June Pretty Palettes Blog Hop

Silver Bay, NY - My happy place and the location of one of my favorite beaches: Slim Point!

The beach. One of my favorite places & Erin Prais-Hintz' choice for this month's Pretty Palettes blog hop! Each month Erin chooses Bead Gallery beads and a color palette as inspiration for a beading project that we can share with other beaders. For more information about Halcraft's Pretty Palettes blog hop, click this link!

For June, Erin chose these beads:

Halcraft's Pretty Palette beads for June 2016

I love the theme and the colors Erin chose! My Michaels had most of these beads, but not all of them. I swapped out the turquoise teardrops for turquoise ovals, and I used gold daisy spacers instead of the gold matte glass bicones (which btw, are some of my favorite beads). I also found some really beautiful Czech squares with two holes.

Now, I like the ocean, but to be honest, I'm more of a lake sort of girl. The salt water is lovely for floating and fabulous hair, but I'll always pick a freshwater lake surrounded by mountains to the wide open ocean. 

When I made my pieces for this month's Pretty Palettes hop, I found myself daydreaming of a family trip we're planning to take this summer to Silver Bay YMCA, a family camp that is a lot like the camp in Dirty Dancing. A full staff takes care of you and the rest of your family while you spend the days playing tennis, practicing your yoga or even beading and making baskets in the craft shop. Check it out, if you're in the market for some family fun in the near future. 

Here are the pieces I made for the challenge, named Beach Bound in honor of upcoming vacations!

The Beach Bound Necklace and Bracelet Collection featuring Bead Gallery beads for 2016 Pretty Palettes

The Beach Bound Bracelets are made with Beadalon's memory wire and a variety of Bead Gallery beads. The wire keeps them rigid, sort of like bangles, but they're easy to slip on and off your wrist. The top bracelet features two-holed beads, which I loved working with. The faceted rondelles on the bottom bracelet are graduated, and each strand includes three different sizes of bead, which would be perfect for necklaces, as well.

 The Beach Bound Necklace is SO EASY! All you do is string the smaller seed beads from the strand in the order that they come in.

One quick tip is to take 5-8 off the string they come on at a time, only removing what you're ready to string. I played around with adding some charms, but this one was just nice as a simple multi-strand necklace. To give it a beachy feel, I used the starfish beads almost like bead cones to gather the three strands.


Another tip is to use the smallest diameter of beading wire that you can, so that the lightweight beads are able to drape well as you wear them. I used Beadalon's .012" flexible beading wire for this necklace, and it lays almost as though it's strung on silk cording, but with even more strength.

I love this piece so much that I had to share a photo of myself while I was wearing it. It's almost a choker, but not quite, at a 16" length. Best of all, this length is exactly what came on the card, so it only takes a few dollars to create this beautiful necklace! I used the larger E beads on the card to create the bracelet with the seahorse charm in the stack above.

I love the length & drape of this necklace! 

Now, it's time for even more fun. Check out the rest of the Halcraft design team's projects and post your own! We'd love for you to play along!

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