What's New Wednesday Continued

I did get a chance to find some time to make an entry into Art Bead Scene's January Challenge. It is a wonderful painting by Claude Monet, one that is different from his more familiar colorful pieces. I like this and think he did a wonderful job in this painting. The beauty is in it's simplicity, it's complexity is in it's setting. A simple magpie perched on a rustic gate is the subject and title, but the real star to me is the capturing of the snow. To me snow is even harder to paint realistically than water. Water is a living thing and snow being frozen water also takes on its own life by the light surrounding it. Because snow it made up of crystals it is highly reflective but multi-faceted giving it even more dimensions that the liquid form.

Monet has captured the colors reflected in snow, the purples, the blues, pinks, grays in so many shades and hues they can't be counted. I tried to do the same in using his painting as the inspiration for my necklace. Bright silver was the obvious choice for the base and I used a semi-oval link chain. To this I fastened it with a bit of an antiqued rope toggle clasp. Now I could move on to the fun stuff. I find attaching the clasp first on a symmetrical piece makes it easier to center the focal. And I had the perfect focal, one I had won months back on Art Bead Scenes drawing. It is from Green Girl Studio and is a pewter tube bead with a branch and two birds, one I choose to call my magpie. To this I wanted to bring out the relationship of the dark bird against the light of the snow and thus antiqued the bead. I also wanted to highlight the trees that border the building and hung from the bird bead the tree in winter Charm.

My Focal taken care of now I went through all my bead boxes and containers in search of my perfect snow mix. What I ended up with consisted of a melange of beads, from vintage to new, from plastics to crystals taken from an old Chandelier. I wanted to capture that frosty reflective look that snow has. The colors I used range from frosted white, iridescent crystal, pale blue hand blown glass, Milk glass with a slight peachy hue, periwinkle and pink with a few branch shaped pieces of Abalone thrown in to sprinkle the dark of the focal throughout like the trees that are a predominant part of the painting. If this painting moves you and you'd like to have a copy of your own you can find one here at Global Gallery , on sale right now for Only $18.00.

I have never made a piece like this before and it took much longer than I'd thought (about 4 hours to wire wrap each bead and attach to the chain), but I think it was worth it, do you?


Now I can move on to making my piece for the Bead Soup Swap I joined. These are the beads I received from my partner, I can't wait to see what I can come up with! Defiantly not the snowy theme of Monet, but a look forward to my favorite time of year, Spring! There was snow covering the ground when I woke up today, didn't hear anything about that on the weather but it is quickly melting under the sun. Still have a couple of days yet to see what Phil will think, but I sure hope it's a cloudy day that day!




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