Coneflower and Bouquets of Flower Brooches

Lisa at A Bead A Day had a post a while back about using the beads from shell bracelets in a design. I love to make flower brooches - kinda of like a bead collage! So that's what I started out doing with this - my coneflower, except the center bead is not much of a cone!

For the coneflower or Echinacea, I wired the long shell beads along with the sguilly(sp) ones in a circle, then wired the flat shell bead on top.



The circle is pretty tight, but I wove Hemp cord from Artbeads.com around in a circle on top of the wiring because I changed my mind and thought this will make a great pendant. I haven't figured out how to attach a bail at this point, but I would love to use some golden horn beads I have as the necklace. Will post a final pic when it's done.

My inspiration came from my mom's free flowing garden and this special patch of purple cone flowers just a hop, skip, and jump from the Blue Ridge Parkway!



Here's some of my brooches- the two with little flowers next to them are the most recent ones I made in the last week or so using mother of pearl shell beads and buttons.