Friday, December 14, 2012

Head-to-Head Challenge Update

It's that time again: time to show my progress on the Head-to-Head Challenge Sonya and I are participating in. Except that I can't actually show my progress, because Sonya and I want to be surprised by what each other makes.

Which makes this update kind of silly. Whose idea was this updating nonsense, anyway? (Answer: MINE). Made sense at the time!

I'm going to show an itty bitty piece of my challenge WIP (work in progress), anyway (and none of my fancy photoshopping skills, either!)

You may recall that this is the ceramic bead we are designing our freeform pieces around:


This week, I made the decision to go ahead and design and attach the clasp to the piece, because the type and size of the clasp helps determine the finished length - sometimes I use clasps that can add 2 inches or more to the finished length of a piece! And I did NOT want my piece to end up being too long, so why not go ahead and design a clasp in the middle of the creative process? Why save it 'til last?

Here is what I came up with:
I chose a Swarovski crystal Cosmic Square in Red Magma, which perfectly matches the orange ceramic bead. I attached it using a square stitch "bail," for lack of a better word, and then stitched a matching bar using the same galvanized orange delicas.

Stay tuned - our big reveal is January 14!

And click over to Sonya's blog to see her progress!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, that's really a very good idea! And I love that square stitch, I've not seen it done in quite that way before. Beautiful so far, can't wait to see the final piece!

DeborahRead.com said...

OMG that is beautiful !

Lori Anderson said...

Looks awesome!

Karin Slaton said...

That is such a good idea to design the clasp early in the process - can't tell you how often I've had to tweak my length at the last minute! Looking forward to the final reveal!

Sweet Freedom said...

Karin- I thought it was just me!

I have always hated the finishing part - the clasp, etc - I dread it, I put it off - and part of that is because of all the finagling I have to do because the clasp is too big, or too small, or too .... something. Just not right.

It really does make sense to plan, design, and make it before-hand, and even attach it if possible. I am going to remember this in the future!

Now I wonder why it took so many years to figure this out! - of course, it helped that I started stitching this particular piece from the back, and am saving the center front for last!