Andrew Thornton Challenge – Beadsophisticate

Periodically, I have been able to snag one of Andrew Thornton’s challenge kits – he only makes 19 or 24 available for sale, so you have to be quick. This month I was able to get in on Frenzied Motion. This is what I received to work with:

Kit contents

In addition, Andrew always includes a handmade “mystery component”, which is not revealed until a couple of weeks before the challenge reveal.

Sometimes when I get the kit open, I don’t know what to make and have to think about it for a while, but when I looked at this one, “bracelet” popped into my head, and that’s even without thinking about the challenge title. Andrew does a great job naming the kits; he has a way with translating inspiration into beads. I put it aside until the last minute (as usual), but was happy I did, because in the intervening time, I received an order containing the perfect bracelet finding for this project.

Frenzied Motion challenge bracelet

The mystery component is the round piece in the middle. Next to it is what I am coming to think of as my signature, a peyote beaded bead. Beaded beads seem to keep popping up in my work, so I plan to explore that.

I thought a shot of the piece on the hand would be nice. Not having worked with this bracelet finding before, I learned that there are four ways to put it on, and three of them are wrong.

on the hand

The first time, the mystery component was back side up. The second and third tries had the dangles under the wrist. Fourth time was the charm. Sheesh!

While doing this project, I also remembered that there is a reason that I generally work with wrapped loops instead of simple loops. Lesson learned.

Here are the links to the other participants in this month’s challenge:

Christina Hickman

Michelle McCarthy

Marybeth Rich

Alison Herrington

Ann Schroeder

Andrew Thornton, Laurel Ross, Joanne Goldberg, Lisa Mendum

Christy Porter