Random Necklace - Finis...?

I want to start off sharing new posts I've seen recently about the Gluable Challenge. They are all such clever crafters!

*melanie* at Earthenwood Studios blog - baby moon faces and re-purposed bracelet turned into a necklace all using beautiful ceramics. I'm saving up for a big purchase from Earthenwood some day, I love their work!

Tammy Powley at Crafty Princess Diaries showed of her fun fish bracelet and a cool quote on the brass frame

And Lisa over at A Bead A Day did this very cool bracelet using scrapbooking brads she modified and glued to the disk and loop bracelet form (reminds me of 60s Op Art Posters)


Now, on to the thrilling conclusion of the Random Necklace Adventure...

I pondered and piddled around with it some more today, and here's the finished* piece, which hangs about 24" from the neckline, so it's about 48" around - weighs in at almost a 1/4 lb (3.8 oz). Here's how it (approximately, since this obviously isn't my neckline...) looks doubled when I tried it on - you may notice my concession to pattern and order with the focal point in the center of the bottom loop:

In this shot I highlight the randomness (but not an ability to focus the camera - it looks focused in that tiny window, but my eyes aren't so good anymore - even with my glasses on, maybe it's time for a new prescription):

And this last shot was just to show it full length (I drug in that branch the other day thinking I might use some of the smaller branches for earring photos...DH just rolled his eyes).

*finished as in I may or may not change my mind, but I did put the finishing hardware on it, but I can always take it apart and try again...someday...maybe or maybe not...don't you love how I'm so definite?

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 :-)

Latest ArtFire listing:

Dawno

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Exotic Tiger's Eye and Yellow Jade

Just finished and listed a new necklace on Art Fire, made of tiger's eye stone beads and nuggets and yellow jade. I really love this combination - the shimmer and dimensionality of the tiger's eye has always fascinated me, even as a young child it was my favorite stone.

But I wasn't satisfied with a necklace just made of tiger's eye, so I poked around in the bead boxes of my (newly organized- yay me!) work table and tried and rejected a lot of ideas until I found the yellow jade. "Ooooh," I thought, "this looks great!"

I also decided against a lot of extra embellishments, so the nuggets and jade have bead caps but the rest of the necklace is just tiger's eye beads. This one is strung on beading wire, not knotted.

I hope you like it, too!

(click to enlarge)

I've added a lot of beading and jewelry blogs to my "follow" list - I don't know if you can see that I'm following you on your widgets, since I added them manually via the blogger dashboard (it's my old-fashioned, non-Blogger-layouts, hand coded html template's fault but I like what I have and so there).

I try to comment on other blogs I follow as often as I can, because I believe this should be a conversation, not just each of us shouting into cyberspace and wondering if anyone is listening.

Ever wonder about that? I added Site-Meter to my blogs, just so I could see if anyone but the Googlebots were ever checking in. This blog has gone from one or two real visitors a week, to a pretty good daily visit rate of real people. Thank you so much for stopping by, it means the world to me!

Now, for a really random thought:

Do you like pool - you know, 8-ball, billiards? How about precocious toddlers playing grown up games? Check out my other blog, there's a video clip of a toddler who is a pool playing prodigy embedded there today.

And now a word from our sponsor:

Dawno

Buy Handmade

With Spring in Mind

We've had cloudy, rainy days for a while, but it's not been too cold and the sun is starting to come out more each day - it's pretty sunny right now. The tree out back thinks it's spring and has started putting out some blooms.

I've started to think about spring as well, and that's what inspired this knotted necklace. I'm using a rose quartz donut, rose quartz oblong nuggets and small round beads, jade beads, Swarovski bicone crystals and glass seed beads. The tassel is made with diamond cut sterling silver curb chain, jade leaves, Swarovski crystals with sterling ball end head pins and a little rose quartz flower.

Here's how it looks draped - it hangs at about the collarbone level on me. I still have some small tweaks to do, specifically, a couple of the jumprings on the tassel need to be closed up a bit.