Pretty Palettes - July Reveal

The inspiration for this month's Pretty Palettes was the bright colors and bold patterns of Marimekko. 

Now to be honest, I had never heard of it before... Or rather, I had encountered it, but didn't know it had a name. So, I had a great deal of fun doing research--not just in the post introducing this challenge, but also on the Marimekko website.

For this particular challenge, the talented Molly Schaller took the above sample of a Marimekko swimsuit and pulled this palette together:

Bright and bold and perfect for summer!

When it came time for me to select which beads to use, I found no shortage of options... After much deliberation, these are what I picked out--although I ended up both taking some out and putting more in. 

...As I said, so many options!

I played around with several different ideas, but none of them worked. Eventually I realized I was trying too hard to fight my original inspiration, so I decided to just relax and go with my first instinct: a tasseled design. Yes, I know I've been making a lot of tassels recently... but it just felt right. So, instead of trying too hard to be clever, I just went with the flow.

However, once I settled on that, I had another challenge to overcome. I had to choose which color metal to use--bright silver or brass? 

Eventually, however, I realized it was a false choice... why not use both! 

...And that is how these sister necklaces came to be:

These two necklaces are not exact copies of each other, but rather gentle inverses of each other. This is most readily seen in the focals and their respective tassels, but there are other evidences in the necklace strands themselves (namely, the green and blue beads have traded places in the pattern). 

When paired with the different metal choices, these changes make these necklaces similar but unique... And certainly bold enough to fit the Marimekko style!

Now, since these two aren't meant to be worn together, here's a look at them individually:

The construction for both of them is the same: links wire-wrapped with their respective metals, a toggle clasp, a hand-stitched tassel with seed beads and faceted oval crystals. In fact, this is probably as close as I get to making the same thing twice! (I tend to go from one idea to the next; I'm not very good at sitting down and duplicating something I've already made.)

So, there you go! Those are the Marimekko-inspired necklaces I made for this challenge. 

Thank you so much for stopping by today to see what I made... Be sure to hop over to the Halcraft Blog to see what everyone else created to go with this inspiration!

Have a wonderful day, everyone!