I Think My New Beads Came via Time Machine

Do you have different favorite colors? I have several.

Green is just my favorite color in general. Don't wear it much, not the best color on me except for some shades: dark rich greens, aqua and teal. But straight out green is my favorite color.

Purple - dark royal purple - is my favorite color to wear. I always get compliments on something when I wear purple - and not even always that I look good in it.

Pink is my next favorite color to wear. Seems to flatter my complexion well enough, and I can find things in pink. Another plus is I can wear it year 'round - purple is more limiting in those ways.

Periwinkle is my favorite color word. Ever since I got my first box of Crayola 64 colors and saw it on a crayon. I also look pretty good in periwinkle so I wear it when I can find things in that color.

Looking through my bead stash it seems that I have many more green and purple beads/stones than other colors. Pink is a close third, then clear, then browns and ambers. I also wear a lot of browns and ambers in the fall and winter along with gray and black.

You might wonder why I wandered down that particular train-of-thought track. It's because I ordered some darling glass beads on Friday and they're already here (cue spooky music)! Talk about fast delivery - were mailed USPS on Saturday from Michigan according to the label. Frankly, I can't figure out how that's possible, unless there's a time machine involved somehow.

These beads from Bellebeads (who are having a cool contest on Etsy thru April 31st, so go now!) were featured on Smu-Topia's Ocean Themed Friday and as soon as I saw them I bought them. Thank you Bellebeads!

My new adorable, hand crafted artisan lampwork glass beads, Periwinkle Tide. Set included 3 Starfish, about 25mm across, 2 corals, about 15mm high, and 6 matching spacers, which would be hard to find in a good color match elsewhere. Do click on the picture to see larger image and enjoy the little details - not just of the beads, but the extras on the strand, too - lovely little faux-pearl beads!

I've got some new stuff that will be ready to photograph and share soon, hope you'll be back!

Spilled Beads Do Not a Design Make...Yet

So, I knocked over my box of aventurine and jade beads - the nagging mom voice in my head told me that it shouldn't have been sitting on the floor on top of other things on the floor, and should have been more tightly closed. After saying some bad words to the nagging mom voice (which by the way, isn't remotely like my mom's voice - it's more like my own, nagging at the kids, but much surlier, voice) and grumbling to nobody about having to get down on the floor to scoop them up and more grumbling and bad words said to myself in general about having to sort them, I was on my knees with a tablespoon* ready to scoop them and sort them back into the box when I really looked at the random pattern of the colors and sizes.

*yes, that's what I use to scoop spilled beads off the carpet and it works really well - happens often enough that I keep one in my tool box with the tiny souvenir (probably not what they intended to happen, but it somehow *cough* fell into my carry-on luggage) Singapore Airlines spoon I use to sort small beads I've used and are now all jumbled up on the bead mat

"Hmm," I said to myself - possibly out loud, as I do talk to myself out loud, quite more often these days since I spend a lot of time alone in my workroom, and I guess I kind of miss the sound of human voices, or I'm just going insane, which wouldn't be a bad guess either - "that would be an interesting look for a necklace."

So instead of sorting and putting them back in the box, I dumped them into one of the shoe-box tops I've lined with a small piece of thin foam packing material for a DIY lap-desk and grabbed the bead stringing wire.

Strung about 20" or so - not happy. Tried adding some silver spacer beads, didn't like this try:

So I took off all the roundels and spacers until I just had two roundels and one spacer. Nope. (didn't take a picture of it)

Added some contrasting colored glass beads and some amethyst beads - still not doing it for me. Will continue to play with this until I get something I like. Knowing me, I'll probably end up with a pattern. I'm not that good with random.

Oh, and one other thing, I've had this silver leaf pendant almost a year now and still haven't figured out what to do with it. I considered using it on the necklace above, but rejected it, too. I do think it needs to be on something big and bold, it's 2 and a quarter inches wide and almost 2 and a half inches long.

As always, your opinions, comments, sympathy and humor are greatly appreciated :-)

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Dawno

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I Finally Made Something Else for the Gluable Challenge - Rectangular Frame

Finally, a sunny day! Got out the MagicGlos and one of my Rings & Things Gluable Challenge frames.

I used the Rectangular frame (Stock#: 49-440-0 Approx. 52x13mm rectangle brass picture-frame charms, 3.5-3.8 inner diameter loop. 1.3-1.7mm thick. Fits 48x9mm image. Back is textured.)

