Monday Miscellany - Gunmetal and Jasper Three Strand Necklace

Hope you're all planning on Tweeting Your Studio today - information about the contest is on my Thursday blog post of last week. Great prizes for three winners have been contributed from The Beadin' Path and me.

Over the weekend we had another warm spell and I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked. I did, however, start the necklace below.

I believe the stone is leopard skin jasper, a somewhat twisty, large rectangle bead, some long, thin rectangular tube beads, gunmetal bead spacers and Crystal Volcano CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements from Artbeads. The gunmetal mesh tube chain came from Michael's.

It's still kind of calling out for something else. Not sure what yet. I kind of have an idea about creating a connection between the two chains, but not sure how I'll accomplish that.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the entries in tomorrow's contest! Hope you will enter!

Mid-Week Mutterings - Romance Trio Necklace

Before I get to the title piece, I have to point you to Wendy Gibson's Craft Dinner post. She has created a wonderful jewelry set from a selection of vintage Lucite from The Beadin' Path that is amazing and wonderful! The pendant and bracelet feature lemon moonglow Lucite buttons used in a delightfully creative way.

Ok, on to today's necklace work in progress. When I first started beading I made some pieces with rose quartz, silver beads and matte crystal beads. 3 or 4 years later the silver has really tarnished and the matte crystal beads have a gray look to them from the beading wire I used. I don't remember what brand, but it tarnished the insides of the beads, I guess.

I unstrung them and decided to re-use the quartz (carved knots and small rounds), some rhodonite beads and light rose matte glass beads with the Romance Trios in a three-strand necklace. I've added some light pink glass leaves on pinch bails and length-wise drilled glass tulip beads, too.

It's still a work in progress - more dangles to add later. Getting too late to finish tonight for the publication time of this post at 6 am tomorrow, plus I need to get my beauty sleep!

Friday Pick - The Beadin' Path Vintage Lucite Blogger Package

The other day I received a message from the lovely Heather DeSimone of The Beadin' Path asking me if I would like to "play" with some vintage Lucite beads and blog about them. Not only was I honored to be asked, but thrilled by the opportunity!

Yesterday, when I got home from work, there was a package waiting for me with a fabulous selection of Lucite beads in blues, grays, turquoise, and sea greens. I immediately had an idea for a three strand necklace using the sea greens and light gray ones.

Now, this is still an unfinished work in progress - I'll be fiddling with the design more over the weekend, plus working with the other sets, but here's the first pass.

I'm kind of thinking I'd rather have the inside strand on the outside, so I've ordered more of the light gray to make the strand long enough (plus a couple other strands that caught my eye).

So the "picks" from The Beadin' Path for the necklace above are

Vintage Lucite Muted Grey Moonglow Side Drilled Round Buttons 12mm (20 pc)
Vintage Lucite Matte Atlantic Green Blue Marbled 8mm Rounds (30pc)
Vintage Lucite Light Matte Marbled Atlantic Blue Oval 10x18mm (12 pc)
Swarovski Article 5301 4mm Bicone Beads Montana (72pc/pkg) (I'm not sure the color I used is Montana, it might be Caribbean or a Sapphire...)

The rest of the necklace materials came from my stash: silver Bali bead caps, 3mm silver round beads, 4mm silver mini-bead caps, your choice 49 strand beading wire - I used a rather thick gauge .61mm, and large link rolo chain - Beadalon silver plated Quick-Links in the picture above, but any silver chain would probably work fine.

Check back for more vintage Lucite design ideas with the Beadin' Path goodies this weekend!

Tuesday Tidbits - Mixing Czech Glass and Semi-precious Stone

Ever wish you had the kind of financing that let you buy the highest quality semi-precious or precious stones in any quantity? Me, too. And unless I win a really big lotto jackpot, I don't think it's going to ever be a reality. But, I do think that sometimes a judicious mix of stones plus matching Czech glass beads works very well. You can have a lush look at a fraction of the price.

Here's a piece I started on what seems like ages ago, when I bought a spool of beautiful gunmetal chain from Rings & Things (scroll down to read about the garnet piece, it's in the second half of the post). I'd started out working on making components with garnet on black SoftFlex, crimping and adding them to the chain.

When I finished fiddling around with the garnet pieces, I decided to make it a 3-strand necklace but didn't have enough variety of actual garnet. So I got out the garnet-colored Czech faceted glass beads and went to town. All the smooth, round beads are garnets, the faceted ones are Czech glass. Here's what I thought was the finished piece:

But something bothered me about the composition. I decided to fiddle with it this weekend. Shorten here, move there - I think it's starting to look better...

...but still not happy. The garnets at the top of the outer chain - they've gotta go. I have a number of online friends and acquaintances who are writers and they all say of first drafts "sometimes you have to kill your darlings" - meaning that during editing, things will get cut out of the final draft. This apparently is true of making jewelry. I fiddled quite a bit on those garnet bits, but they aren't going to work out. Must be strong and say "bye-bye".

Where is my chain? Dug around in the still not completely unpacked BayCon bin and found it. Have hooked the tail end to the jumpring, the rest is still on the spool until I get the spacing right - links are not open on this chain, measure twice, cut once. And, to let you know that all of this is not without it's little foibles, one of the two jump rings, used to attach the 3 strands to the back piece of the necklace, went "sproing" and has completely disappeared *and* I can't find anymore just like it. Took one I was using for the clasp to replace. Will have to re-work clasp now.

Hooking on a link made from garnet glass bead and two TierraCast bead caps that match the one in the pendant. That part I'm connecting the bead to is the only part of the original third chain that will be re-used.

Link on left is in, positioned where I want, excess chain clipped off. Now for the other side.

Ok, done. Well, except for the clasp. I have to do that part, but I won't bore you with the details. New "final" piece. Will sleep on it, stare at it again later. Decide if it's really done. Who knows, could be a version 4 coming up...

Monday Miscellany - The Day Job, New Necklace

Today through Wednesday I'll be attending a conference in San Francisco, related to the day job, so I won't have much time to make anything or share much here. Since it's relatively close to home, I won't be staying at the conference hotel and that means getting up early each morning to get ready and drive up to the city. Because I'm not a morning person, it'll be a challenge. I'll still try to get something posted, but apologies in advance if it's not up to my usual output.

I've been working for a few days on a triple strand necklace with rhodonite beads and pendant. I had to re-work it several times (thank goodness for Scrimps!) but I'm pretty happy with the final piece.

(click to enlarge for detail)

At first I didn't have the spacer bars in it, but I didn't like the way the lower strand hung with the heavy pendant so I dug out the 3-hole spacer bars and re-strung the whole thing. Then I had to play around with the lengths of each segment to get the right curve in it.

The thing about this work that is quite different (for me) is that it's almost entirely rhodonite stone - no silver spacers or beads which I would normally add. I just wanted the colors, textures and shapes of the stones to be the focus.

Here's the clasp - I've had this for quite some time waiting on just the right piece for it.

Hope you took some time to read the Sunday Wanderings post - don't miss them every week, add yourself to the followers list or subscribe via RSS.