My Partner for the Bead Peeps Swap and Hop!

I am happy to introduce you to my partner for the upcoming Swap and Hop  organized by the wonderful folks behind the Bead Peeps Facebook group.

  Johana Nunez is a very talented jewlery artist from Puerto Rico.. Her blog is on her website art incendi and she has a shop on etsy as well. She speaks Spanish in her daily life but is totally fluent in English as well. We first met last summer during the "My Country Blog Hop" hosted by yours truly! At that time I became familiar with Puerto Rico through her blog post and now am happy to have the opportunity to learn even more about her tropical island home. Can you imagine living everyday on a Caribbean island! Total bliss! This is especially true for those of us in the northeast struggling through another frigid, snowy winter!

After perusing Johana's website, blog and etsy shop I can see her favorite subject matter is the nature she finds all around her in her town of Aibonito in the central mountains of Puerto Rico. We have met and chatted online and she told me that she loves flowers and birds which I can see from her work.

She makes lovely enamelled pieces which she sells and incorporates into her jewelry designs. Beautiful and full of the most stunning colors you can imagine! I am thrilled to be paired with her since I know nothing about enamelling and am looking forward to learning more. She has an amazing sense of color as you can tell from her lovely components. 

You can see how her location affects her creativity. I'm sure that if I lived in a tropical climate that I would use more bright colors as well. I doubt if anybody wants to see jewelry reflective of the current climate in eastern Canada.......snow and ice which turns into grey mud when it melts. So I just dream of other places  and other times of the year when designing.

Winter in Canada

Spring in Canada

It is going to be so much fun to swap with Johana since we come from such different parts of the world. I am putting together a collection of beads and other goodies to send to her to stimulate her creativity and hopefully gently push her outside her comfort zone because that's what this challenge is all about. 

I'll post a teaser picture of her surprise once I send it off. You'll be able to see exactly what we swap and what we create  if you check it on the official reveal day, May 2, 2015. 

Have a lovely weekend and Happy Valentine's Day!