Tuesday Tidbit - Trying to Keep the Cost Down

A colleague of mine asked me if I might make a lanyard for her using pearls, and showing me her bracelet of pearls with Bali-style silver beads, said, "in this style". She was hoping I could keep it under a certain price as well. The final constraint is the length, as she wanted it to be 32" long. I knew that with the pearls I already had I wouldn't be able to come close enough, especially with silver Bali beads.

I managed to find a great deal on freshwater pearls on sale the other day at JewelrySupply.com, so I bought several 16" strands. I already had some Bali-style beads I bought at the Rings & Things bead show that, if I wasn't too generous with them, would keep it pretty close in price. Here's what I came up with (click to enlarge):

(shown doubled to feature badge clasp)

I also had some large, irregular freshwater cultured pearls that I thought I'd string and see how they looked. I've pretty much decided that I'm going to re-do it and take out the bead caps I've used to set off some groups of three pearls (they're about mid-way up on the first picture and close to the clasp on the second one), I'm not happy with how that looks. But otherwise, I like it. Unfortunately this one prices out to $20 above what my friend wanted to spend. (Update - yet, it's the one she purchased!)

(shown doubled to feature badge clasp)

I really like making necklace lanyards with pearls, I've made several. People think they're beautiful, but the price ends up being too high for everyone who's admired them so far, though.

Here's one I made that's been at every show I've done and was on Etsy for a while. It's had a lot of admirers, but no buyer. It's a long one, 32", with gold filled beads and beautiful malachite and some very nice freshwater cultured pearls. (In case you're curious, I'm asking $85 for it).

That's all for today, thanks for stopping by!

PS - here are the necklaces posted above that are on sale at Artfire:

Dawno

Sell Handmade

Tuesday Tidbit

Was at w00tstock Monday night - just got home and it's *really late*
Made some new jewelry today and wore it to the show, but I'm too tired
to try and grab any photos or post.
Will share them on Wednesday.

Update: I've posted about w00tstock on my other blog, if you're interested...

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!

Tuesday Tidbits - My Workspace - Almost Done

Well, I took Friday and Monday off so I'd have a 4-day weekend to get organized, take pictures of my work that's ready for Art Fire, and maybe even make a thing or two if I had time left over. On Friday my DH surprised me by also taking the day off and treating me to a movie I told him I'd like to see (The Informant with Matt Damon and Scott Bakula).

Thus, a big chunk of Friday was unavailable. It turned out to be more than just the movie time, unfortunately, as the hot dogs or popcorn I had at the theatre didn't agree with me very well and I didn't feel up to much work the rest of the day.

Saturday was very productive, though, and I did the bulk of the clean up then. Here's a shot of my worktable (it's 6' long by 3' wide). Down to the far right is a little wheeled shelf unit that has my polymer clay toaster oven (still unused, alas) sitting on it, under a Bead Buddy lap desk and another Bead Buddy 'briefcase' that's great for traveling with beading stuff. I've got lots of various kinds of bead storage containers, desktop drawers, etc., crammed full of beady bits. I just ordered a Beadalon beading station and a table top work bench from Great Craft Works (who also had the Beadalon square knot links I've been wanting!) so I can get my beading wire and tools better organized.

for a clearer, larger picture, please click!

The boxes at the bottom left side of the table, just past the Ott lamp, are my 'sorting' boxes - bits and beads and stuff that needs to be sorted back into their proper places. That's what most of Saturday was about. As a result of my re-sorting and consolidating I freed up five or six of the divided plastic storage boxes and got a lot of stuff out of bags and box lids into proper bins. The boxes on the table hold the metal beads, bead caps, findings and components I've managed to collect. Several of them also have Swarovski, since there's no more shelf space and I don't want to mix them in the other bins by color and mix them up with the other glass.

Here's the stuff further along the wall to the right of the table. The bins in the bookshelf are beads sorted by color. That pink bit at the bottom right of the picture is a nifty cushion thing from Bead and Button Show 2009 on-line souvenir sale, called a Krafters Komfycush that I've got on my worktable chair. It has handy pocketed flaps that hang over the side of the chair and a seat cushion. The whole thing folds up into a tote with a shoulder strap. I thought it'd be handy for conventions and other shows whether I'm selling or just sitting in a seminar/panel discussion.

for a clearer, larger picture, please click!

