Kelley's Bead No. 1

Today I finished my first piece using one of the fabulous beads Kelley Wenzel of Kelley's Bead Studio sent me. Her bead is a plump egg shape, mostly clear with a graceful swirl of diaphanous sandy ribbons inside. The "ribbons" inside Kelley's bead reminded me of the web-like pattern of sand-colored veining in aqua terra jasper, and I thought her glassy clear bead would be a nice contrast to the opaque and semi-matte jasper.



I thought an asymmetrical necklace would work best, as I thought the visual weight of the lampwork bead could carry one whole side of the necklace by itself, and giving it its own space would make the most of it.



I used the last of my most recent batch of copper bead caps, more aqua terra jasper in big 12mm rounds, a little amazonite roundel on the lampwork side to bring the sea green into that side, and four strands of Ornamentea's fabulous "borneo" rolo chain in copper. The little fluorite round was mostly added as a spacer to get it to the length I wanted, but I think it looks nice. Turned out to be about 17 and 1/2" inches. The length is a bit of a challenge, because you have to remove even numbers of links when using double strands of the rolo chain, as the links alternate orientation.



I don't know which of Kelley's beads I will use next. I'm really drawn to the one (see two posts ago) with the swirls of mauve, lavender and green on a sand background. I'm ALL about sand right now. Probably because it's winter and I despise winter. Winter is seven months long in Montana. Summer is one month long. Spring and fall are just minor variations on winter. I live in Montana for complex psychological reasons I am not even going to begin to try to unravel (i.e., my Mommy lives here).

OK, time to make more bead caps. I am SO not in shape for that kind of thing right now.