Tropical Vacation Challenge

I've been working on my entry to the Etsy Beadweavers January challenge and thought I'd give you some sneak previews. The theme is Tropical Vacation.

I started off with the idea of brilliant colors, which led me to thinking about green palm trees and luscious red flowers, blue oceans, white sandy beaches and bright yellow bananas. Well I figured I had a big problem in how to incorporate all those ideas into one piece - so I settled on just trying to use all the colors.

I began with a simple peyote stitched band and then started adding greenery. Here's a picture of the beginning of the necklace band and closure. I made small sections and combined each section together with different colored swarovski crystals.


The next step was to start adding other colors and so I began with some red beads and the idea of loops and some pretty blue ab finished flower beads. Here are the results of two flower groupings going around one side of the necklace.



















Now I'm working on the bottom section of the necklace, creating as I go. No planning - just letting it flow out of me. What fun! I like the free form of the necklace and trying things on a whim. Of course, I end up taking out a lot of experimentation in the process.

The entry needs to be finished by February 2nd and at the rate I'm going, I'll barely get it done in time.