ABS Challenge September

Tags

art bead, Autumn, beads, doughnut pendant, necklace, painting, pendant, polymer clay, SEP ABS, silk ribbon, silk yarn

This month’s Art Bead Scene challenge painting is Autumn by Alphonse Mucha. I made a hollow doughnut pendant using colours from the painting and a floral pattern to convey the bountiful atmosphere of the painting. Here is a video demo of me making the polymer clay pendant.

Autumn from “The Seasons (series)”, 1896
Alphonse Mucha
Oil on Panel

The first thing that caught my eye in the painting was her beautiful tendrils of red hair. I used a mix of red silk yarn, ombre silk ribbon and strands of beads to represent this and the maturing foliage.

Voilà – Autumn on a string. Or should a say many strings? 🙂

Advertisement

ABS Challenge August

Tags

abstract painting, art bead, beads, bracelet, handmade, handmade beads, macrame, polymer clay, purple, red, silk yarn, surface texture

For this month’s ABS challenge I have made a micro macrame wrap bracelet with a selection of my handmade beads. The muse took a slightly scenic route this time so hang in there…

Tres Personajes, (Three People) 1970
Rufino Tamayo
Oil on Canvas 51″ × 38″

First of all the inspiration painting: I loved the vivid red and purple colour combination and the rough surface texture that looked almost chalky.

I want to improve my cane building skills, so I have been thinking it’s time for me to practice building canes to a planned design. Thanks to my toddler I remembered the “scribble patterns” I used to make as a child (i.e. draw a scribble and colour in the shapes) and I thought this would be a good place to start.

I made a rough mockup on the computer to test my idea. Now I had an abstraction of an abstract painting which amused me but…

I didn’t like it so much multiplied out into a kaleidoscope pattern.

Going back to the earthy texture of the painting I was reminded of the Cosmic Ceramic tutorial I still haven’t been able to play with. So I decided to combine the ceramic tutorial with my cane design and make a toggle to use with Sherri Stokey’s micro macrame wrap bracelet tutorial.

Micro macrame wrap bracelet

Wrap bracelet unwrapped.

The result is pretty difficult to photograph!

I used silk yarn instead of nylon cord (I was too impatient to order it) so the knotting is finer than I had hoped. I had intended only to make the toggle and use existing beads for the bracelet, but I ended up making all the beads from scratch. It was a fun exercise to make a variety of beads using the same colours. I even ended up with an extra set of beads that I love but the pattern seemed too crisp in comparison to the painting so they will go to my Etsy shop.