Two for Tuesday: Roped Into Love

This piece was for the Convergence contest a couple years ago. A jewelry designer was supposed to team up with a lampwork artist to create an earth, fire, water, and air themed piece of art. The International Society of Glass Beadmakers (ISGB) was in charge of the project. They grouped people in sets of two and gave each the other's contact information.

I think we had about six months to finish the project. I know for a fact that all I did for the first five of those months was doodle during political science. I had contacted my partner and we had discussed ideas. She never did make anything for me to work with, so I told her no hard feelings and that I was going to find someone else who was still available.

I then contacted Terry Hale, the lady in charge. My mom had recently been Terry's neighbor at a craft show in the Southeast somewhere and said she was personable, friendly, and a good friend of Susan Parry, a good friend of ours from the show circuit. I told Terry the problems I was having with my partner and that if Susan was a part of the group, I would love to work with her instead.


The next day, Susan emailed me and we started tossing around ideas. We decided on hearts and she got all excited in her usual manner. In two weeks flat I received about a dozen or more hearts and hollow vessels to choose from for the lariat necklace I had decided to make. I chose 4, purchased 2 for myself (which I still haven't used yet :-( ), and mailed the rest back to her for inventory. We even determined a price level in case the piece sold. A week and a half after that (and a few days before the deadline), I finished the necklace:

Photo collage made with photovisi.com

Photo from firmountaingems.com

I was pretty proud of myself *insert smug look here* for having found a partner and creating a finished piece in less than a sixth of the time allotted for the contest. I don't usually stress too much if I haven't finished something for a contest in time, but I just knew I wanted to work with Susan again and had to make it happen. Anyway, after all the sketching, planning, stress, joy, netting, right-angle-weave, and braiding, we weren't selected as a finalist. The results came back as "undermuted." What does that even mean? *shrug* That means you just enter it in the 2010 Fire Mountain Gems Glass Contest, which is exactly what I did (with Susan's permission of course). You can see our design in better detail here.

This is the only photo that exists of the necklace because my laptop had a case of the 'I don't wanna' last summer. Sad day and a lot of missing reference pictures. However, go to the FMG website and zoom in to see really, really good closeups of Susan's beads. <3

The lariat is also no longer in existence. I kept it until late last year or early this year. It didn't sell and Susan needed the hearts for inventory, so I took it apart and sent those back to her. This was a fun project and I will be recycling the beaded ropes and tassels back into something new! It would be a pity to let all those turquoise heishis and garnet chips go to waste.

And isn't that mermaid bead just gorgeous?