Purple Heart

I got this amazing purple lampwork heart from one of Etsy's talented glass artisans (if it's yours, drop me a comment and I'll credit you - I can't find the original transaction!) - I love purple, love hearts, and knew I wanted to design a spectacular necklace to showcase it.

Coin pearls: another one of my favorite things! These peacock-colored coin pearls are richly iridescent, and go with the heart focal perfectly! I put them with white freshwater button pearls and tanzanite-colored Czech firepolished beads, and a bit of sterling silver, to create this feminine, romantic, double-stranded necklace:

It closes with a sterling silver S-hook and sterling silver chain, so the finished length is adjustable.

And it's available on Etsy!

New Earring in the Works

My student yesterday was late so I had to fill some time. Not knowing how late she was going to be, I didn't want to dive into the fringe necklace, so I started playing with some beads, wire, and hoop earrings.
This is how far I got before she finally showed up:

Hoping to finish this pair today - they're freeform, so they go fairly quickly, even though I'm doing a pretty dense pattern.

And here is the finished garnet torsade I created while teaching the multistrand class yesterday:

Bi-colored Quartz, Pearls, and Lampwork

Don't you hate it when pictures just don't do your work justice?

In reality, no picture, I don't care WHO takes it, under what conditions, can show the real beauty and all the intricate details (and love!) that goes into a piece. But most of the time, my pictures do a good job of representing my work.

My nemesis, picture-wise, is purple. In all of its shades, from the palest lilac to the deepest purple velvet, and even spreading across the spectrum to cobalt/royal blue. Nothing I do (so far) lets the true color of the purples shine through.

But purple isn't the culprit here:

This double stranded necklace started with the gorgeous, earthy lampwork focal. It has several shades of browns, greens, and cream, with big textury dots - love this bead.

I paired it with some mouthwatering faceted bicolored quartz (half lemon quartz, half smoky quartz) - their colors matched the focal perfectly, and the added some sparkle! Then I added some sage green faceted Czech glass, some peach freshwater pearls, and some Swarovski crystals (more sparkle!), and some sterling silver.

I really love the necklace. It all came together perfectly (in my opinion, of course!).

But the photographs didn't come together at all - this is the best one, and it is overexposed, but when I reduced the exposure, the details of the focal and the quartz were lost. I know I took 75 pictures of this necklace if I took one. All different camera settings, angles, backdrops. Crazy.

But the necklace (and it's beautiful components) stood on their own - with the earrings selling right away, and the necklace selling a few months later.

 This is another set that has given me "Seller's remorse" - I miss it!

Long Kazuri Necklace

I bought some black and white Kazuri beads (hand-painted ceramic beads from Kenya) at a bead show about 4 years ago and squirreled them away in my stash . . . and hoarded them, and hoarded them, and finally decided what to do with them!

The Kazuri beads have nice-sized holes, so I created a multistrand necklace with thousands of size 11 black seed beads, and a few 3 mm cube-shaped onyx beads. I hand-strung all the seed beads, 'cause that's the way I roll. This probably would have been the perfect project for one of those bead spinner thingies, but I don't have one, and it really didn't take too terribly long to get all these beads strung.

I used 5 different Kazuri beads - 4 have black and white patterns, and one is solid black. I like the symmetrical asymmetry (that's a thing, right?) The necklace is a delicious 44 inches long, and I've worn it long, but it can also be doubled up, like on the mannequin above, so it's very versatile, and goes with a lot of stuff.

I don't often string this many seed beads - I am a beadweaver at heart, sewing each little seed bead individually into intricate patterns, so I'll probably never invest in a Bead Spinner. Anyone out there have experience with one?

Worktable Wednesday

Yesterday afternoon I assembled the beads and started stitching a necklace idea that popped into my head on Saturday, so this is what is on my workbench this morning:

Some amethyst nuggets, some amethyst and ametrine chips, and some gold freshwater pearls. And I stitched up 2 brick stitch connectors for the design, in Jet AB 4mm cubes (I know, what other color would I choose, right?)
Stay tuned tomorrow to find out why I allowed myself to start a new project! (Gosh, I hope you can sleep tonight lol)

So, for a little personal digression, here:

We are having a stunningly gorgeous day today - it is 65 degrees, the sun is shining, birds are singing - beautiful! Other than having a slight headache while driving to work, a great day! So I decided to allow myself a treat, and I pulled through the Chic-Fil-A drive thru to get a fountain Diet Coke - YUM! I stuck the cup in the car's cupholder, and continued across the street to the shop (yes, I am right across the street from Chic-Fil-A), and lifted the cup to take a long gulp, and discovered they had given me Coke. Not my delicious Diet Coke, but nasty sweet Coke. I know my friend, Sonya, understands how this can ruin a mood!

So, of course, I had to get rid of it - I don't like the taste anyway, but I could never drink all that sugar (though I could certainly consume 10 times as much sugar in the form of Krispy Kreme chocolate iced cream-filled donuts, but that's different. That's the Breakfast of Champions!)

So now I am settling for a canned Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, and blogging while listening to The View. Where "the ladies" (and good grief, do I use that term loosely) are having a big, loud, rant, led by Whoopi, about Whitney Houston, Drew Pinksy, and Nancy Grace. With Elisabeth chiming in her 42 cents. It's a "View-ha-ha"! I crack myself up!

Have a great day!

Pearl Torsade

I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of last week creating this gorgeous pearl torsade - a multistrand necklace consisting of 10 strands of differently colored and shaped freshwater pearls, with a beautiful shell pink carved mother-of-pearl flower focal bead (which hides the sterling silver tube clasp.)

The mother-of-pearl focal piece is center-drilled, which created some unique design problems: how to attach it to the necklace without it hanging upside down like a dinner plate! I finally figured out (I hoped!) a way to rig one half of the 5-strand tube clasp to a wrapped loop I ran through the flower (with an eye-popping white pearl and vintage rose Swarovski crystal on the front of the flower), and crossed my fingers, and started stringing pearls.

With the 5 strand tube clasp, I planned on stringing 10 different pearl strands, figuring that when twisted they would give the perfect amount of volume to the necklace. I knew a fair amount of length would be lost to the twisting process, so I planned to make each individual strand almost 19 inches long, hoping for a finished length of around 17 inches. I knew there was little I could do to test my plan until I bit the bullet and just strung each strand and attached it, so I crossed my fingers and dug in.

Each strand of pearls was only 15 to 16 inches long, so it actually took 2 strands of each pearl type to get the length I needed.

I chose some absolutely delicious pearls to compliment the carved flower focal: all freshwater pearls, in whites, champagne, and various pinks and mauves.

I love the finished look! When fully twisted, it is between 16.5 and 17 inches long.

 And for a different look, it can also be worn untwisted, falling to around 19 inches in length:

Each strand of pearls is connected independently to the sterling silver tube clasp, which, when closed, is cleverly hidden by the focal flower:

And it's available in my Etsy shop!