And here's a bit further to the right - this is the hutch that still hasn't been worked on yet. When I first started beading it was my work surface. Eventually I had to get some carts with drawers to hold my beads, then after a while I needed two more. And all the shelves in the hutch were full of bead bins. Finally I bought the long table and moved stuff over to it. No way I'm going to pan further around the room - it's still a work in progress and there's still a lot of clutter over thataway. The wall is rather short as that side of the room has the sliding glass doors to the back patio in it.

for a clearer, larger picture, please click!

The other 180° of the room has my printer, computer desk and bookshelf. It's a major mess that's next on the list of things to do. Someday. When I'm not busy beading or blogging about beading.

That's the Tueday Tidbit. See you tomorrow when I go back to sharing about some new pieces I've done post-cleaning frenzy.

P.S. - can you see the one Star Trek item I've got in my beading area? Tell me in the comments if you can and know what it is.

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!

Tuesday Tidbits - Sometimes It's the Beads, Sometimes It Isn't

Often I'll let a design come to me by starting off just playing around with different beads and findings to come up with the idea for a necklace or bracelet. This time I started out looking at the silver links, then pairing them up with some chain, then looking at a few of the piles of beads lying about (yeah, I'm still trying to get the workspace organized) and that's how I ended up with the necklace below.

The larger beads are Czech fire polished beads in crystal/aquamarine with a metallic AB coating on one side, from Rings & Things. Also from Rings & Things are the small opaque turquoise glass disk beads being used as spacers. I have had the opaque turquoise Swarovski bicones in my stash for ages, not sure where they're from anymore. The smaller purple beads are a light amethyst/copper roundelle from The Beadin' Path. The chain, tiny antiqued silver flower bead caps, and the silver Art Nouveau style links are from Accessories Susan.

I think this one is done, although I never know when I'll look at it and decide that it's time to fiddle some more. The biggest problem I have with this, and most of my designs, is coming up with a name for it. I suppose one will eventually come to me, but so far, nothing.

When I first started making my lanyards I would look up the names of cities that I felt somehow fit the look or the stones I was using. After a while, and especially when I started branching out to other types of jewelry, I stopped. I also gave some pieces names from Star Trek - characters, things, places from the shows or movies. Lately I've named very few pieces and stuck more to descriptions. I hope I'll eventually settle on something that satisfies me.

Pretty soon I'm going to have to start working on tags and things for the convention I'll be selling at in November. It would be great if I had a good idea of what to name things as I'm doing that. Wish me luck!

Hope to see you back tomorrow - I like how the piece I'll share turned out, hope you do to!

Tuesday Tidbits - The Last Trios Design, at the Last Minute, Too.

All vintage images on this page are courtesy of The Graphics Fairy

I sent off 5 submissions to the Soft Flex Company's Flex Your Creativity contest (today is the "submissions must be received by" date!) on Sunday. I had four completed and photographed by then, but I'd planned on doing a couple more over the weekend to use each of the Trios I had from the Rings & Things blog partner package back in June. Unfortunately Saturday was so hot I didn't do much of anything but sweat and drink copious amounts of ice water.

So Sunday rolls around and it's cooler and I feel inspired. So I go grab my Harmony Trio and start thinking about what I want to do. I'm not sure what sent me towards the impressionistic butterfly thing I ended up with, but that's what happened after my original "how about making a Harmony petaled daisy?" idea bombed.

This design uses the Bone, Lemon Quartz and Copper colors of the Harmony Trio with beads from two different mixed contemporary glass color mixes, orange and yellow, from The Beadin' Path.

In this design I wanted to create something sculptural, like I did with the Renewal Trio necklace I recently re-worked. I started with an idea for creating a butterfly design (well, started after I couldn't make a decent daisy, so it morphed) as the focal piece and went from there, including a smaller butterfly on the body of the necklace as well. I used a lot of crimp tubes and crimp covers to help stabilize the designs. It might be a bit challenging to see the Bone colored Soft Flex parts in the small picture, so just click it for a larger image.

