a birthday present..............

This bracelet was specially custom made for my good friend, Lis's (Simple Arts Planet) birthday in October.

The inspiration for this design was drawn from the lovely Serpentine donut pendant which I bought from Beads Cage. The pendant has a very lovely soft olive green base with natural lines in gold hues. I know Lis would like that "organic" look especially when olive green is one of her favourites.

I thought of a few stitching techniques and finally settled on using the Herringbone (flat and tubular) stitch to create simple bracelet bands on both sides of the pendant. We are both into simple jewellery and trying to make it too bling would only mask the beauty of the pendant. The challenging part of the project was finding the right seed beads colour to match the pendant. Going with the gold seed beads was not my first choice as I know Lis is more of a "silver" person. However, silver beads would not work in this case as there is too much negative contrast with the gold hues on the pendant. Hence, the matte gold beads were used instead and I think the combination worked out nicely.

This bracelet is actually my second version. The first set of bands was stitched too narrowly and did not look right. I undid and stitched another set of the bands with broader width. The juxtaposition of the new bands and pendant couldn't have been any better.

The present has been received by Lis and she has written a very lovely blog on it with pictures attached.

Thank you, Lis and have an enjoyable birthday!