Confession: I love gnomes. Eight years ago, I picked up my first garden gnome on a whim. Now I have big ones and little ones. I have garden gnomes and house gnomes. I’ve actually lost count of how many I have. I’m sure I could count, if there wasn’t several feet of snow on the stretch between our house and the shed where most of the gnomes winter. Although knowing the number might be a bit scary. Kind of like counting my beads.
And, of course, I have gnome beads.
Now, I know that a gnome isn’t a leprechaun. But when I started thinking about my St. Patrick’s Day bracelet, I realized the gnome and tomte beads could represent leprechauns. So I put them to work! My Tomte hasn’t gotten much use since I took apart my woodland bracelet, but he easily took the centre of the bracelet. Maybe he just needed an opportunity to hang with his gnomies. ;)
Last year’s St. Patrick’s Day bracelet made use of my darker olive greens, which invited even darker black beads. This year I really wanted to use my lighter greens to make it a bit more festive. Thankfully I had just enough. I’ve said it before, but I really would love to find more (non-duplicate) beads in those fresh green colours. They seem to be popping up in quite a few of my bracelet designs!
With three leprechauns, I also needed to up my gold quotient. I tried to fit a third golden bead in there, but couldn’t find an arrangement that worked. So, they’ll have to share (not something leprechauns are known for, unfortunately). But I do have the Hong Bao to represent a bag of gold, so maybe that’s enough to satisfy them. And, of course, I added the German Clover to represent luck.
And then I hit a bit of a snag. The bracelet was still short a few beads, but I couldn’t think of how to fill it in. Leprechauns are known as shoemakers, but I have no shoe beads. They hide their gold at the end of a rainbow, but I have no rainbow beads like Chakra Colors.
In the end I picked the wood beads to represent the forest homes of the leprechauns and filled in the last two spots with two of my olive greens. I like the contrast between the lighter greens and golden beads and the darker woods and olive greens.
Hmm …. they say if you capture a leprechaun, he’ll grant you three wishes if you free him. So if I’ve “captured” three leprechauns, does that mean I get nine wishes? ;)
I love this bracelet! The wood beads go so nicely with it. Brings back memories of when I was kid and wished there were real little people in the woods that I could meet.
Thanks, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out considering I didn’t have much of a plan when I started :) But sometimes those have the best outcome.