Summer Snowflakes

my Snowflake tutorial - still available on Etsy

Back in 2011, I opened my Etsy store with exactly one item - my beaded Snowflakes and Stars PDF tutorial.  For some reason that I cannot now remember, I didn't list my first book on Freeform Peyote Beading until months later.   Needless to say, I have a soft spot for these little beauties.  They're rather the potato chips of my beading world.  I can never seem to make just one, and they're a quick and satisfying 'beading snack'.  When I don't know where I want to go with other projects, I find myself making snowflakes.

Most recently, I've been playing with Summer Mandalas, and sequins.  What happens to snowflakes when you use other colors?  Here are a couple of my discoveries.


First, I decided to work with Hot, summery colors in reds and oranges, with a pop of cool lime:

This pendant and earring set makes me think of margaritas and summer flowers.  Not a hint of snow in the forecast!  After a little experimentation, I found I particularly liked the look of matte transparent and opaque beads best.  They created the most striking lines and the best foils for the sequin embellishments.

But what if I wanted a necklace to cool off in the summer heat?  To answer that question, I started playing with turquoisy blues and bright greens, with lime sneaking into the color palettes every time I looked away.

The colors reminded me of a dress I purchased last summer.  Thinking it would be fun to make a necklace to match, I began playing with more stars.  The dress, by Desigual, has an asymmetric design across the front, which I hope to echo in my design as well.  Right now, all I have are component parts, which I thought I'd lost for most of the past month.  Luckily, they turned up this morning while looking for something else.  Yeah!  (Especially since I couldn't even find the pictures I'd taken before!)
  

Not completely sure where I'm going yet!

With the largest component, I'm going for a field of stars effect.  Not quite sure if I like the crystal interstitials or not.   They're supposed to take the place of the white polka-dots from the dress's design.  Adding white to the necklace seemed like simply too much.

 It's such fun swapping out the colors to see where things end up.  I first did this a few years back with my Halloween Snowflakes, complete with little lampworked bats to finish off the earrings.  Doing some inventory, I found I have exactly of those two kits still available, and have relisted them on Etsy. 

So there are my summer experiments!  How about you? Any crazy color experiments this season?