Took a Tropical Turn Tonight with the Beadin' Path Design Partner Challenge

The Beadin' Path sent me some vintage Czech and German glass beads to feature in some Design Partner jewelry designs back in October.

I've really struggled with what to do with these - partly because of the colors and partly due to the shapes. Well, I finally figured out what to do with the yellow strand on the far left. I started with just re-stringing the beads this way and that. Then it occurred to me that I could pull out the hyacinth druk beads and some Lucite flowers I had played with this summer to mix in with them.

Necklace #1 uses each of the shapes on the strand, except for the larger oval one (I keep calling them 'pods'), and a orange Lucite flower. The bright orange beads I've added are modern hyacinth Czech druk beads.

(I think this is darling, if I say so myself.)

Necklace #2 uses the pods and some dark orange Lucite flowers with a larger yellow one. I put some yellow seed beads between the flowers and pods since they didn't hang well without them.

There were some problems making the second one. I couldn't find enough of the original yellow seed beads and at the end I had to use a different yellow bead. And of the eight orange flowers, seven were matte and the eighth was shiny - I put that one at the end. The large yellow flower looked brighter, and more like the yellow in the 'pod' beads, in the light I have in my beading room than the light I used to take the picture, too.

I'm quite happy with these, especially since the ideas didn't come easily! Now it's off to figuring out what to do with the others.

Hope to have more designs with the Beadin' Path beads soon.

FTC compliance disclosure, notice of material connections: All items in the previous post, specifically referenced as from The Beadin' Path, were provided as promotional gifts by for review or design partnership purposes.

Experiment with Steampunk and Vintage Style Embellishments on Retractable Ribbon Lanyard Badge Holders

I was trying to go to sleep last night and was thinking about the upcoming Potlatch SF Convention, and had a 'voila moment' about some badge holders ("C-line retractable adjustable neck lanyard" @ $3.54 retail each) I bought last year thinking I might be able to do something interesting with them, and never got around to it.

So, I'm experimenting with adding embellishments to those badge holders, which come with a retractable ribbon lanyard. I'm going to display these at Potlatch and get feedback, but I would only sell them if the buyer understood the caveats. These are prototypes, they need to be tested. Right now, I don't know how they'd hold up under different types of use - could be a bit delicate for anything but very occasional stress-free use - so, caveat emptor, no refunds, returns or guarantees.

The top one is the "steampunk" style idea using tiny watch parts and a tiny glass 'gem' from an old re-cycled costume jewelry brooch. I painted the retracting part with Classic Gold Liquid Leaf and glued on the parts using Aleen's Jewelry & Metal glue. I want to seal it with MagicGlos, but I still need either a sunny day (not having many right now) or get the right UV light bulb. I bought a flourescent black light blub, but it didn't seem to work on my test piece - might be the wrong wattage? Anyway, I will need to seal that one before it could be used.

The other two use brass filigree from Accessories Susan and some glass gems from the same re-cycled costume jewelry brooch. The one on the right has chain and a dangling Swarovski crystal and a bead cap on the ribbon retractor bead. The other one is just one filigree and two little glass gems. I used clear E6000 glue for those. I show an un-embellished badge holder with the ribbon (16" on a side) pulled out. There's a button on the back of the holder for releasing and retracting the ribbon.

I'll probably replace the silver jumpring that came on the holder with an antiqued gold one and maybe add a dangle...

I'd love to hear your impressions...

First Necklace (and post) of 2009

Couldn't get to sleep and decided to use some 'camouflage' stone I found on the local Michael's Bead Gallery display that caught my eye months ago along with some spacer beads of indeterminate metal - it's got an antiqued brass looking finish and I thought it went well with the dark greens and mottling of the stones.

It was actually the spacers that inspired the design - as I was wondering what I'd use them for (they were included in a strand of glass beads I bought in Fayetteville and I was after the glass beads, not the spacers) because they're rather rough and inelegant, I remembered that I had the camouflage stones and hadn't figured out what to do with them either.

I can't find a description on line of what camouflage stone is - looks like a type of jasper or agate (click for a larger image). The length of this necklace is 20".

Back in early December I posted about a lapis lazuli piece I was working on. I decided to change the design a bit from what I described and here it is nearly finished - just needs a clasp. It'll be around 27" when finished. I'm really happy with the final design, I was never quite happy with using the spiral coil beads I started it with. I think those will end up in a necklace with garnets sometime soon.

Basic Black Beads

In another one of those occurrences when I'm just poking around looking at various beads, I got the idea to use coin shaped 10mm black opaque Czech glass beads and some pinched oval black opaque Czech beads in a necklace - I'd gotten these beads from Michael's in Chicago when I was there back in the fall.

