Art Jewelry Elements: UFO's Reveal

Four weeks ago I issued you all with a challenge to finish off some of your unfinished projects! Guess what, today is reveal day!

My UFO box

In my quest to be UFO free I have been utterly ruthless! I have finished some projects, I have ripped some apart and put the beads back on display (yes, I display my little art beads in a printer tray mounted on the wall, like the little works of art that they are) and I have even thrown some away all together, the ones that I really struggled with and wasted way too much time overthinking about (do not worry, no art beads were binned). Here are a couple that I have finished....

Unfinished Beaded Coin

This one I started as part of the A Time To Stitch blog hop but as I am not used to seed beading I did not know what to do with it, so it just lay in my UFO box, but now it is finally done....

Beaded coin

I decided that the ceramic drop did not go as well as I was hoping and instead paired it up with this beautiful enamelled feather by EB Bead and Metal Works and finished it off with a simple copper beaded chain.
The next piece again was a challenge piece from the Bead Peeps blog hop....

Coin Capped Wooden Bead

My wonderful partner Melissa Trudinger sent me some beautiful wooden beads and some fab little 3d coins from Australia, I had got as far as putting it together but wanted to burn a design on to the wooden bead so it was not as plain, upon researching Australian art I came across some aboriginal cave art and decided to give it a try.
This last piece has been half done for months!

Stamped copper bangle

This one is so close to being finished but I just run out of time at the end! I had stamped the bangle with "Confidence is the key to success, be confident" and riveted a beautiful bronze heart lock by the talented Cynthia Thornton to the front and then, nothing my mind went blank!

Be Confident

I have added a cute tiny key and a sweet lampwork heart Earth Shine Beads to one side and a copper heart to the other. It's not quite done tho, I intend to add a silver rivet to the top of the copper heart and a tiny 4mm garnet, I just run out of time!

I was not the only one here at AJE with unfinished projects, here were some Linda's....

Linda Landig's UFO's

And I utterly love how they turned out....

Linda's Kyanite Bracelet

"Here's my 1st revision. - This was the kyanite and garnet bracelet in the original picture. It was an old bracelet and I used to use a thinner stringing wire than I do now, so it had broken. But it was also just a boring bracelet. There wasn't enough contrast between the kyanite and the garnet, so neither was really shown off to its best potential. I removed the garnet and the silver clasp. The new enameled toggle clasp is by Bead Swede. The beads between the kyanite are sparkly glass. The reflective quality of the glass beads, bring out the shimmery aspect of the kyanite."

Linda's Necklace

"Here's the 2nd revision. -
I liked parts of this necklace, but it had "issues". One problem was that the lampwork sand dollar dangle kept flipping around backward. I fixed that by wiring it, instead of hanging it from waxed linen. I ran a wire vertically along the back of the sand dollar, which holds it in a forward facing position. (lampwork by Beads and Botanicals, ceramic pendant by me) The 2nd issue was that the larger lampwork pieces on the neck piece all slid forward and clumped unattractively at the center. My first thought was to wire them, but they were too large and overshadowed the pendant. I tried stringing some small blue beads with some mother of pearl. It was a pretty combo, but it just didn't seem to work with the pendant. Finally I just went for simplicity and strung it on blue leather, with an adjustable chain in the back."

Personally I am hoping that I can finish off the last few UFO's and then stick to not letting them build up and zapping my creative energy! We would love to see what our wonderful blog readers have created, so please link up using the link tool.