Mad for Toggles

I'm rediscovering my lentil and tablet beads with this front-closure toggle design. It's sort of an easy bail to make! My bail making skills are very rudimentary, and the toggle bar adds interest to the focal.

Toast and Sagebrush Pendant

I made this one with one of my toasty textured tablets by Mary Ann Carroll--it's a very warm looking bead, with its warm toast colors, and its pebbled texture makes me feel warm (makes me think of ostrich hide, and ostriches come from Africa, and Africa is warm...) It also has some sage green mixed in--green like sagebrush, and sagebrush grows in desert climates, which are warm...(Yes, there is a theme here; we got new snow today on the ski hill, so I am thinking of warm places. I do that a lot. All year round in fact.)

Then I did another similar pendant. I really like to squeeze all I can out of a design.

After I finished the pendant below, I thought I should name it, and by golly if it didn't remind me a lot of Monet's "Water Lilies." It was the dollops of sky blue on the dark green background that made me think of lily pads. I went to look at the painting online, and the name seemed apt. I had even gotten some lilac in there too (there's a little spot of violet at the top of the focal).

Water Lilies

The large lentil focal and the bigger roundel are by Karen Hardy. Unfortunately her Etsy shop is empty. :-( The smaller roundel is by BeingBeads (I was thrilled how well they all went together!) The round beads include moss agate, teal-dyed quartz, and Czech glass in lilac. Copper plated pewter charm and freshwater pearls hang from the focal. Monet wasn't Irish, but it works for me. It's all "wet" colors, and Ireland is wet. So one dry pendant and one wet pendant. I try to be inclusive because I'm all about diversity.

Well, I suppose I should go to bed. There's nothing else to do.

Liquid Sunshine

Otherwise known as rain here in the northwest United States.

This bracelet took its inspiration from the sun totem bead in the center (from Happy Mango).



I was dying to use some of the sesame jasper buttons I found locally--I was surprised they had so much pale blue-green in them. I thought they would look cool with one of the pewter totem beads I got from Happy Mango, which are apparently inspired by northwest Native American totems. It would have made more sense to use the orca one, or a salmon one (what with the watery blue greens and grays I wanted to use), but I really wanted to use a round one, which meant the sun one. But wait! This made sense. Northwest, sun, gray, vague blue-green...that IS sun in the northwest!! Very, very diffused sunshine. Like diffused by thick layers of clouds. So, it's like a joke. (Ironically the sun is shining here and it's 46 degrees. Might have to leave the house.)