I am not a happy camper today. I am mad with myself for not entering this month's PCAGOE challenge.I love entering the challenges. The themes are always great, and give me the opportunity to push the envelope and really exercise my creativity. The theme, "Inspired by Fabric", is right up my alley, too! Vintage fabrics are my specialty, dang it! I have a collection of somewhere around 1000 vintage fabric images and a closet full of real vintage fabrics which inspire me every day! I use image transfers of vintage fabrics as the basis for many of pendants and brooches.
I even had an entry ready to post, this beautiful Vintage Silk Kimono Necklace. I added it to the challenge pool for about 5 minutes, then withdrew it.
(Front View) Why? Because I really wanted to enter a necklace made from these gorgeous black and white Damask focal beads instead, but a funny thing happened on the way to the entry deadline.
The focal beads' gemstone matches didn't speak to me like they usually do. I went through my entire inventory of gemstones and Swarovski crystal, but nothing worked, even though I had some ideas (faceted black Onyx and Black Diamond Swarovski crystal) and suggestions from friends (jet and pearls). 
(Reverse View) NOTHING I put with them worked. The black gems made the black in the focals look brownish gray. The gray gems made the white in the focals look yellow. It almost drove me nuts until 11:59 p.m. last night (entry deadline is midnight), when I threw up my hands and decided not to enter either. I could have entered just the focal beads, I suppose, but that felt like cheating. So I will be sitting on the sidelines the first week of April, enjoying the fantastic entries of all the talented (and much less neurotic) artists who managed to make the deadline. I'll be pondering my top 3 choices and continuing the hunt for my damask beads' matching gemstones; and I am open to suggestions, people.
Happy Last Week of March, everyone!
3 comments:
Lynda, so sad you didn't get to enter! I love the red floral.
As for the beautiful black and white beads - what about clear crystal beads, and perhaps some smaller round beads made to match the larger ones?
It's odd how blacks and whites, especially, can look so dramatically different on one piece to the next!
The challenge won't be the same with you.
me<><
Thank you, Cindy. I am still struggling with the gemstones, but crystal Swarovski with another color other than black or gray, I think...red, maybe? I wanted a monochromatic color palette, but that may be the problem. Blacks are like blues, I guess, there are a million different shades! I had to put them down and walk away for awhile, know what I mean?
Thanks for missing me in the challenge!
The long rose beads are gorgeous!!! Do you have them for sale?
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