Swarovski Elements create your style giveaway

Hello there, today I'd like to tell you about a pretty sweet collaboration.

Swarovski just launched a new Color Carousel App that helps you coming up with harmonious color combinations or interesting design contrasts. It's for free, so check it out if you like. It's a gimmick but could be really helpful if you hit a creative dryspot.
Also you can check out their Facebook pace for more information.

screenshot from iTunes

Anyways, to promote and celebrate this launch, Swarovski sent me a jewelry kit to try out their "Create your style"-line.

I got offers for collaborations before but usually declines because this is a hobby, not more not less. But this opportunity was too good to pass, especially as Swarovsky is giving away a jewelry kit to one of you guys.
I haven't had much experience with Swarovski items so far. I've been to the occasional Swarovski store but usually I'm not so much for bling. So I didn't know what to expect really.

When the kit came, I was impressed with the packaging. Everything came very neatly stored with anti-tarnishing sheets, as the elements are silver pleated.

I especially like the packaging for the set stones: a plastic frame with flexible membranes that keep the stones from moving around and getting scratched. You slide off the ends and open the frame like a book. I'll keep it to display something. It's so cool!

This is what the kit came with, all the supplies to make the design on the front of the instructions.

While reading them, I noticed how the design couldn't work so added a few supplies from my stash but more on that later.

Here's a closer look on the suggested design:

As you can see the stones are strung on one piece of jewelry wire, alternating between going trough the upper or lower hole of the setting like this:

Unfortunately this doesn't work because as soon as you pick up the wire, gravity strikes and the upper stones fall and their back is exposed.

So I had to come up with a solution that kept the design which I liked but also kept the stones in place.
Easy, I just added two more wires, going through the leftover upper and lower holes and used small silver beads for filling the gaps between the stones.

Another problem I came across was quite a paradox: the quality. Now I was really impressed how well all the elements were crafted, all the chain links were even welded together.
Which then made it impossible to open up a link to get two pieces of chain for each end of the necklace. I know it's complaining on a high level but that resulted in an uneven number of chain links for each side and frankly speaking, I just don't like to waste.

Besides these minor bumps, the necklace came together rather easily. And though I wouldn't have been drawn to this particular design in the first place, I really like the result.
I couldn't find a link to this set online so it might not even be available yet and maybe my critique could help eliminating the last few issues.

Now for the giveaway rules, it's easy to participate:
To win please leave me a comment with your email-adress so I can contact the winner.

RULES:

• You've got to be a subscriber to the blog via Bloglovin or Google Reader
• You've got to be older than 18 years
• one entry each
• get an additional entry by sharing this giveaway on your blog and leaving me a link (ergo 2 entries max per person)
• open internationally

The winner will be chosen randomly and the giveaway is open for 10 days (ends december 12th 2012, 0.00 o'clock central european time). The winner will be contacted via email and the prize will be send by Swarovski.

Also Swarovski is hosting a Pinterest contest where they "are asking fans to create their own COLORful World board and pin at least 5 images of what they see a colorful world as. Once the board is complete, they just comment on one of our pins on the example board with a link to their completed board to enter. The Pinterest contest runs through Monday, January 6th 2013.". You can find it here.

Good luck!