Bougainvillea Bouquet!

I have finally finished working on my new flowers and here is my entry for the Etsy Beadweavers challenge - Bougainvillea Bouquet!

Whilst I was working on this, I recalled some of the beautiful images of bougainvillea I have seen on my travels; arching over a monastery doorway in Corfu, cut into neat hedges in Spain, growing wild by the roadside in Thailand and Sri Lanka and vivid clusters set against a backdrop of deep blue sea in the Maldives. I didn't need to dig out the photos to remind of these scenes, they are all quite clear to me and I thoroughly enjoyed casting my mind back as I sat and sewed each bead together.

I wanted to create a piece that was not only eye-catching but also very wearable. Therefore I engineered it so that the necklace can be worn quite simply with just two bougainvillea bracts suspended from the woven rope, or all eleven bracts can be threaded onto the rope, creating a vibrant cluster, exposing their inner white flowers.