Spring flowers bracelet

The spring flowers are coming out in force now around our village, with profusions of golden daffodils. I've got a few pieces on the go at the moment; this is the only one I have actually finished so far! I designed this bracelet around a lampworked focal with pale pink and blue "flowers" beneath the surface against a dark blue background. You can kind of see it in this picture here, but in real life it has a lot more depth to it. I am ashamed to say I can't remember where I bought this bead; I think it was from someone at the Bead Fair. Now that I'm blogging, I'm going to try and keep better notes of who I buy my beads from!

I used a dark-pink glass pearl and a bright blue bead to match the colours in the focal bead. Previous bracelets that I had made from beads of this size had suffered somewhat from lack of flexibility - in retrospect, they might have been better strung on elastic rather than beading wire. So this time I decided to use a mixture of different small "spacer" beads between each of the larger beads: tiny glass pearls, gold-coloured spacers and glass beads with a peach-coloured core (from Viking Loom again, did I mention this is one of my favourite shops in the world?). So of course I had to use my last gold-plated clasp to complement the gold spacers. The warmth of the gold also goes very nicely with these shades of pink.

I found two pink lampworked beads; their weight balances out the lampworked focal so that the bracelet hangs evenly. I added in a couple of very pale pink glass beads, and two trios of iridescent leaf-shaped beads (which are a similar dark-blue shade to the dark blue background in the focal).

With the small spacers in the design, the bracelet is quite drapey and feels nice to wear; I was careful not to put too much tension on the beading wire this time. The colours also work well; the bright blue really "pops" out amongst the pinks and golds. It is quite good for a bracelet to have the different shapes and textures of the beads: you can fiddle with them during boring moments!