Peacock Bracelet - ABS challenge

The inspiration for the Art Bead Scene blog challenge this month is a wonderfully painted manuscript page full of beautiful birds. The colours are so rich, despite the page being over 400 years old. At the centre of the page is a peacock, and as soon as I saw it I knew that I had the perfect bead! It's a bead by Mindy Macgregor (of course!), one of a set that I bought from her a few years ago and that had been sitting in a dish on my desk for ages waiting for the perfect project - and here it is!

The clasp is the silver feather clasp I made on Wednesday, and I've used dainty faceted amazonite, amethyst, Swarovski crystals and lovely soft purple lampwork spacer beads to pick out some of the colours in the bead and the peacock's tail. I did try some tiny faceted labradorite beads in place of the amethyst at first - it seemed appropriate considering the original name for labradorite was peacock stone - but they looked a bit washed out. The glossy purple brightens up the bracelet instead. Unusually for me, I've strung the beads in the bracelet rather than link them with wirework, and I've formed the beadalon into loops to stop the strands of beads from being too narrow. The clasp hooks onto one of two rings - I put two at the end of the bracelet so that the length can be adjusted if need be. The silver has been given an antiqued patina using liver of sulphur both to highlight the texture on the clasp and it seemed more appropriate considering the age of the manuscript.

I am so pleased with my feather clasps! I'm definitely going to be making more, but each one will be different as no two feathers are ever the same. In fact, the two I made on Wednesday still turned out differently despite being made from the same feather. I've added the copper feather clasp to my etsy shop if you fancy using it in your own bird inspired jewellery, and the peacock bracelet is on my website here.