Challenge Entry: Links Cuff

The new EBW Challenge theme is Complementary Contradictions.

My first thoughts were for black/white, yin/yang type things, then art/artifice which brought me to art/science and that sounded fun!

I'd been saving up some green june bug wing covers for a special project and I found a piece of citrine rough and a great fish vertebrae for science. The art link would be a lampwork bead that looked great with the rest of my collection.

I tried working it in RAW, but I don't like Delicas in RAW. I like seed beads, but the Delicas shape and corners give RAW a boxy look.

So I decided to do freeform and I remembered a project I'd seen recently in Bead&Button magazine by Linda Rettich. She made a beautiful sea fan like necklace and the basic technique seemed viable for other projects!

So I started something similar, not sure how similar because I can't find my magazine, but I think hers was more flowing, softer and less dense.

In Valerie Hector's The Art of Beadwork she says that the more senses you involve the better and she suggests incorporating movement. So I made the abacus type element (which also clinks a bit) and made the lampwork bead a swinging, dangling clasp instead of my usual solid stationary one.

The one element that troubled me was a crystal bead that I incorporated early in the design. It wasn't planned, it just hopped in there. So I gathered some other bits but it was never the right time or place to put them in. I eventually gave it up and thought of the crystal as a little rogue bead. As I finished this today I realized it wasn't rogue at all. Science and art are both very much about clarity, and what could represent clarity better than crystal? It's just ironic that that was the last piece that was clear to me!