Vintage Glass & Gold Beading Chain Necklace, Plus Another Last Minute Creation

Last night I was looking over the rest of The Beadin' Path vintage glass (pictured above) - there was still a strand of light blue opaque glass and the bag of faceted light blue iridescent finish beads (far right), a strand of yellow & white glass disks (second from left), and a strand of red fluted roundels in the same shape and size as the amber colored ones I'd used the other day (in the center).

Since I had a good amount of those amber glass fluted roundels, I thought I'd see what I could come up with using them with the red ones. As I was staring at them trying to think of what I might design, I remembered I'd bought a set of lovely lampwork autumn leaves and matching spacer beads from Mermaid Glass and thought those would look lovely with the red and gold.

First I strung them on beading wire, but then I thought it would be interesting to try using some gold filled beading chain I had. The spacers are gold vermeil daisies. The round bit that finished the end that the lobster claw clasp is on is a Scrimp cable-end from Beadalon. The necklace is 18" long.

I'm very fond of this necklace and look forward to showing it off.

Speaking of showing off...this morning I had some extra time before work, so I decided to make a bracelet to complement the copper and green glass necklace lanyard I had picked out to wear. Took about 30 - 35 minutes because I used wrapped loops. I am thinking about adding some Swarovski to it - I've got some huge bicones (10 or 12 mm) I picked up at Global Beads - I forgot to ask the color, they have an AB finish and are a orange-y tone, perhaps the color is "sun" but I'm not sure. The fancy antiqued interlocking arcs copper beads and bright, smooth copper spheres (no longer listed) are from Lima Beads and the chain is from Michael's. I've had the clasp in my stash for some time and don't recall where I got it.

I seem to get some pretty good ideas when I'm trying to figure out what to wear to work.

Do come back tomorrow for a great list of sales and bargains tomorrow!




FTC compliance disclosure notice of material connections: All items referenced in this post, with the exception of the red and gold vintage glass beads provided by The Beadin' Path, were personally purchased.

Autumn Wardrobe Accessories

Ah, the browns, rusts, and olives of my autumn wardrobe...how to brighten them up? How about a glittering necklace with richly faceted Czech glass 'gems' linked together with handcrafted silver links?

I'm hoping someone will fall in love with this one. The beads are 7mm faceted Czech glass in lovely shades of amber, olive, citrine, flame and cranberry. Doesn't it remind you of a trip through a New England Forest?

After a Very Busy Week, Finally Able to Bead Again!

Wednesday through Friday nights I was just too tired to do much more than come home and crash, so I didn't get any beading done. Today, however I was able to finish a beaded badge lanyard necklace that I think will transition beautifully from fall to winter.

It's 31" long and in addition to the tablet cut rectangles and the two tone faceted rondells there are two sizes of amber shell ("amber shell" is what the label says, not the color) beads.

I also finished my Byzantine pattern chain off as a bracelet. My next chain maille attempt will be a Japanese pattern using two different sized jump rings to make a mesh pattern. Will probably also stop at bracelet length with it.

I think I'll work on more photography and put up a few new Etsy listings tomorrow.

Mostly a Photography Day

Did photography most of the day and got nine new listings up at Etsy. I've set up a fall themed background for my beaded badge lanyards. Of course this means I'll have to de-list them and re-do the pictures in a different theme come December. Probably not limit myself to a Christmas theme except for Christmas items. I'll go with something snowy I think.

Before I started photographing I worked for a little while on the vintage style necklace, a piece of which I posted about last night. Here's my progress - will need to do some tweeking to make it lie nicer, but I'm nearly there.

When I'd grown too tired of taking pictures, I decided to work on a new strung necklace to give my hands a break from the pliers, and also because the design idea I got was more suited for a badge lanyard.

I used prehnite and amethyst beads with antique gold vermeil spacers in this one. I'd also recently received a couple packages of bead caps that fit down over the front and back edges of rectangular or larger flat oval beads and I'm using them for the larger prehnite rectangles at the clasp end of the badge lanyard necklace. I think they give the piece a very lush look.

A Winning Design

Wow! I won the Beadfly Fall Design contest! Thank you to the Beadfly folks. I've enjoyed being a member of this new site and its forum. I blogged about the winning design here, too.

So, what is Beadfly? It's a very web 2.0 type of site for beaders. It has an interactive forum, a place to upload and showcase one's work and talk about the inspiration for it, it provides members with opportunities to give and get reviews. It's got a good look, some neat features and I'd love it if you'd join and be my "friend" on the site. I'd also love to get a group going - another fun social networking feature they offer. I was thinking either a regional group (Northern California) or one of folk who do vintage style jewelry would be fun.

Now if I could only find the time to really concentrate on getting my stuff in the public eye and sell some of it! I have a new domain but haven't figured out how to get it on the hosting site account (which is set up under my husband's name with the hosting co.) nor how to build a storefront website.

I've got some good Googlejuice on the search "beaded badge lanyards" since I blog here so often and make sure to tag nearly every post with that phrase, but other than that, I'm still floundering a bit as to how to market my work. I had really hoped to get into LosCon (as I've whined about before) and get a few more sales this year, but absent that opportunity, I'm just not sure what to try next. I tried Google Ads for several months, but tracked no sales from that investment so I stopped it. I love Etsy, but it's a huge site and unless someone knows about me specifically, I doubt if they'll just stumble on my site and make a purchase.

Not going to give up, though! Eventually I'll figure something out, and next year I'll contact some cons much earlier than I did this year.

To cheer myself up, I'm working on a new necklace - turns out these stones and colors I'm using are pretty close to some of the the "Pantone Fall 2008" fashion color report colors. I'm thrilled about purples being 'in' as that's one of my favorite colors to wear.

I'm using 20 gauge copper wire to 'string' and attach squares of hemimorphite, bright, fluted copper beads and antiqued copper bead caps, faceted amethyst colored rondells and oval beads in this one. May not take this pattern all the way around the neck, have some nice antique copper chain I can use, too.

Fall Has Officially Arrived and I Celebrate With Fall Color Projects

I finished my vintage style filigree and amber glass bead necklace today and have set up a fall display for photographs. I've also been playing with making jump ring chains and some earrings. Wanted to share the new necklace - there's a 'hidden' touch, I've put four faceted amber glass roundells inside the large filigree bead - they're barely visible at close examination, but I think they will glint inside a bit in the sunlight. The clasp has an extender chain with a tiny amber glass bead at the end. It hangs about 9 inches from collarbone to the end of the beaded focal piece.

I wish my weekend wasn't nearly over - there are a number of ideas bouncing around in my head and I might get them started, but I know that next week is going to be busy at work, so in the evening I'll be rather tired and don't know if I'll get a lot done. Nevertheless, I have a number of great fall color beads, ambers, garnets, browns and golds that I look forward to working with.