OOOOH Goodie! New Beads!

I love finding packages in my mailbox or opening the door to the smiling delivery person (I'd specify, but I get UPS, FedEX and DHL depending on the supplier I order from and how fast I want my shipment).

Yesterday what I found was a package from a new place I thought I'd try, beadsonsale.com, which popped up in my gmail header as a 'sponsored link' and I succumbed to the temptation to click it and just peek, mind you, I had no intention of buying anything, really...

I ended up with the beads in the picture below, plus some lovely smooth, round 6mm amber and very nice Lapis (the color is deep blue, and the majority of the beads have a good amount of 'gold' pyrite flecks) 8mm round beads.

The beads below are (starting at the top) 24mm Hemimorphite disks, one was badly chipped and the others may or may not have gotten a bit banged around, I'm not sure how hemimorphite should look, this is my first purchase. But, beadsonsale didn't pack the stones as well as my other suppliers do - and the bits of stone in the bag was the evidence the worst of the chipping happened in transit.

Next is a strand of 12x17mm rectangular blue Amazonite, then 9x10mm Brazilian "flashy blue" Kyanite, which I really like and am looking forward to working with. Then my favorites, lots and lots of simply gorgeous vertical faceted smokey quartz 10 x 15 mm barrel beads - the color and clarity of those beads are stunning and fortunately they weren't chipped or scratched. My fuzzy picture doesn't do them justice, but when I make something from them, I'll make sure I get a really good quality photo.

Only new thing I've made recently was a royal blue and gold eyeglass leash - thirty tiny blue seedbeads, then a tiny seed bead sized, gold plated metal bead, before thirty more seedbeads and so on until I reached 30". The reason I did that particular eyeglass leash was that I spilled the blue seedbeads and as I was cleaning them out of the carpet one of those tiny gold beads ended up in the mix. Right then I decided on the pattern I wanted and started stringing the beads.

Before I go, I'd like to recommend my Absolute Write colleague, Jenn Nipps' site Creative Tips, the forum, the blog and on Twitter.

I simply love getting her inspirational tweets on Twitter - they never fail to make me smile and they're all ready encouraging me to try and stretch my self a bit.

If you're on Twitter, you should definitely follow creativetips there. If you're not, well, go join so you can get these wonderful little encouragements on your cell phone or via the web (and you might think about following me too, just for the heck of it).