Oh, and here's the early version that I felt was too plain and not quite the right balance.

Did you enter? Have you entered any other contests or submitted to a magazine call lately? It stresses me out. I don't know how often I can do it, but I do know it's worth the effort - after all, I'll be seeing my design for the Colorworks contest published in Step by Step Beads in just a couple months and I was so hesitant to enter that one.

Until tomorrow!

Tuesday Tidbits - Starring the Rings & Things 7-loop Star Connector Necklace

Yesterday I mentioned the July goodies package and said that I was getting close to finishing some designs for the remaining items. Today I can share what I've been working on with the Gold filled 7 loop star connector and some Soft Flex Trios (Tranquility) from the June blog partner offer.

The pendant and design elements are strung onto 24k Gold Soft Flex Extreme wire (which was part of my Extreme Trios prize in their Twitter contest!). The gleam and shine of the 24k Extreme is really lovely. The beads I used are glass bicones because I didn't have any Swarovski in the right colors. I know those would look better - this "Under the Boardwalk" assortment from Rings & Things would be a good choice, I think.

I wanted to use the Trio colors as embellishment, so I crimped about an inch and a half of one of the three Tranquility colors on either side of a set of bicones, then pinched it to a point to echo the points on the star. This will definitely be re-done, I've learned a number of things that I can do better (to say nothing of using Swarovski crystals instead of glass bicones) in the next version.

I had the day off today and one of the things I tried was to teach myself how to create a wrapped wire cabochon (thanks to Tammy Powley and her About.com 'how to' article). I think I'm getting the hang of it, but it's going to take more time, materials and a couple new tools before they're ready for prime time, so I decided to try a different approach. Tomorrow I'll share some pendants I've made with that approach and some gorgeous free form polished stones I received from Fable's Rocks (@MidnightReading on Twitter), beading wire and silver/copper embellishments.

Tuesday Tidbits - Rose Stone and Paper Roses Mixed Media Earrings

"Attention! Attention!"
Before I get to my tidbits, I have a wonderful opportunity to share. Tish from Just A Tish has posted about getting an Artist's Exchange going beginning September 1st. You need to get over to her blog, read the rules and comment if you want in. So, what are you waiting for? Go now, I'll wait.


Welcome back!

Today's tidbit is about trying something completely different (for me, at least.) I was messing around with some components, trying to come up with more earring ideas, and hung a rose quartz bead on a new Accessories Susan bead cap on a brass headpin with a small brass spacer and matte rose glass Druk, wired it to a bronze loop (by Bead Landing, the Meadow Grove collection, from Michael's) and attached a simple brass ear wire. Too plain - time to go a bit nuts.

So I looked around the room, just wondering what I should do about the empty loop. My glance landed on a sheet of scrapbook paper covered with vintage-look roses. I put the earring on the paper and traced the loop,

cut it out -

and glued it to the hoop. The G-S Hypo Cement may have been overkill as far as a glue selection - but it was handy. Here's the earring with the paper glued in but before I trimmed it - I waited until after the glue dried to do that.

Then I put some Diamond Glaze and a CZ-gem drop inside the loop directly on to the paper. I put a rather thick layer, so it took maybe 4 hours to dry. It wasn't very level, I added another layer and it's about level with the height of the bronze loop now. I'll let it dry overnight. It's...interesting. I've made the second earring - it's at the stage where I'm letting the glued on paper dry to the hoop right now. It'll be a day or so before I have a finished pair. Since the back is plain white paper, I'm considering what to do about that.

I have quite a few sheets of pendant vintage prints from Alpha Stamps - I'm pondering how I might use them, perhaps with the brass frames or copper blanks I have from Rings & Things.

All vintage images on this page are courtesy of The Graphics Fairy

Hope you'll come back tomorrow to see what I've done with some gorgeous chrysocolla beads.

PS - today's ArtFire listing goal achieved:

Dawno

Buy Handmade