The Dive Pendant and EST Challenge

Let me start from far away... One of my favorite seed bead artists is Heidi Kummli. She creates amazing beadwork pieces inspired by nature and Native American culture. In one of recent Bead and Button magazines there was Heidi's tutorial on bead embroidered bracelet with rubber animals. I've always wanted to create something with same feel and charm.

And then when I saw this week's theme for European Street Team challenge I couldn't resist trying to create something fun and a bit different.
So, here is the pendant I made for the Animal challenge hosted by wonderful Star of the East.


I called this piece The Dive. It has large fan shaped bamboo stone cabochon, small oval carnelian cabochon, variety of Japanese seed beads and rubber turtle from my nephew's toy box. ;) He was very generous and sacrificed the turtle for artistic purpose. :)
The pendant is backed with artificial leather and it hangs from brown twisted silk rope. First I thought to add some fringe to it, but the pendant turned out to be quite large and fringe would just make it too heavy.

I'm quite satisfied with the result, and I have more rubber and ceramic animals in my stash to put in the beadwork. :)

You can check all entries of European Street Team weekly challenge here.
Good luck to all the participants! ;)

xo,