The People's Bead 2012 Spiritual Collection

The people's bead is a competition for anyone to design a bead, and the winner, or in the case of 2012, winners, get to have their bead made by Trollbeads and released for sale.  Trollbeads UK posted a blog piece about the individual past winners which sets the background to the concept.  To read about the 2012 People's Bead results then I'd point you to Trollbeads Universe who have presented a great feature of  2012 winners showcasing both the designers and their designs.  For this year the winners beads, as voted by fellow fans, form an entire collection based around Spirituality.

Trollbeads People's Bead 2012 Spiritual Collection

So, what to get? My first choice of bead was always going to be the Chakra Colours, I loved it as soon as I saw the photos on release day.  I had been making good use of the Lithuania Bead from the World Tour Collection and Chakra Colours reminded me of this.  When it arrived, literally minutes before we were about to go on holiday (and 2 hours after we should have left), it looked like an 80's UV paint explosion all contained in a single bead!  The photos below show just how much colour is contained in this one bead.

 

My second bead choice was Happy Dragon, this is a double headed bead, he's the same both way round so if he spins on the bracelet he still has a face on the other side.  I have always had a particular fondness for dragons so if there is a dragon in a new collection there's a good chance that this will be one of the beads I desire.  As we were literally heading out the door just as soon as I'd ripped the packaging apart, and I'd already packed for our journey, I carefully wrapped these two beads up and secured them safely in my purse so that I could take them on holiday with me. Ironically it wasn't until we got back from holiday that I had the chance to make these into a new bracelet, what with being sidetracked by my unexpected discoveries in the Beaverbrook's Cribbs Causeway Store!

Incidentally the Chakra Colours in the shop were "neater" than the example I have; I think this is one bead I'm always going to be checking out as I think there will be a lot of variation between the beads. It's certainly one I'll be considering buying multiple beads of.

So, how to make best use of my first bracelet using these two beads?  I'd only just made up my purple/blue, green and silver combo and I wasn't ready to break that one up yet; I really need to consider getting another silver bracelet as I've now got too many (scrub that sentence, there can't be too many) just enough beads to warrant splashing out on another chain, however remembering that I'm supposed to be waiting until my next salary payment in September I'd better push that thought to one side for now!!

So if I wasn't ready to break up my new combo - then it had to be a leather combination.  One of the nice things about my leather bracelet is that with natural wear the leather stretches out (so it's worth ensuring you buy the smallest size that fits) so I can now get more beads comfortably on there, when I started I could fit 3-4 at a push, now I can happily wear 7.  So which 5 beads to put with these 2?  I looked in my whole collection for some bright colours to combine them with, and the result is below... along with some of the beads that didn't make the bracelet this time around.

Making up this leather bracelet really made me wish I had 2 locks so I could wear both of my bracelets together, (*stamps on willpower and tells it to get a backbone* must remember to resist until September!) and although it is an explosion of trollbeads I think I would definitely rock this look!

Okay, maybe it is a bit much, such fabulous colours though.  I love the rich tones in my current silver bracelet combo and think the leather and the beads on this one compliment the choices magnificently.