Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Pretty Palettes :: October Reveal

This is what fall looks like to me. Leaves, warmth, comfort. 
Erin chose the perfect palette for October's Pretty Palette challenge to go along with these "coasty" (the combination of "cozy" and "toasty" my 4-year-old came up with) feelings.
Design Seeds put together a great palette, and Erin chose some beautiful Bead Gallery beads at Michaels. 
Although I loved Erin's bead choice, I had a pair of earrings in mind for the challenge, and I needed some other shapes of beads, so I added a few little faceted rounds and rondelles. I also had some wooden rectangle beads that I'd been hoarding in hopes of finding the perfect project home for them. Because they're so lightweight, wooden beads are great for earrings! Here are the beads I chose for this challenge:
My beads, with the purplish wooden rectangles right in the middle!

I wanted to play around with wire, making frames around the larger beads with smaller beads. I ended up adding some gold faceted rounds because I needed some more smaller beads to use to frame the larger beads. Pretty soon I had some components that I could put together with wrapped loops to make some chandelier earrings with a color palette that appealed to me almost as much as a spiced warm apple cider. 
Pumpkin Spice Earrings by Molly Schaller
Now that I've made these earrings once, I want to make them again with other colors, and make them better. Time got away from me, and I didn't have enough of the small beads to make all of the trips around the red bead that I wanted to. I also want to get more practice using wire this way. I'd never made this type of component before, so my wires are a bit wonky. But when it's reveal time, it's reveal time, right? This time I worked down to the wire! ;)

To see the projects that others have made for Pretty Palettes, just click the InLinkz below.