Monday Miscellany - Beadin' Path "Sea Glass" Necklaces

Just a very quick post today - busy weekend trying to get organized for LosCon and also birthday shopping with my daughter.

I've made four new necklaces with the sea-glass style glass beads from The Beadin' Path that I'm really fond of. I've used CRYSTALLIZED™ Swarovski Elements and semi-precious gemstones in three of them and Bali sterling in the fourth. The gemstones are lemon chrysoprase, howlite, and snowflake obsidian. The blue and bali silver necklace has a matching bracelet (bottom right) and earrings (not shown). I wish I had red glass to make one more since I think it would be very nice with Christmas outfits, as will the green. I'm hoping I'll have time to make matching earrings and bracelets for the other three, too.

Hope you have a pleasant Monday and will be back tomorrow!

Thursday Feature is on Hiatus This Week

No review or interview this week - will have a good one for you soon, though! Thought I'd share a necklace I made using (I think - things are a bit disorganized still and I'm not quite sure) off white matte sea glass style disk beads from The Beadin' Path and some aqua glass spacer disks and Czech pressed glass bicones with tiny silver plated lead-free pewter beehive bead caps.

I wanted to make something in a bit bolder and not quite so formal look. I think this hit the mark. I'm also thinking that I want to do something in colors more suited for fall and winter (although I think this would look great against grey or black as an accent).

Fortunately for me, there are disks in great fall colors, including a matte jet black, root beer, hyacinth and fire opal. I'd love to do something with a dark purple but I'm not sure which disk color to use in contrast since purple isn't one of the colors available. When I figure it out, I'll share.

This and (I hope) a lot more of my work is finally going to make it onto my Art Fire shop this weekend. I've taken tomorrow and Monday off and plan to do a lot of photography. The other thing I'll be doing is getting more of my lanyards posted to Etsy. Haven't made a sale in either store in ages, guess I'll need to get a bit more assertive in my marketing. It's a challenge for me as I have a full time job and can't spend the time I'd like getting the word out or doing some of the things I'd do locally (visit boutiques and maybe see if company stores would like to carry them - seems like everyone around here wears a badge) if I could.

Well, I'm not too worked up over it. I do ok at conventions, so I'll just have to try and get into more of them. Hoping next year is a better year for that.

See you tomorrow for a rather different Friday Pick - October is nearly here and October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so I'll be sharing the Rings & Things picks for awareness jewelry. Hope to see you then.

Friday Pick Still on Hiatus, So Today I'll Talk About My New Necklace

Can September only be 10 days away? While I know intellectually the actual last day of summer/first day of fall is mid-September, it still seems in my heart that summer is over when I flip the calendar page away from August. I will have to get the most out of these days while I can.

I love having new jewelry! This set is one of my favorites. Well, they're all favorites, this is just the latest one. The big disks are bold in size, but the subtle color doesn't overwhelm me. I know some people thrive on it, I'm just not one of them. I do think I should make more big, bold pieces - it's just another hurdle out of my cushie comfort zone that I have to make.

It's made from The Beadin' Path's light azore 'sea glass' disk beads, Beadalon silver plated square knot links (see G and K - anyone know of an online-source? I want MORE!) and 3-cut round, 6mm window cut Czech glass beads - I sorted them out from a pile of Blue Moon assorted glass packages from Michael's, but you can buy them from Beadweavers (first hit on Google as I went looking for them) and I'm sure other suppliers as well.

I had finished the necklace Monday night and picked out an entire outfit to wear to go with it. (You don't ever do that, now, do you?) Tuesday morning I decided that I needed earrings and a bracelet to go with it. So I went into my stash and found these cool square knot links I thought would be perfect for putting between the window cut glass beads. Whipped up the bracelet in about 15 minutes. The earrings took about 5. I would love to make a lot more square knot bracelets, but I'm out of the links!

All vintage images on this page are courtesy of The Graphics Fairy

I did take two of the few remaining knot links to make another pair of earrings with round sea-glass beads and paired them with a small pale blue bicone, which under my Ott lamp looked like a perfect match. Took them upstairs to photograph and put on my Art Fire shop (that one listing a day goal and all). Oops - they're a very pale lavender in the (fast fading) sunlight! I take them into the hall and turn on the light there, which is an incandescent bulb - they're a purple-pink (fuchsia?)! Take them into the kitchen under the fluorescent light, and they're lavender again.

Fortunately, I have some really lovely Czech glass in alexandrite, which changes color exactly the same way. I swapped out the blue bicone for some spiral faceted ovals, ran upstairs to get the last glimmers of sunlight (and used my high ISO setting), so the picture on Art Fire right now isn't the best - I'll re-do tomorrow. I also took pictures under the other light to show the color changes.

Here's the pair under the Ott light

and incandescent light

You can check Dawno's Art Fire shop for the natural sunlight picture now, but I'd wait a couple days for the better ones to show up. I haven't had time to photograph and post new listings during the last few evenings before the light disappeared, so I'll have to catch up again. Plus, my daughter is coming up tonight to stay the weekend, so I'll be short of time the next few days as well (and her bedroom is my photography studio, too).

Have a beautiful Friday and enjoy your weekend! Hope you'll visit if you can, especially on Sunday for my weekly wanderings - I have some really great links to share that you won't want to miss - contest deadlines, gorgeous creations and a couple new (to me) blogs to share.

Tuesday Tidbits - The Inner Toddler's Tantrum

My inner toddler is stamping its little footsies and shouting "Need more! Need more NOW!"

I love this design for a necklace, but I only got 5 of these gorgeous Sea Glass style beads from The Beadin' Path August bead club beads. I'm not sure what color they are, probably the one that's out of stock and on my wish list, but not one of the other colors I chose for the order I just sent. Which is ok, too - I have more ideas for this gorgeous disc shape!

But that's not the only tidbit today - A while back, Lisa at A Bead A Day featured a Swarovski flower pendant bead. In the comments I said

"I like both ideas but when I saw it I thought "what if you use large jump-rings and hook lots of flowers in lots of colors through the links in a large gauge rollo chain for a "daisy explosion" bracelet....

Oh dang, now I have to go out and buy them so I can make it! :-)"

And so I did -

It's not on a rollo chain, I'm making the chain with silver tone base metal jump rings from Shipwreck Beads as I go - it's about 80% done. I think it'll look adorable on the wrist when it's done.

The flower pendants are from Dreamtime Creations, where I found I could order just a few of each color. I ordered three of each available color except crystal, got crystal AB instead.

I was a little disappointed in the packaging - one of the Fuchsia flowers looked cracked and sure enough, once it was hanging from the jump ring (which I was extremely careful placing and closing so as not to stress the beads) it broke off at the hole. They used a padded envelope but no additional paper or bubble wrap around the beads which were packed 3 to a small plastic bag.

The package itself had been handled roughly by UPS - it was gray with dirt, had some tears and holes, and even looked like someone had stepped on it...oh well. I don't usually complain about UPS, but this time they really blew it.

I've just put in an order at ConsumerCrafts.com for more flower pendants and some flower beads to make a necklace (not as many colors, though) because of a very kind blogger offer they provided. I was pleased with the pricing and selection, although I haven't done a thorough comparison of that versus other online stores. I should be posting more about the necklace and the experience, next week.