Handmade necklace with pink and black glass beads, faux pearls, and pink owl pendant, by Mary Warner, March 2022.
art challenge design process

Owl or No Owl?*

Several weeks ago I made a necklace with an owl pendant for a friend. Because the package of owl pendants I bought contained four pendants, I decided to try my hand at another.

Here is the result.

Handmade necklace with pink and black glass beads, faux pearls, and pink owl pendant, by Mary Warner, March 2022.
Handmade necklace with pink and black glass beads, faux pearls, and pink owl pendant, by Mary Warner, March 2022.

While buying the owl pendants, I purchased the pink glass beads (2 tones of pink beads in the package) specifically to use with this owl pendant.

Handmade necklace with pink and black glass beads, faux pearls, and pink owl pendant, by Mary Warner, March 2022.
Handmade necklace with pink and black glass beads, faux pearls, and pink owl pendant, by Mary Warner, March 2022.

There were only 8 pink beads in the package, so I had to be creative about arranging the rest of the black and faux-pearl beads and metal cap beads around them. Note that the neck portion of the necklace is all black and faux-pearl beads and metal caps, with none of the pink ones, which are lower on the necklace. Truth be told, from a comfort perspective, this actually worked better than having the pink beads up near the neck. They are rather chunky, cut glass beads, so they are heavy and the sharp edges would not feel good on my sensitive skin.

Now that the necklace is done and I’ve been living with it for a few weeks, I’m trying to decide whether I like the owl pendant. The rest of the necklace has an elegant feel and the owl pendant seems to throw that off somehow. I am tempted to remove the owl pendant and rearrange the rest of the necklace somewhat to compensate.

What do you think? Owl or no owl?


*Search engines hate artistic titles like “Owl or No Owl?” because they don’t get right to the point. Have you noticed that most titles for online articles are now full-on sentences? That’s for the benefit of search engine optimization. While that’s useful for news articles and how-tos, it stinks for anything with a creative flair. I’ll just puddle around down at the bottom of the search engine results with my “Owl or No Owl?”. Which makes me think … have you ever wondered what is at the very end of large search engine results? Wouldn’t it be fun to have a reversible search engine that would reorder the search to show you what’s at the end?

2 thoughts on “Owl or No Owl?*”

  1. The penant reminds me of the Athenian owl, making it feel sort of like an amulet. Without it, the necklace is very elegant. With it though, you might gain support from a goddess of war and handicrafts, which is equally good. A tough call really.

    1. Those are excellent points, Sebastian. I always associate owls and wisdom, plus I’m fond of owls. I’m getting a pretty 50/50 split between folks who say keep the owl and those who say lose it and you’ve split the middle. Through all of the feedback, I think I know what I’m going to do with the necklace. 🙂

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