I loved this color palette! I use a lot of turquoise, teal, and brown in my designs already, so I felt right at home with these colors. Here are the details behind this necklace:
The Natural Look
When selecting my beads for this month's challenge, I gave myself an additional challenge to use natural beads and materials: wood, bone, horn, and leather. I wanted an end-of-the-summer, sitting-by-the-pool design.
The Beads
I was happy to find bright pink and teal wood rounds, carved bone rounds (the same ones that Erin Prais-Hintz chose for the challenge), triangular brown horn beads, carved bone rectangles with a sunny flower pattern, and textured blue wood rounds.
Knotting on Leather Cord
The beads are knotted on silver metallic leather cord. The silver color is very subtle; it looks closer to white with a little bit of shine.
I added the knotted brown leather lace around the knots that connect the knotted strands to the chain. The brown is close in color to the brass chain, so the transition between the chains and beads is more subtle than if I had just left the silver cord exposed.
Tip: You can't see it from the photo, but I did use a little bit of wire wrapping around the silver cord under the brown leather lace. That was mainly to tighten up that connection as much as possible so that the leather lace would make a nice, smooth knot. Think of it as a girdle!
Twisted Strands
I did twist the strand a little before knotting them to the chain. I was inspired by Erin's Train graffiti photo where all the colors were gloriously mixed up!
No Clasp
If you look closely, you'll notice that there's no clasp for this necklace. It's long enough to slip over your head. On some of those lazy summer days, even closing a clasp seems like too much effort!
Check out the Halcraft USA blog to see what everyone else did with this color palette.