Monday Miscellany - Lots of Black & Gray Lanyards

People at work who are interested in my lanyards seem to be drawn to the black or dark gray ones. I ran out of those, so I spent my beading time this weekend making lanyards with jet black Czech glass, hematite, and hematite colored Czech glass. At the end of Sunday evening I'd finished 9 and was almost done with a tenth.

I've managed to get three of these listed on Art Fire for now, too. I'm going to try to get all of them, and a few others up there this week. I am also going to try and finish my Halloween necklace before our office Halloween pot-luck this Wednesday...wish me luck!

Hope you have a great week - see you tomorrow!




PS - here's the three listings I mentioned, in case you'd like to see closeups

Dawno

Sell Handmade

Angelite Jewelry Lanyard and Accessories

Had some meetings today, so last night I knew that I was going to wear a pair of medium gray slacks with a subtle periwinkle blue pinstripe, matching silk knit cable sweater and gray knit and suede sweater jacket. I got out my hematite, the new angelite stones I received the other day, and made this lanyard to go with the outfit:

(please click to enlarge for detail)

The angelite stone is nearly a perfect match to the sweater. I also made earrings - the bead caps in the earrings and lanyard are Tierra Cast gold plated lead free pewter, ordered from D & I and have simply lovely detail, and a bracelet, but in the bracelet I used the Swarovski Tahitian-look pearls instead of hematite:

And this is kinda what they all look like on (what you can see of) me in the periwinkle blue sweater and added Swarovski Tahitian-look pearl and gold bead bracelet I made the day before (note the Tahitian pearl pendant - goes great with hematite, too).

I do plan on making more with the Swarovski pearls, but I have a lot of hematite, especially the 4mm rounds, because I wear a lot of dark to medium gray in the fall and winter and lighter gray in the spring. Of course, all my meetings were with guys who probably didn't even notice the jewelry (and if they did weren't about to comment). I may make a duplicate set for sale - but for now, these stay in my personal collection!

Three New Necklaces Today

It's great to be home! I relaxed today with my beading, making three new pieces today. First I decided to get out some of the new gunmetal colored components I found at the ACMoore store in Fayetteville and my hematite beads. I used some 'black diamond' colored Druk beads to make it less monochrome. I'm not sure I'm finished - my daughter is visiting and she suggested adding more chain to the center, so I may play around with this one some more.

Then I felt like making another Christmas themed necklace and made this eyeglass leash. I used red and green cathedral glass beads, red and green faceted rondells and antique gold filigree beads.

Then I decided I wanted to finally make something with the handcrafted art-glass bead I bought at the Art and Wine festival back in September from Susie Harper. This features the silver ring spacers and light sapphire blue round glass beads I bought in Fayetteville along with some light sapphire blue Druk beads from Artbeads. In order to keep the larger circle spacers open, I used two headpins on each one to create the loops. I 'threaded' the Druk beads into the smaller circle spacers with eyepins. I'm very happy with how this one turned out. I think the circle theme perfectly compliments the design of the glass bead pendant.

Back in the Groove?

Productive day for me - even with a bit of sleeping in, and a long drive to get hubby's favorite lunch from the only place that serves it a 30 minute drive away, so it takes over an hour to get home with it, and then eating lunch with him while catching up on some TiVoed shows from last week - I still finished 4 lanyards so far today. I'll probably do a couple more tonight and then get them up on Etsy and eBay tomorrow.

I've been on a bit of a hematite kick, but in the last one with hematite (and copper, second from the right), I used a 3mm garnet colored Jablonex faceted Czech glass bead. That led me to grab my boxes of red beads and my garnet colored Czech glass hexagonal beads from Artbeads caught my eye. I have a lot of these hex bead lanyards and really love making my necklace lanyards with them because of the way their shape catches the eye and their subtle facets play with color and shadow on the bead in interesting ways.

These are all between 28" and 30" long.

I think these are great winter colors - and garnet is the January birthstone, too.

My last comment tonight is that I really wish that I would hear something back from the dealer's room committee members I've written to. I discovered two SF/Fantasy conventions that were going to be held locally, one in March and one in the summer, I think June. I reached out to the dealer's room committee members via the email address listed on the convention websites several days ago, but haven't heard anything yet - and after the LosCon disappointment, I figured I'd better get an earlier start. I really hope my email didn't go into their junk folder...