Vintage Style Set Made with Clear Glass & Brass Filigree

Fast post, it's late and I need to get to bed, but I just finished up some new, as well as re-worked old, pieces tonight. The necklace was one of my first experimental pieces using filigrees. The earrings (the earrings are what are hanging off the necklace) and lanyard necklace are new. Filigree, chain and large lobster claw clasp, Accessories Susan; tiny brass spacer beads Ohio Beads; clear Czech glass beads from Blue Moon clear glass mixes, except for the long oblongs in the lanyard, which were from Bead Gallery, purchased at Michael's.

Will Practice Make Perfect? My Aching Hands Hope So

Very brief post - I finished the wire loop necklace yesterday and have worked on two more today. My hands are a bit battered and sore. I need to get back to making necklace lanyards soon and I want to make at least a couple vintage style pieces, too - but the making of little wire circles is strangely hypnotic. The center necklace has a glass fish that came from the Botmo gift beads, by the way. All the loops are made from the same copper wire I talked about in yesterday's post. I have red, blue and purple glass ovals left and may make more practice necklaces with those colors, too.

I'm glad tomorrow is a holiday!

Sometimes I Think I Should Just Stick to What I Know

I have this urge to make a necklace using wrapped wire loops. I am practicing. I am wasting a lot of wire. I think I need to take a class.

I have also been visiting various lampwork glass artisan sites. Somebody hide my credit card - I could do it a lot of damage, the ones I've visited have such lovely beads. One in particular, Air and Earth Designs, by the artist, Kandice Seeber, has me especially ga-ga. The flowers she adds on top of the beads are fabulous - to say nothing of the colors.

Made a necklace lanyard tonight, though, so I did finish something - the wire wrapped loop necklace will probably take several years at the pace I'm going.

I used faceted glass cubes in clear and light blue with an iridescent finish, tiny silver seamless round beads, faceted blue glass bicones and teensy tiny dark blue iridescent seed beads. I think I will name it "Resistance is Futile".

Still haven't heard from the LosCon folk. I hope that doesn't mean anything except they're very busy with Real Life stuff and haven't had time to get back to me.

New Names for My Necklace Lanyards

For the most part I've been giving my pieces names descriptive of the stones or colors in them. I've lately seen a number of bead artists giving evocative names to their pieces, either from quotes or, perhaps, lovely sentiments they've created themselves. I am charmed by and enjoy the thought that goes into the naming.

My pieces sold pretty well at BayCon, so I'm (as mentioned on this blog) hoping to be approved as a dealer at LosCon and am going to look into other cons I can attend. Since most of the people at the cons are SF and Fantasy fans, using SF inspired naming seems like a fun idea, and it represents something I enjoy personally, not just a gimmick. So I was pondering where to get my inspiration for the names of my pieces.

Flash forward to a post about day lilies I clicked on yesterday. There are varieties of day lilies that have been given Star Trek names. I'm a fan, and I got a kick out of looking at the beautiful Borg Technology and Cloaking Device flowers. I've named my most recent pieces with a Star Trek theme, with many thanks to Memory Alpha Wiki to help me find information and quotes.

Here's Tears of Elaan, a short-ish piece at 24" in frosted Czech glass druk beads and iridescent glass seed beads with a larger iridescent Czech glass bead at the ends, best suited for an eyeglass leash. I'm going to also pick a quote from the episode that inspired the name, for each piece. This one comes with the quote from Spock to McCoy at the end of the episode:

"The Enterprise captured his heart long before the Dohlman did"

And almost finished (still need to attach the hardware) this morning, is a longer badge lanyard necklace - approx. 30 - 32", with two sizes of clear glass bicone (diamond) Czech pressed glass beads, separated by silver glass and iridescent glass seed beads. I've named it Treasure of Rigel XII, and the quote, from a conversation between Kirk and Harry Mudd:

"You either believe in yourself or you don't."

First commenter to tell me the name of the Star Trek episodes the necklace names come from, can claim these earrings (Enterprise-A not included), if they'd like: