Flap Your Wings

A month after Judy passed away, 31 designers have made jewellery in her memory, with Flap Your Wings as inspiration as that was the name of Judy's jewellery website. I gave you a little taster of what my design looked like last night - and here it is!

Lampwork disc bead by Outwest, lampwork spacers left over from other projects, silverwork and lovebird clasp by me

I took this apart three times! Three times! That is really unusual for me, as I usually have ingredients for designs lined up on my workdesk for so long that by the time I come to make them up I've usually already worked through all the kinks in my head, so making the actual finished piece is fairly quick. Not this time though! I knew that I wanted to use one of my lovebird clasps to fit in with the theme, and I wanted to use the gorgeous lampwork donut by Outwest (well spotted Julie, yes that's one of yours!), and I wanted to make a bracelet as I would normally use a donut as part of a pendant, but my original plan had been to soften the black and blue with either macrame or silk ribbon. Those were the attempts that I took apart as it just didn't look right - too messy, too many different looks in one small piece of jewellery - so I ended up wire-wrapping it all!

The clasp has a hook on the back of the bird to close the bracelet

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm auctioning the bracelet off to raise money for the Wessex Cancer Trust, a charity that raises money for cancer research (which helps all of us, no matter where we are!) and supports cancer patients and their families in the south of the UK. I'm also donating half of the proceeds from the pieces I made with my Bead Soup from Michi to the charity, but I'll post properly about those next week so there's no confusion!

The bidding starts at £15 (just under $24) for the Flap Your Wings bracelet - 

to enter a bid leave a comment on this post and let me know how much you'd like to bid,
or email me and I'll comment on your behalf.

I'll keep a running total on this post and the top of my blog, so keep coming back to see if you've been outbid!

There's no extra cost for postage, no matter where you are in the world!
The bidding will end at midnight BST on Thursday 19th April.
Please do make certain that you either leave your email address in your comment or have your email address linked to your profile - thank you!

Thank you so much to all of you who bid and spread the word about all the Flap Your Wings auction, and thank you especially to Lynne who won the bidding with her bid of £70 US$114!

And to see the other designs in the Flap Your Wings challenge please visit the blogs below!

1. Tania Spivey  (hostess)

2. Lori Anderson (auction)

3. Kashmira Patel

4. Gail Accinelli

5. Rebecca Anderson (auction)

6. Rebekah Payne  (challenge jewellery for sale)

7. Amanda Doyle Tibbetts 

8. Kim Ballor  (challenge jewellery for sale)

9. Rochelle Brisson (challenge jewellery for sale)

10. Sandra McGriff  (auction)

11. Lana Kinney 

12. Kym Hunter 

13.  Terri Wlaschin 

14.  Ginger Bishop (auction)

15.  Shannon Chomanczuk 

16.  Kelli Jacobson (challenge jewellery for sale)

17.  Patricia Gasparino (auction)

18.  Deana Hager

19.  Erin Siegel (challenge jewellery for sale)

20.  Deborah Wenske Brooks

21.  Lynne Bowland

22.  Alicia Marinache (challenge jewellery for sale)

23.  Pam Ferrari

24.  Shirley Jones Moore

25.  Joanne Tinley (auction - you're here!)

26.  Shanti Johnson (challenge jewellery for sale)

27.  Lorelei Eurto

28.  Antiquity Travelers

29.  Shelly Joyce

30.  Marlene Cupo (auction)

31.  Dee Torcherer Elgie (auction)

Flap Your Wings - getting ready

If you read this post then you'll remember that Judy Glende lost her battle with cancer last month despite fighting with all the strength that she had. The "Flap Your Wings" challenge was set up by Tania of Moobie Grace Designs as a tribute to Judy, and the day to reveal what we all made is tomorrow. And after taking my design apart three times as it just wasn't right, it is finally finished! You'll obviously have to wait until tomorrow to see it, but I thought you might like a quick preview.....

We've just come back from spending a couple of days with T's Mum up in the Midlands. I'd more or less decided what I wanted to use in my design a couple of weeks ago but hadn't worked out quite how to put them all together, so I decided to take it all with me. Now, you have to remember that I'm used to being able to get a different box of beads out if the ones I've got on the workdesk are quite right, or being able to solder and hammer to make new findings and clasps, but all I could take with me was what you can see above, plus some silk ribbon and a secret ingredient that you'll see tomorrow, so it definitely was a challenge! My own mini bead soup!

Most of the people taking part in the challenge are donating their pieces to charity, either selling them on etsy or auctioning them off. I've decided to go down the auction route, so tomorrow I'll let you know the details of how that's going to work. I'm donating the money raised to the Wessex Cancer Trust, a wonderful charity who are based locally but do fantastic work all along the south coast here in the UK. They support cancer patients and their families wonderfully, including me and my family when I was fighting cancer last year.