Love, in Lavender

Well, I played around with the design I mentioned last night and just couldn't get it to look the way I want. I will have to poke around at the bead stores this weekend and see if I can find just the right aquamarine stones or colored glass something(s).

That decision out of the way, I now needed to figure out what I wanted to make tonight.

"Hmmm," I said to myself, "you haven't done anything purple in a while."

So I pulled out the purple drawer - oh, that one's the purple drawer with the gray beads, hematite and pearls. See, early on when I was getting my beading area set up, I bought this 10 drawer thing I saw at JoAnn's for my beads, every two drawers is a different color: red, purple, blue, green, orange. The drawers are just the right height and width for a single plastic organizer box with a couple inches in the front and about one inch on the side for other stuff that didn't fit in the box. So in every other drawer the bead color matches the beads inside. Well, except for the red drawers at the top - I have clear beads in the top and white beads and pearls in the second one. At the time I didn't have many red beads. And the orange ones at the bottom - those have pink beads in them. I have a lot of pink beads.

So, back to the story, I pulled out the other purple drawer, and looked at my purple beads. I had bought two strings of tiny, opaque lavender glass heart beads ages and ages ago. I'd used, or thought about using, some of them at one point, because a number of them were loose in the storage box, but I had lots and lots left. Decided I wanted to do something with them.

Poured them out on the BeadBuddy lapdesk bead design board. Stared at it for a considerable bit of time. Lots of little hearts - enough for two long lanyards. I'll just do one for now, I thought.

"What else needs to go into this?" I mumbled. Then I decided on the tiny, dark amethyst purple glass bicone beads between the hearts - nice contrast.

For the center focal, I used a glass bead I've used before as the main detail bead on a lanyard, which has light lavender leaves over a milky opaque color that is just a blush of lavender, put two small amethyst druk beads, and two larger iridescent amethyst glass beads, on either side of it. There, ready to go.

I merrily strung the hearts so the points would face the focal. I finished it, put on the hardware, and realized as I held up the "finished" piece, that worn as a badge lanyard the hearts would all be upside down. As an eyeglass leash, they would be right side up as they ascend to the glasses, that's good, and worn as a necklace, the hearts would all be fine since that's how I designed it on the board. Conundrum. Do I re-string the whole thing and alternate the orientation of the hearts (point-bicone-point, bumps-bicone-bumps, and so on) so it works as a badge lanyard?

I'm putting that decision off for tomorrow. Here's what it looks like now, with the hearts all oriented points toward the focal.