Variations on a Theme with Pearls, Adventurine, Amethyst and Rose Quartz

A couple posts down I wrote about an amethyst, aquamarine and rose quartz lanyard necklace I strung and then re-strung. I liked the color combination so much I wanted to do another, complimentary piece. The larger beads are adventurine, amethyst and rose quartz. I used small sterling silver rondelle spacers from Artbeads.com and silver bead caps I found at Global Beads.

The pearls are very nicely shaped freshwater cultured pearls I picked up last winter when I was down in Orange County. It's about 29" and very light - perfect for an eyeglass lanyard/leash, or just to wear as a necklace with the other lanyard.

I had a large rose quartz donut in my box of pinks and a large snap back bail that fit it, so I thought I'd see how that looked. Not sure it will work - the donut is very pink and the beads in the lanyard necklace are very pale. But the bail slips on and off easily after I rounded it a bit to go over the bead caps, so it's not a permanent addition.

Of course, now I'm thinking that with the right shade of pink pearl...

(This post brought to you via the magic of technology which allowed me to compose and post date so my blog wouldn't be completely dark during my conference week.)

A Bit of Sprintime as the Days Grow Colder

Maybe this is more of a springtime piece, but as I was poking around my beads looking for something else to go with the turquoise nuggets, I pulled out some chunky rose quartz beads and amethyst nuggets. I'd used these in other pieces, so I didn't have that many left over, but I remembered that I'd seen some lovely necklaces here and there with the pink, purple and a light green.

I went to my green stone box and there were these aquamarine chips I'd bought and also some very pale adventurine that were just the right colors. Deciding how to space them was a bit of a challenge, until I realized I had tiny silver ox beadcaps that would go great with some small pearls for in between the rose quartz and the aquamarine chips.

(Click for larger image)

Since I didn't have enough nuggets to go all the way around, I used the nuggets for the clasp ends and smaller round stone beads (this was how I used the palest adventurine beads, since I didn't have round aquamarines), plus more freshwater cultured pearls to go around the neck.

I did that work (and the post) Friday night and Saturday morning, before I put the hardware on it, I decided I wasn't happy with how it looked - just seemed off balance. So I re-strung it like so:

...and I was much happier with it, so I put on the clasps.

(This post brought to you via the magic of technology which allowed me to compose and post date so my blog wouldn't be completely dark during my conference week.)