Thursday, April 8, 2010

Four-Sided

Amy thought the three-sided pendant version of this looked like a spaceship.

Sputnik, I think.

This is the same thing, but with four faces instead of three (so it's square in cross-section rather than triangular), and is in the middle (and part of) a necklace, rather than being a stand-alone pendant. It's fairly substantial, about an inch and a half across and about an inch end-to-end.

In the three-sided pendant, I used metallic peacock-lined clear fringe beads, which are barely noticeable. I really like the intensity of the metallic iridescent fringies in the version above; I think they accent the shape, and add loci to draw the eyes.

While colour is a large part of what draws me to beads (after all, I'm pouring my love into tiny uniformly boringly round seed beads), it's architecture and texture that makes my fingers itch (metaphorically) to thread that needle and get going.

The funny thing is that the two most recent projects which have thrilled me, all about their construction, work so much better with contrasting colours, which is not my natural inclination. The colour palette into which I tumble with no effort is sludgey and monochromatic, a melange of subtly different hues with very similar values, so it's been a bit of an effort to choose seed beads that contrast in such a way as to enhance the various elements that make up my little Sputnik baubles.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Both are gorgeous! The 3-sided one reminds me of a crown. I could see these done with bright primary colors too!
Bead Happy!
Michelle

Stefanie said...

Gorgeous bead! regards Stefanie