Wearable vessels

I'm not sure exactly where my fascination with vessels came about.  I just finished teaching Cryptex at Beading by the Bay.  I designed it because I wanted to try my hand at making hubble stitch both tubular and structural.  I was concerned about the sheer amount of beading it would take to complete, but people seemed to get on with it very well and I've even seen a couple of finished ones.

This one is called  Hidden Paradise.  I designed it two years ago while sailing on the Bead Cruise with Heather Powers.  I remember the inspiration now....It was a piece of fabric from Tina Givens with a bird house. I blogged about it at the time which tells me it was June of 2014 when I first came back from the cruise.  You can read about and see the fabric inspiration here.

I wanted to try to create it in beads and this is what I came up with.  Heather had the polymer houses and I thought it would be fun to tuck one inside.   I always think there should be a 'secret' inside a vessel.

When the piece is worn it has a lot of movement as the little dangles tend to bounce with your movement and catch the light.

I designed spaces into the top for the strap to feed through insuring it doesn't get lost.  The golden double wire ring at the top attaches to the house and acts as a handle to lift an reveal the little house.

This one should be a fun bead.  I predict some will finished and worn by the end of the cruise, perhaps not in class, but with a few hours of deck time spent beading I think it will be doable.

I love the bright fresh colors of this one, inspired directly from Heather's house.