Etsy Beadweaver's May Challenge - How Unsual

So the challenge for May, was: Let's use the most unusual items this month! Besides your normal beading items (seed beads, crystals, gemstones, etc.), your entry for May must have at least one unconventional item. Look around you - on the street, in nature, in your kid's room (dolls, dice, playing cards, etc.) or in a man's world (screws, tools, bolts, bullets, animal eyes or teeth, etc.), or anything else you have not thought so far could be part of your beaded projects. Just think Out of the Beading Box and be innovative! ======================================== Not as easy as it sounds actually because I'm not that clever. But once I figured out what I wanted to use, a zipper it really didn't get any easier. Why? Because at first I thought, I REALLY WANT THE ZIPPER TO BE OBVIOUS. So I went and bought a jacket zipper, very close to these,

Pretty cool huh? Well here's the thing, I bought the smallest/shortest zipper available in the store which was 21 inches. I thought, Oh I know how to shorten a zipper, I do it all the time when sewing! Pfffttt.... yeah well it's a different story when you still need it to be a zipper that still needs to separate. You need a specialized tool and specific parts to be able to finish the ends of the zipper. Parts I neither had nor had the time to special order in time to have my entry finished. So back to the store I went and found - on sale - and the VERY LAST OF THEIR TYPES, a black and a white zipper that were both 7 inches long and that would zipper together like I wanted. Now to figure out how to cut back on the size of the fabric part of the zippers. Turns out I pretty much ended up cutting away almost all of the fabric part with just enough to left on which to bead on. I knew the colors I wanted to use, contrasting colors: Purple and Turquoise. I started with the purple,

. . . . . . . . .

Here it is two weeks later, completed:

Time to start on the Turquoise part:

Now here's the thing, the base of very fringe part is a size 11 bead, each size 11 bead has 2 to 3 fringe parts made from 11, 8s, 6s and 3.4 drop beads; each fringe part has three fringe branches to it. Getting the picture here on why it took me just about a month to bead this baby together? :D

Turquoise half done!

Although another glitch in the design, the white tab on the zipper. It was so painful to look at sitting in between the two halves that I wanted to color it to match the turquoise. But you know what? A sharpie didn't work and I didn't know what to use so I asked my Facebook friends and one suggested, nail polish! It worked like a charm and the tab part is now un-noticeable once the two parts are together.

Time to put the two halves together!

So there is the story behind my entry, which I managed to get entered one day before the deadline because it was A LOT more work than I thought it was going to be.

You can find it available at my ** Etsy Shop, HERE. **
Raven. :D