Mid-Week Mutterings - Peach Moonstone Necklace Lanyard

Here's another "Baroness" necklace lanyard - because I don't have the clasps on yet, I'm showing just the front. I used peach moonstone rounds, pale mauve Swarovski pearls, small disk shaped shells that vary from light peach to ivory to pale mauve shades and 4mm CRYSTALLIZED™ Swarovski Elements bicones in a pale pink with tiny gold plated TierraCast™ petaled beadcaps. Those beadcaps are a real workhorse in my jewelry designs - I try to keep a couple hundred in the stash at all times.

I've done a lot of pieces that explore various design types, but this romantic, old-fashioned look is always my favorite and I keep going back to it.

My company has started an internal classifieds on our company intranet and I'm thinking about putting up an ad about my jewelry lanyards. It's free, so that's a huge plus! I'm pretty much decided to do it, just really thinking about how I want to word my ad. They allow pictures, too.

Hope all is well, wherever you are. See you tomorrow!

Mid-Week Mutterings

This is going to be really brief - I'm very tired this evening. Thought I'd share a new necklace I made over the weekend. It has faceted carnelian rounds, gold filled beads, CRYSTALLIZED™ Swarovski Elements in topaz helix and red magma bicones, and orange-gold freshwater pearls:

The beads are not graduated in size, that's just the angle of the picture making it seem so. I really like this color combination, it's going to look very nice with dark brown or even as a contrast with other winter colors like dark teal, navy blue or purple.

Got a nifty little package of items from Rings & Things today - will take some pictures and share more soon.

Until tomorrow -

Mid-Week Mutterings - Onyx Lanyard and Bracelet

Yesterday morning I got up pretty early and was ready for work with about an hour to spare before I had to get in the car. I was sitting in my workroom checking emails and looking at Facebook and the Bali silver beads I had used the night before were still out on the table. Looking at them , it occurred to me that I could make sort of a 'negative' to the pearl lanyards from yesterday. So, I got out my box of onyx beads and made a lanyard and a bracelet before work.

The onyx came from my Rings & Things bead tour purchase (oval, rondelle & round are listed online), the silver Bali-style bead caps, sterling beads, and Jet Swarovski 6mm bicone (on sale until Thursday at 9am Pacific, for 21% off) on the bracelet are from Artbeads. The Bali silver beads on the lanyard are from a local store, Beads after Beads.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, my colleague ended up buying the lanyard with the larger pearls, even though it was more expensive.

Tuesday Tidbit - Trying to Keep the Cost Down

A colleague of mine asked me if I might make a lanyard for her using pearls, and showing me her bracelet of pearls with Bali-style silver beads, said, "in this style". She was hoping I could keep it under a certain price as well. The final constraint is the length, as she wanted it to be 32" long. I knew that with the pearls I already had I wouldn't be able to come close enough, especially with silver Bali beads.

I managed to find a great deal on freshwater pearls on sale the other day at JewelrySupply.com, so I bought several 16" strands. I already had some Bali-style beads I bought at the Rings & Things bead show that, if I wasn't too generous with them, would keep it pretty close in price. Here's what I came up with (click to enlarge):

(shown doubled to feature badge clasp)

I also had some large, irregular freshwater cultured pearls that I thought I'd string and see how they looked. I've pretty much decided that I'm going to re-do it and take out the bead caps I've used to set off some groups of three pearls (they're about mid-way up on the first picture and close to the clasp on the second one), I'm not happy with how that looks. But otherwise, I like it. Unfortunately this one prices out to $20 above what my friend wanted to spend. (Update - yet, it's the one she purchased!)

(shown doubled to feature badge clasp)

I really like making necklace lanyards with pearls, I've made several. People think they're beautiful, but the price ends up being too high for everyone who's admired them so far, though.

Here's one I made that's been at every show I've done and was on Etsy for a while. It's had a lot of admirers, but no buyer. It's a long one, 32", with gold filled beads and beautiful malachite and some very nice freshwater cultured pearls. (In case you're curious, I'm asking $85 for it).

That's all for today, thanks for stopping by!

PS - here are the necklaces posted above that are on sale at Artfire:

Dawno

Sell Handmade

Tuesday Tidbits - More Lanyards in Fall Fashion Nomad, Crème Brûlée and Iron + Black

Image from The Graphics Fairy

I came this <----> close to calling today's post Tuesday Tid- "Bats" but spared you the agony...

