Greenery Glam Necklace and Earrings: May Pretty Palette Challenge

This month's Pretty Palette Challenge from Halcraft focused on the Pantone color of the year: Greenery. Below are the inspiration and color palette images from this month's challenge (from the Halcraft blog):

(Click here to visit the Pretty Palette Challenge.)

(Click here to visit the Pretty Palette Challenge.)

I chose to use the following mix of beads within the color palette for my design:

The pyrite, large aventurine, and small dark green tourmaline beads are from Hobby Lobby; the pale green faceted prehnite beads are a long-ago purchase from Fusion Beads in Seattle; and the small green quartzite, medium green aventurine, white quartzite, nebula glass, clear crystals, and silver luster glass beads are all Halcraft beads from Michael's.

I stuck to my usual wire-wrapping techniques this time, although I confess the end product is not the design I originally had planned. My original idea involved one single strand of smaller diamond-shaped focals and more emphasis on the upper part of the necklace, but because of the large size of the focal beads around which I planned the frames, the wire elements ended up being huuuuge, so I fell back on a previous design I've used several times (see most all of my prior Pretty Palette submissions...many of them [unintentionally] have a similar design/layout).

The basic forms I wrapped together to form the large diamond focal elements.

The wire form completed for one of the diamond focals.

Wire forms to be used for earrings and side connectors in the necklace.

I added beads in ombre shades of green to the diamond-shaped focal elements to try to give them a rich, jewel-like feel. Between the shape of the frames and the shades of green I hope I also managed to reflect a bit of the look of succulents as seen in the inspiration photo. [The frames were all created using the same technique as in this necklace. I embellished them using the same technique as in this necklace.]

I added white quartzite beads in between the focal elements to make the green really pop. (Also, you might notice in later photos that I eventually changed out the large, duller green aventurine center beads in these earlier photos for richer-colored bright green stones.)

I also wanted to continue to reflect the earthy inspiration image (the beautiful succulent plants in the photo above) in this necklace's structure, so I decided to use these slightly industrial, earthy pyrite beads to create the upper part of the necklace. I love this pyrite-meets-emeralds earthy-glam pairing! I don't think photos do these beautiful beads justice. Pyrite is really hard to photograph.

You can see the new green focal stones here. These are Halcraft beads as well.

Besides the three focal elements the side connectors and toggle clasp are all handmade as well, and embellished with clear crystals and silver luster glass to imitate the metallic shine of the pyrite.

Overall I'm happy with how this necklace turned out. It's too similar in style to a few of my recent pieces for my liking, but the earthy-glam pairing makes it a little different and really gives it a contemporary edge.

I made a couple extra wire frames to create a matching pair of earrings, and I wanted something a little different than the obvious chandeliers. I wanted something that felt glamorous enough to reflect the emerald-feel of the bejeweled necklace focals, and I think I managed to achieve at least 'unique', if not the glamour befitting emeralds.

These earrings were probably the hardest part of this entire set to create--getting them to hang at the same angle was close to impossible! Luckily, when worn they won't hang right next to each other and the slight difference in the angle of the frames won't even be noticeable.

And that wraps up another Pretty Palette challenge. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to do some photographic justice to these beautiful beads and not just how to wire-wrap them.

How do you like the pairing of the pyrite with the sparkling green jewels? What do you think of the unique earring orientation? I'd love to know!