Handmade Bead Netting Necklace - Grand Prize Winner

This was a challenge I intended to meet head on; this was the International Jewelry Designers Guild's first Beady Design Quest challenge. The participants all received the same beads with the exception a unique focal bead created by the very talented Brea Van Putten. We were exhorted to create, No matter if it was jewelry, a figure, a vessel. Just create using all of the beads supplied.

I was filled with anticipatory excitement as I opened the padded envelope containing me set of beads. I gasped in delight when I saw that my focal bead was a wondrous glass flower of rich color. It stood out immediately from the black and white and silvery hues of the other beads included and I knew that this would lead to a very special creation.

Although I could not devote much thought to the design then, I nonetheless took every opportunity I could to stare, mesmerized, at my beautiful flower. Ideas began to flow as my creative consciousness took hold of the assignment with determination. I went through my own beads and findings and the myriad of half formed designs metamorphasized into fewer but more explicit ones as I finally focused on the concepts of balance, chaos, and random order.