Playing with a monochrome and neutral palette (jewelry making mojo challenge)

I'm really getting into making long headlines... Anyway, this is some of what I've done this weekend inspired by the Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge assignment of the week, which was working in monochrome.

Now, if someone tells you to work in monochrome would you end up with something as boring as beige as your chosen colour? Surely, neutrals are best when used to enhance a colour, like when combining light grey beads with a turquoise blue focal? It wasn't my plan -- I thought about using blue to challenge myself, then I wanted saturated purples to really temt the eye and then I ended up with beige-brown just because I had to go through my flower-and-leaf-beads box and happened to pick up the zip-lock bag with button flowers... The button flowers just happened to sit so nice between the maple leaf beads in the same colour (as you can see below) and as it fitted the challenge...

Originally I wanted to make a daintier bracelet, just using one flower and a leaf on each side, but then I thought "why not see what it'd look like if I used all the five flowers in the bag?" and that's the point where I got the camera out -- in between baking; if the photos look sloppy it's because I took them while I had cookies in the oven.

This is a WIP. I haven't finished it because I'm trying to find a slightly darker cord (and hopefully a matching clasp, might be a button -- or one of the flower beads if I just had more of them). Then I'll probably knot between the trios of beads instead of using seeds like I've done here.

Just to give you a better idea of what the bead combination would look like with more colour, here are two other variations of it:

(If I'd had purple/lilac maple leaf beads this challenge would of cause have featured the flower below instead of the beige-brown beads. Believe it or not, despite my love of purple, I only own two purple leaf beads -- and they're not the right shape for this.)

I think I'll play around some more with this bead combo, see what I can make from it and perhaps see if it works with other leaf beads too, though of the ones I have I do believe maple leaves are the best option. I'll also do a few dangles with just one leaf below the flower.