I cut out a piece of the label from my favorite drink, Arizona Diet Green Tea, and glued it to the frame with Mod Podge, smoothed to remove air bubbles underneath. Then I took some 26 gauge brass wire, bent it around the picture, hammered it lightly and set on top of the picture. The reason for the wire is that I plan to use cloisonne beads in the necklace, so now the picture has a cloisonne-like look, too.

Coated it with a thin layer of MagicGlos, took it outside. Learned how quickly Magic Glos sets in sunlight, had to sand with a fine grit sandpaper under water to remove the lump I created, put another coat of MagicGlos on. Needs work, but it's a start. (click to enlarge for detail)

Thanks to Carmi's Art/Life World blog for her post about using MagicGlos - gave me the nudge I needed.

One of the Twitter-folk I follow, mySA_beading, mentioned a contest - Step by Step Beads Colorworks Challenge.

Enter the first Colorworks Challenge!

Tertiary Colors

The orange-purple-green tertiary triad presents a challenge of bold and striking contrasts. Create a piece of bead jewelry (or a bead in any medium: polymer, beads, glass, etc.) using the triad from the color wheel. Black, white, or clear are welcome, but the predominant colors must be the orange-purple-green triad (any shades of those colors).

As it happens, I'd begun work some time ago on a strung piece using those colors and copper. I won't show the whole piece, just in case I decide to enter, but here's a bit of it:

The workspace is a wreck, so I'm going to listen to City Arts and Lectures with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as I tidy up.

More Photo Background Ideas

Pulled out a couple new background ideas, shown at thumbnail size - these have texture but because they're white and beige, would they be better than using color or pattern?

Here's a set showing the different uses, but flat instead of on a bust like the ones shown in my previous post.

Here's another idea I had, in 3 versions - does adding the bag (just for the teaser shot) detract?

Comments appreciated!

A Day of Rest - ful Beading

It was a lovely Sunday. I slept in a bit, read a new spy-thriller novel or listened to the radio, and nibbled on comfort foods. Got inspired to do a couple new lanyards, which is one of the more relaxing things, short of taking a nap, I can do.

Today I made three lanyards (one still needs one clasp, but is otherwise done), here are the two I photographed. The one on the left has a foil lined bead with a tiny white flower detail the other has an abundance of beautifully faceted oval beads. This color, while perfect for spring, still has a wintery feel about it - like a crystal blue lake below a clear winter sky.

I also posted two of my pieces on Etsy - the garnet hex with copper lanyard, and a silver Christmas color lanyard, the latter of the two I also posted on Ebay. Lost the light after taking pictures of 5 or 6 lanyards, these early sunsets don't work for me at all.

For the copper hex lanyard I needed a copper split ring. I found large copper lobster claw clasps but to hook the smaller terminal clasps to it to complete the lanyard findings, I need a split ring. So I got out some 18 gauge copper wire, wrapped it three times on a 4mm mandrel using my Beadalon Jump Ring Maker and snipped the outer two wires at the same place on the triple looped ring to create a split ring. Worked great and looks good, too.

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?

What's Your Favorite Color?

My favorite color is green, closely followed by periwinkle, and 'periwinkle' is my favorite color word - ever since I saw it on a Crayola crayon in my first box of 64 colors. I loved reading those color words - and noting the difference between 'yellow-orange' and 'orange-yellow' or 'blue-green' and 'green-blue'.

So, with green being my favorite color, there are several wonderful green stones to choose from, such as malachite, jade, many agates and jaspers, too. I have some 'camouflage' stone I'm looking forward to using and a lot of moss and tree agate as well. That's why my latest piece was created from a new bunch of glass beads I bought last weekend at Global Beads. They reminded me of malachite, with black and paler green striping in them. Here's the "teaser" shot

(click picture for larger image)

I used copper bead and disc spacers and copper clasps for this one, I think copper and dark green are a beautiful combination. Here's the necklace lanyard draped - it's 30" long.

I didn't do much different to the center set of beads than the rest of them, except to add larger copper beads.

My vintage-look findings and components shipment arrived today (Whoopee!!) and I'll be playing around with designs using them soon. I'm pretty excited about it.

Oh, the shell necklace lanyard - here's a fair picture (it's still unfinished, though)

It's a fun one, sort of '60s looking. I can see it really looking great with winter white knits.

Gonna go play with my new stuff now.