Tuesday Tidbits - Day 2 of 3: Not Quite There Yet Necklaces

Right now what I have is a choker length necklace, simply because I only had enough of the silver open 'cage' beads to go this far. While I could stop here and say 'done', there's a nagging voice in the back of my mind whispering to me that it's not. Unfortunately, what Nagging Voice neglects to volunteer, is what else I should do. That's Nagging Voices for you - all critique, no ideas. I am trying to encourage Nagging Voice's shy cousin, Flash of Inspiration, to step up and pitch some ideas. I'd be satisfied if the other cousin, Impatient to Move on to the Next Thing would just chase off the other two. I'm considering options I've come up with no thanks to the crowd in the back of my mind - putting something inside the open bead cages, maybe? Adding drops to hang from the jump rings is another idea, but it's not at the top of the list.

While the voices in my head are busy (or, perhaps, asleep) I'll just babble a bit about the beads I've used.The black bead in the necklace is an interestingly faceted piece of pressed jet black Czech glass from the Halcraft Beads Bead Gallery collection at Michael's. By the way, I went to the Halcraft site to see if I could find the bead and the site is ponderously flash-heavy. You can't link to one particular thing, even if you find it.

On top of that, each page (and there are 4 in the 'glass beads' section once you finally get that page loaded) takes forever to load. Well, ok, 30 seconds, but that's forever in internet time. They need to fire their web-designer. While I've given you the link, I wouldn't recommend a visit unless you have the patience of a saint. Do not go there if you have a slow connection.

Since after my fruitless visit to the Halcraft site I couldn't find an example of the bead to show you, I'll have to try and describe it - plus if you click the picture above you might be able to see enough detail to get the idea.

The facets on the bead are long thin stripes cut or pressed into the bead at an angle from top right to bottom left, the shape of the bead is oval viewed from the top and the center of the bead is thicker than the sides. There's a kind of wavy look to the shape if viewed from the sides as well. It's a pretty interesting bead, approximately 10mmx14mm in size.

The silver cage beads are made up of strips of silver plated metal with a braided, patinaed pattern on them. There's a pin with looped ends through it and each end comes already connected to a jump ring. Made assembly much easier. They're from Sterling Effects which I found in quantity at A.C. Moore last winter when I was in Fayetteville, N.C. Haven't seen them around here anywhere, though.

Last night my Artbeads package arrived - I used the 20% savings offer available over Labor Day weekend to really stock up on different sizes colors and shapes of CRYSTALLIZED™ – Swarovski Elements (many of which you can still get for 15% off until the 22nd at Artbead's "Crazy for CRYSTALLIZED sale) and bead caps. I've quite a nice assortment to work with and since I really need to beef up my inventory of things like earrings and bracelets for the show in November, I felt it was a good use of the opportunity.

Tomorrow you get Day 3 of 3 - and I have made it to version 2 of this one, you get to see some pictures of the changes on this one.

See you then!