a brand new bangle design...in purple!

I know that I'll get questions about this so I'll put this out there now.  I did not make my coasters, wedding art, and bangle this past week.  I simply got them all up on my blog this past week.  I have actually spent most of my creative energy this past week on a time-consuming customer order and spread out these other projects over the past month.

The April EBW Challenge theme is Seed Beads Only.  As part of the EBW mod team, we had a difficult time putting out a definition of the term "seed bead" and what the perimeters for the challenge would be.  This would seem like the most straight forward theme ever, but there were a lot of questions about whether non-beaded clasps would be allowed and what shapes and sizes of seed beads could be used.  I will spare you all the details, but suffice it to say, that I was pretty happy with the final decisions and decided that I did want to participate.

I have moved away from using beaded bead clasps for bracelets, as customers have really preferred button and metal clasps.  Since neither of these options are allowed, I opted for a bangle.  All of my bangles thus far have been based one of the most standard bangle designs out there.  I decided it was time to break way from that and do something new.

One of the final stipulations is that 20% or less of the final design can be non-round seed bead shapes (hexagons, triangles, cubes, etc.).  Yep, this involved doing some math before I started beading.  I thought that some would be interested to learn that the final piece has over 1,500 seed beads.

This is a variation of my skinny wrapped peyote design.  I had wanted to make a purple version of this design for a while and decided to convert it to a bangle.  I've always used right angle weave for bangles.  For those of you who beadweave, you know how easily it converts to a bangle.  I honestly didn't know how peyote would go.  It is not as flawless, but it's pretty good.  I chose to complete all of the wrapped embellishment before I joined the two ends, as I didn't know if the beadwork would allow the design to flip or not.  It turns out that it is flexible enough to flip so if I do this again, I may join the cube base, which will make the bangle conversion more flawless.

As always, it was really hard to put together a well blended purple combination and photograph is accurately.  Bangles are not my favorite type of jewelry to photograph anyway, but I'm fairly pleased with the result.  Purple continues to be a very popular color combination so it's well worth the effort.

This piece is available for sale here.  Voting for the April challenge will take place on the EBW blog April 9-15.  Check back here that week for all of the voting information.

Have you been working on any new designs lately?

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