Well, I thought I'd finished two lanyards tonight, but it turns out one of them has a major mistake about halfway through the strand, and will have to be redone. See if you can find it - I didn't see it until I went up to take the photographs. I have been trying to watch some shows on Hulu while beading, guess that's too distracting.

The top lanyard is jet black Czech glass with silver plate spacers and sterling beads. The lower one is dalmatian jasper, a stone that I'm quite fond of, and a few Czech Druk beads in jet black. Here's a solo shot of that lanyard.

Turns out that the colors in this stone are pretty close to the fall fashion colors of nomad, crème brûlée and iron. I had originally thought to pair it with snowflake obsidian, but that stone has pure white markings and, as you can see, the dalmatian jasper is gray/beige with black. I couldn't really tell when I made the order online.

I ended up pairing the snowflake obsidian with white howlite, and they worked quite well together. I'll be doing a few more pieces in that combo before long, so I'll be able to show you what I mean.

That's it for tonight, busy day at work tomorrow, need to get a good night's rest!

Monday Miscellany - New Pieces Featuring the Pantone Fall '09 Fashion Colors

Over the course of my 4 day weekend, I've been trying out some new color combinations based on the Pantone Fall Fashion report (you can download their .pdf file at that location). It's weird, now that I'm aware of this palette, I'm noticing the color combinations in various places. For example, tonight we watched our TiVo'd episode of Dollhouse and Eliza Dushku was costumed in an outfit with a bright olive sweater and a rose-pink tank under it. "That's Warm Olive and Rapture Rose," I thought.

Here are the Fall colors:

And here's the first example I'm working on, a necklace with the idea of Warm Olive represented by using CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements Olivine* (Light Olivine and Lime are recommended) 6mm bicones, and Burnt Sienna, represented by CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements 4mm Indian Red bicones, which is the Swarovski color suggested in Margie Deeb's Color Report for Bead and Jewelry Designers, plus some large Czech glass baroque pearls in a satiny light olive, and Antique Brass Swarovski pearls.

*all links are to the actual supplier sites or store sites from which these beads were purchased.

Here's another inspired by Iron using hematite rice beads, gunmetal bead caps, CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements 6mm Black Diamond Helix and Majolica Blue hinted at with Swarovski Tatitan look 8mm glass pearls, CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements Capri 4mm bicones.

And here's the last one for today, faceted semi-precious amethyst rondelles for Purple Heart, CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements 6mm Helix in Topaz for Honey Gold (also the recommendation by Margie Deeb for this color) and sort of mid-way between American Beauty (Margie Deeb suggests Siam) and Rapture Rose represented by CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements 6mm Padparadscha bicones.(Yes, that's my pale, wrinkly wrist - it's hard to get a good picture of a memory wire bracelet lying flat. The colors are a bit richer than this picture is showing, as well)

It's back to work tomorrow, but I'll still have a Tuesday Tidbit for you, so I hope you'll be back!

Tuesday Tidbit - Aventurine Leaf Necklace

Last evening I dropped my Bead Trends March 2010 piece into the FedEx pickup box for overnight delivery. I didn't mean to put it off to the last minute, but I somehow let things slip last week and had to scramble today so it would be there in time. The April 2010 Bead Trends submission deadline and the Stringing challenge are all coming up in just a couple weeks, so I need to plan ahead better for them. To say nothing of having just over a month left to finish preparations for LosCon in LA next month.

Well, rather than dwelling on my little failings and recent foibles, let's move on to something positive! As the seemingly never ending chore of organizing my workspace continues, I occasionally stop cleaning or sorting or organizing and make something with the beads I've uncovered. Case in point, this aventurine necklace.

I pulled out a box full of beads left over from an earlier project and rather than sort through them as I was planning on, I got an idea. I grabbed this carved leaf I bought from Etsy seller Beadaholique, which I had actually managed to put in the right place to find easily (a box labeled "green stone"), and strung it with some carved floral aventurine beads from Baubles and Beads in Berkeley (say that three times fast!). Then, from the box I picked out the nearly white pale, and lovely celadon green, aventurine rounds to string into a necklace.

Normally I use metal caps and spacers in my work. This time I liked the simplicity of using just the stones.

Although I think I'd typically put this aside for Spring, the idea of a falling leaf (which I think the pendant looks like) green or not, makes me think of Autumn. Besides, here in California a lot of the trees stay green all year round, and not just the typical evergreens. I've got a couple Fall outfits I think I'll try this with and see how it looks.

See you tomorrow for some mutterings about another "last minute idea for something to wear to work" jewelry creation.