2010 Create Your Style Creative Beading Awards

Well, after what seems like an eternity, the results of the Open Division have been announced. Finalists are receiving their copy of "Creative Beading" this week and finding out where they came.

I'm very pleased to announce, and still getting my head around it, that my piece "Jardin des Fleurs Rouges" made it to 2nd place. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out. I'm also so very proud that there are so many of my Beading Forum buddies in the finalists - it's an honour to be included with you girls.

My only problem now ... where the hell am I going to store all those crystals that I get as part of my prize. Holy dooley I'm having storage problems now, let alone when they arrive!!!

Here's my piece - "Jardin des Fleurs Rouges" .... inspired by the garden paintings of Claude Monet. I love Monet's paintings, but especially his garden series. So I went about making my own little garden. For this piece I wanted to use a Swarovski element I'd never used before, and this is where the gorgeous Wing pendants came from. As I wanted to use a rustic sort of red, finding these Wing pendants in Red Magma was a sign :). Using my first love of wire, I made the frame from 14ga wire, wired my flowers together and "enhanced" them with Swarovski pearls and Red Magma rounds, then attached them to the frame. I had these gorgeous copper leaves in my collection for a while and they went so well with the Red Magma that I wired them on as well, just to give a bit of a break in the crystals. The simple bit was wiring smaller bicones and rounds in a multitude of autumn colours to the frame.

I was so stoked that this even made it through to the finalists, let alone that it made it to 2nd place. I'm so glad I took that plunge 5 years ago and did some beading classes ... this has been a fantastic journey and I'm still learning more every day ... and loving it!!!