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Studio Saturday with Melanie Brooks

Welcome to Studio Saturday! Each
week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio,
creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our
readers and hope you’ll leave comments! As an incentive we offer a free
prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard.
The following week we choose a random winner.

This week’s winner is Cynthia aka Cynth’s Blog
Congratulations! You have won a Tales They Tell pendant from
Erin Prais-Hintz.
 Send Erin an e-mail with your address and she will get it out to you as soon as possible!
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This week we visit the studio of
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I recently received a lovely package of goodies from the folks at Nina Designs as part of their blog partnership program. I got a goodie bag with all of the items above included:  a bunch of beautiful shiny charms, pendants, and findings from their Bronze Collection, a lovely bright turquoise silk ribbon, and a bundle of soft and supple deer hide leather. What a generous and gorgeous selection of things to play with!
I loved the lotus pendant and it was very fortunate that I had just finished up some pendants with a water and lotus pond theme!  So I was eager to use those things together!  The cut-out design of the lotus pendant, like many of the other bronze pendants in the collection, makes it really versatile with all the areas to bead onto.  I used the lotus as a triple connector, hanging my pendant from the bottom and attaching a loop to each of the two top petals.  The ribbon color wasn’t so matchy-matchy with the pendant, so I took a few little strands of it and tied them to the bottom leaves of the lotus to tie the color in near the pendant.  I also used two of the swirly bronze charms and some strawberry quartz to make some interesting dangles further up the necklace, to tie the pink color in.  I like the cool simplicity of this necklace, interesting, but not too overly complicated.
I also made a pair of coordinating earrings with a pair of my ceramic links! The bronze is very shiny, almost gold in color, and I didn’t have any gold jump rings or other findings, so I used gunmetal black.  I really like the contrast of the two shiny metals and how it brings a little bit of extra interest to the design.
All of these pieces and colors remind me of cool waters like the kinds I get to see on vacation at the beach or visiting beautiful parks.  Or maybe that’s just my pre-Bead & Button preparation crazed head dreaming of summer vacation after the show.  It’s almost June… are you dreaming about summer vacation yet?

When you take a vacation or trip, do you do anything beady?  Do you visit local bead stores in the area that you are staying, or do you work on fun projects?  Leave a comment on this post and tell us about it!  Next Saturday, one random commenter will be chosen to win the Nina bronze charm and pair of Earthenwood ceramic links above!

*The
materials above were provided as part of the Nina Designs blogging program. The
author of this blog has not received any payment from above-mentioned company.
The post above represents only personal opinion of the blog author.