I used non-tarnish silver 22 gauge Artistic wire, silver plated pewter spacer beads and bead caps and some bright silver 10mm jump rings. For a focal point I used a silver and black rope circle and hung a black coin bead on a head pin to it with one of the 10mm jump rings. It's about 20".

Then I decided to keep working with the black and silver and made these three lanyards two are 30" the other is about 32" long.

That was last night. Today I worked on another necklace, 18" long, making tiny beaded links with 22 gauge non-tarnish silver Artistic Wire, square black glass Druk beads with antiqued silver bead caps. The pendant is a tablet cut black glass bead with dark green edges and tiny dangles made from sterling bead end head pins, sterling beads and sterling jump ring links. I put the dime beside it to show how small the links were.

I purchased the tablet cut bead at this fall's Art and Wine festival from Harland beads, the other materials (for this and the other necklace above, too) from Artbeads and Accessories Susan (tiny bead caps). The clasp is a Sterling Elegance deco style hook and eye from Michael's.

Inspired by Snow on Mars

Read today that NASA's Phoenix Mars lander detected snow in the atmosphere. I have a number of opaque white faceted glass beads in the bead mix I recently received, and I just felt inspired to make something snowy.

The chain is pretty short right now, about 7 1/2". I don't have nearly enough of the gold roundells to go all the way around in a full necklace length (18 - 20" is what I think will look best), so I'll probably finish up the chain with just the white druk and gold tone bead links.

Struck by a Particle of Inspiration

I've had this lovely ceramic disk sitting around for some time now. I knew I liked it (and I bought two of them) but I wasn't sure what I'd do with it. Finally got hit by a particle of inspiration or two. The chain on this was made entirely from jump rings. Hope to find time to get better pictures of it and load up on Beadfly and Flickr soon.

Gift of the Magpie

Several months ago I redeemed a Christmas gift certificate from two dear friends, MacAllister and Medievalist, for a Bead of the Month selection from any month. I think I got a "Big Magpie" certificate - although with the selection I received, it might have been "Mother Of All Magpies" - there were certainly a lot of wonderful beads in it.

Well, I've been staring at these beads since they came, trying to decide what I would do with them. I wanted the design to be extra special, since not only were the beads a gift, but the Bead of the Month club is one of Elise Matthesen's endeavors - and you know how much I love her work and appreciate her sense of color, design and whimsy.

Last night I was busy again with the organizing and arranging and *there* were *those* beads. And over *there* were these *other* beads (some favorites of mine that I bought down at Beadology in Huntington Beach back in February) - wait! They would work together really, really well, I thought. And here's what happened:

The necklace lanyard is 34" long. The Botmo beads are the three larger roundells in the center focal area and the larger tablet cut beads. In between are faceted glass rounds with a yellow/gold/olivine and opaque turquoise pattern and faceted small roundells in that same yellow/gold/olivine with faint turquoise swirls inside them separated with seed bead sized gold-plated beads. I love this one - I don't know if I'll be able to part with it!

Now I'm working on something with the aquamarine nuggets, round beads and pale watery-blue chips (glass?) to which I'm adding my own light aqua druk beads, sterling silver beads in 3 sizes and darker aqua glass seed beads. Should be able to post a picture of that tomorrow.

There are still a lot of Botmo beads left, so I'm sure I'll be mentioning them in future designs.

Thank you Mac, Medievalist and Elise!

Tonight's Work In Progress - Badge Lanyard Necklace in Teal and Aqua

This one will be about 32" when I'm done - using faceted glass in teal with teal lined glass seed beads and a larger aqua faceted bicone bead between two flat teal glass diamond beads with a bit of detail to the edges - hard to describe and not easy to see in the small photo. The thing about this one is that I got all the beads at different times and different places just because I liked the color or shape. It's another case of just "wandering" through my beads and seeing a possibility, playing around with them on the design board and having a voilà moment. That's pretty much how I do all my necklace lanyards.

That Voilà! Moment

Sat down with an older piece today that I had never been quite happy about. Unstrung it and put it on my bead design board and started playing around for about half an hour. I think I've finally figured out what I want to do!

I added some newer beads I love, and wish I had found more of, but I found them on the discount shelf at Michael's (where they've completely re-designed their beading area, in many ways it's much, much better now) and some antique gold tone matte seed beads, made from who knows what material, I think it's a coated glass. Those I found a few months ago, at a wonderful store called Global Beads, when I was doing a lot of antique gold tone pieces (see this one at Etsy for the bead) and felt that "voilà!" moment. The picture is a bit dark, took it with my phone camera.










Here's the bead I like so much - it's got a little milleflore type flower in it and a foil lining in the center.












This evening, while looking for a good price for some silver lever-back earring components, I also found a large supply of the bead I've been looking for - in quite a few colors, except for the color I want. Artbeads had them, called "flat hexagon" beads. If I ever find them in a pale pink, I'm buying a couple pounds of 'em.