a bail for one of Kristie's donuts a couple years ago, I made it way too tight and only a thin ribbon will fit through.  This has inspired me to redo that at some point.  Anyway, the big bail works with this statement piece.  I like how the purples coordinate with the donut.  I wanted the magenta shade so the piece would have a brighter pop of color.

The donut is so reflective!  I had a hard time taking a picture without glare that didn't turn the purple into black.  I am pleased with how the purple did turn out in a lot of these shots.  Kristie's donuts are so much fun to work with because her craftsman ship is so great.  If you're interested in your own, they're available here.

I added an extender chain for this necklace.  The rope is 17".  The extender will lengthen it up to 22".  I can add a longer chain if necessary.  The delicas are so light that the rope didn't weigh the piece down as much as I thought it would.

I'll have this item up for sale in my Etsy shop sometime next week.  You're welcome to reserve it now if you're interested.  I am still clueless on a name for it so if you have any inspiration, please let me know.

One of the best parts of this team is that you get to see what all of the other members created this month as well.  Click on the picture links to see what they made.

"What's Old is New Again" Art Beads design partners piece

Typically I complete my Art Beads pieces about three weeks after the themes are announced.  I got the initial e-mail for the spring theme at the very end of March and didn't complete my piece until this past Sunday.  The size for one of my bead sets was mislabeled on the Art Beads site.  It took a couple weeks to get a new set of something similar in the right size.  I've also been busy with custom orders (no complaints there!) and all of the moving and graduation stuff.  But I finished it and am really happy with the result.

The theme for the Art Beads design partners is "What's Old is New Again."  We were supposed to use any old or vintage inspired components with or without new components to create a brand new piece.  I didn't have any initial idea for the theme.  I started browsing the suggested site categories and came across these patina daggers in the glass beads category.  I'm sure that it's no surprise that I was immediately drawn to them.  I've been eying some similar ones in Shannon's shop for a while, but hadn't bought any yet.  This was the perfect opportunity to use them.  The whole set with orange, lime, turquoise, and purple reminded me of the 70's, which fit perfectly for this theme, so I decided to go with it.

Once I was set on the patinas, I hunted through my own bead stash for cube and seed beads in coordinating colors.  I supplied all of these myself, although three of the cube bead sets were ones that I'd purchased from Art Beads on my own.  You can see my sneak peak post about this here.  I filled in the patina daggers with orange, lime, and transparent green daggers.  I love the dagger beads on Art Beads, but as I've posted about here before, it's cheaper to buy them in bulk elsewhere.  Usually I get a few unusual designs from Art Beads and fill them in with bulk solid colors.

This is the first dagger bracelet that I've made with side fringe.  I used coordinating orange and lime pressed Czech glass beads, along with the seed beads, with the same technique that I use for my other skinny fringed/embellished bracelets.  If you want links for the specific Czech glass that I used in this piece, let me know.

Art Beads has several awesome triangle clasps in their clasp category.  I choose this one because it was vintage inspired and has the circles on it, which mirror the ones on the patinas.  Normally I would have used a button from my own collection, but we need two product categories for our pieces, so this was a perfect way to make that happen.

I decided to name the piece after That '70s Show.  I thought that this would be appropriate as I grew up in the 80's and got my inspiration for this retro color combination from my own generation's pop culture.

I love the way the colors came together in this piece.  I also love the side fringe.  I think that the size and shape of the beads that I chose worked really well as a little border.  I may experiment with similar fringe in the future.

It's available here.  I collected some new green daggers in the process of making this bracelet so I'm planning an all green dagger bracelet in the future.  That's the only dagger piece that I have in the works right now, but as always I'm open to other suggestions.

Disclosure - I received my ArtBead's products free of charge through their blogging program. I am honestly reviewing their products and have not been paid for my endorsement as it pertains to the products I received.