Friday Pick on Hiatus Today, but I have Two New Organizers and Necklaces to Share

I may have mentioned that I do the posts for each morning the night before. Thursday night I didn't get back to my workroom until pretty late and I spent some time setting up things in my new Beadalon storage products from Great Craft Works - where I also found the Beadalon square knot links in bulk (yay!) that I've been looking for.

I got a Table Top Work Bench and a Beading Station. The biggest enticement to get these were the rods that hold beading wire on both and the bars at the top of the beading station for my tools. And I just love the little drawers! Haven't figured out what all will go in them, but whatever I use a lot of and need at hand (probably finishing findings) will go in those.

I will try to remember to get a picture of the new set up and post it soon - the pictures above are the catalog pics from Great Craft Works and not my own stuff. I don't have nearly that many tools, but I do have that much wire - and seeing lots of great Soft Flex Trios colors all lined up in a row, ready to use, is really fun.

Anyway, that absorbed quite a bit of time, but I do have two more things I'm working on that I can share, too.

First up is a glass River Rock necklace with the remaining citrus nuggets and a 'topaz' nugget. You can find these at The Beadin' Path in a number of colors and two sizes, medium and large.

I used gold tone spacer beads in two sizes that came from Michael's but I can't recall the supplier and didn't save a tag, unfortunately. They're from a line that features rough, natural beads in ceramics and stone and wood. The spacers have a matte finish and a rather organic pattern to them, so I thought they were a good fit.

No clasp yet, still deciding how I want to do that. It's pretty heavy, weighing in at 4 ounces (doesn't sound like much, but it felt like a lot when I tried it on. For me that's a big drawback, since heavy necklaces give me terrible headaches. I could probably wear it for an evening out, but not a full workday.

Update: new pictures of completed necklace! Used ceramic beads and Artistic Wire to create the hook and eye clasp.

The next necklace is a re-do of the one I shared earlier in the week. I re-arranged the pink glass and green aventurine beads. I think I like this way better. These aren't great pictures, as they're workroom shots with the available lighting. The green aventurine beads are well up the necklace and almost hidden at the top of the strands in this shot. I'm still really fond of the River Rock pendant and exposed lemon yellow quartz Soft Flex wire.

Well, Friday is going to be a busy day (I hope) for making new stuff. I'll be really happy to have some new pieces to share and talk about next week! Saturday I'll be posting my Supplier Sales and Sunday we'll Wander around the Beadosphere together, so please be sure to visit!

Tuesday Tidbits - River Rock Concepts 2 & 3

As I mentioned before, Heather at The Beadin' Path sent me some glass River Rocks to create some designs with as one of their design partners. I made the first one with the amber rocks pretty soon after I got them, but the yellow ones were harder for me, as it's not a color I work with much.

I gave the rocks a lot of attention over the weekend. Finally I got an idea to jumpstart my imagination. I pulled out my Soft Flex Yellow Lemon Quartz (also comes in the Harmony Trio) beading wire and played around with clear and yellow beads, but didn't like anything I was seeing.

Then, after I'd spent some time reading Margie Deeb's Fall/Winter 2009 Color Report, I pulled out my green aventurine beads but ended up not happy with the combination of just the two colors. So I decided to try some multi-stone bead chips I'd had in my stash forever because I hoped the variety of colors would be a better balance against the large, strong bright yellow.

I strung just the chips and the River Rocks but it wasn't clicking. I got the aventurine out again and decided to use the large round beads. Still not quite it but really close. Finally, I thought I'd add one or two bright pink chips and big pink glass beads. Almost there! Made a simple pendant by using two strands of Soft Flex and more chips and curled the wires. I didn't string the large green and pink beads symmetrically on the necklace and I'm debating re-stringing them so they follow the same pattern on both sides. That's why I haven't added the clasp to this one yet. I'm really happy with the pendant, though! I'm tempted to do another necklace with just River Rocks now and a similar pendant.

The next River Rock necklace is an attempt to 'dress up' the rough glass, which I used as a solo focal this time, with some faceted glass beads, some tiger eye beads, some gold freshwater pearl disks and other miscellaneous amber/bronze/browns. I strung a length of dark amber, 3 or 4mm faceted glass rounds and twirled them around the strand.

I don't have any gold tone cones to cover the double strand ends, so I used some large holed beads...I really like how it turned out...I'm going to use this idea again.

There are your Tuesday Tidbits. See you tomorrow for Mid-Week Mutterings!