Spring Is in the Air...Somewhere! (Not Here.)

And that idea inspired me to dig into my new Happy Mango Beads stash! Plus feeling lots better after being laid low by a mystery bug. Getting back to the gym has helped with muscle pain and fatigue--gotta love endorphins!

I put this bracelet together with my new technique, using Indonesian lampwork discs from Happy Mango in olive-lime, lilac and vanilla. I accented those with little charoite roundels from Lima Beads, glass seed beads in lime, and a bunch of little copper bowls (a/k/a upside down copper beadcaps). White greek leather from Magpie Gemstones completes the bracelet, fastening to a hand-forged toggle bar.

I was totally beside myself with dopey glee when I created a flat headpin the other day--It was a spontaneous thought, figured it wouldn't work. "Gee, I wonder if I could make my own flat headpins from my ball headpins?" So I put a ball headpin tail down in the vice, tightened it up, and tap-tap-tapped on it until it was flat. They look like chubby little nails. Love them!!!

I just love the swirls in the ivory and lilac beads:

"Spring Around the Corner and Then Way Down the Road" Bracelet

I'm getting foolish collecting more lampwork discs from various Etsy sellers. I can't stay away from Outwest and Alisha White's shops! I also loaded up on some spacers from TheSpacerQueen that I thought would coordinate with my discs. I think those spacers will be perfect little buttons for pieces like this. She has oodles of colors!!!

Summers Studio Pendant No. 2

This pendant started out as a bracelet. I was going to make a triple stranded bracelet with these wonderful minty porcelain beads by Macarroll, with teal quartz and amethyst glass. I started out with the main strand (minus the pendant focal), and a strand of amethyst glass tile beads with silver heishi, and another strand with tiny antiqued silver rounds and green aventurine pebbles. When I looked at it lying there on my glass top Japanese-style work bench, however, I thought to myself, "That really ought to be a necklace." And then I remembered my one remaining Summers Studio lentil bead, and ran (seriously, I did) and got it. I thought it looked decidedly fabulous with the other beads, so I started trying to figure out how to work it in. I ended up omitting the third strand with the aventurine pebbles, and just went with the amethyst glass tile beads. I threw in a few lilac pearls for variety, and a couple faceted glass beads in an ultra pale lilac (which I bought at the bead store a couple years ago thinking, under the fluorescent lights, that they were blue green).



I spent what seemed like HOURS trying to decide how to finish the ends of the beaded portions (so hard to make it look NICE and also be durable), and settled on wire guards and crimps/crimp covers. I didn't like the way it looked though--wire guards are not very pretty--so I covered the wire guards with some gorgeous pewter ring beads I got from Happy Mango Beads -- they slid right over them. But then the rings were wanting to slide up the chain (seriously cool stuff from Ornamentea), so I had to add the little pearls (on my hand-forged sterling ball head pins) to keep them from moving. Phew.  This took me all weekend to figure out. And some of it had already been sitting there for a couple weeks already -- some green and purple stuff I had big, vague plans for.

I rather like it. Those silver plated heishi from Happy Mango are so rustic (I think they're silver over copper), they lend an earthy, funky feel to stuff that keeps it from being too formal looking. It almost has an industrial flavor. Those Kenyans. Nothing like Kenyan heishi. (Sounds like a matter for the DEA.)

Getting it Out of My System

Apparently I'm harboring some purple in my psyche that needs exorcising. I had this laid out alongside my Easter blossoms necklace and finally put it together the other night. Found these big pietersite barrels at a bead show last year, and loved the colors so much i bought them on impulse. There was so much lilac in this strand, and some of the beads (not the ones I used here) had broad bands of what looks exactly like tiger eye in them. I combined them here with lilac stone, tiger eye, Czech druk beads and freshwater pearls, and of course more of my bead caps (wish I had a metal punch that punched out flower shapes or something. I'm betting Harbor Freight doesn't have anything like that.)



I'm hoping that I'm also harboring lots and lots of blue that is going to be exorcised soon, because I have lots and lots of blue beads now. And a lampworker named Karen Hardy contacted me, asking me where I got my bonefish pendant, and as a thank you for pointing her to Happy Mango Beads she's sending me some of her beads. Blue beads! It's fate I tell you.

Signs of Spring

I was determined this weekend to use some more of Kelley Wenzel's beads. I had bought some of her "raku egg" beads earlier this year, and had been incubating ideas in my head. I wanted to draw out the lilac in them, so that was my starting point. It actually came together rather quickly, for a change. One of the gratifying things about Kelley's beads is you don't have to work very hard to make them look spectacular in a piece of jewelry! Less is more, and keeping it simple is best so they can really have the spotlight.



I love the colors in these beads--lots of soft amber, a little pale green, and surprising swirls of lilac. The larger bead was actually among the set that Kelley initially surprised me with, and I was thrilled to see how perfectly it complemented the raku beads. The little egg beads are mostly transparent, with the swirls of color in them, and the larger bead is opaque. It reminds me of Jupiter in its Easter bonnet. They are perfect together. I combined them with some simple Czech druk rounds in lilac, a couple of rustic Chinese jade rounds (I felt it needed a little bit of matte finish in there somewhere to turn down the frou-frou factor a notch), and a couple lilac pearls just for fun. I had done the brass spirals several months ago, without any idea what I would do with them, and I liked how they echoed the shape of the beads. The bead caps are my own.



The egg beads are, as their name implies, egg shaped, and the holes are nearer the "top" of each egg, so that if strung, there would be a "dancing" effect, like top drilled pearls. When I wired them onto the bead caps, it created this (in my opinion) utterly charming crocus effect. They look to me like crocus just starting to open. Perfect for an Easter necklace!



I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I think it's my new favorite thing I ever did. Thanks for making it easy, Kelley! Can't wait to do more!

P.S. I think I finally have some inspiration for one of Leann Weih's (Summers Studio) blue-green lentil focals that might almost be worthy of it. Hope to do that tomorrow, along with a little more PURPLE!

The Painted Desert

Burning red rocks, incandescent tangerine sunsets, delicate coral sunrises, and cool lilac shadows. I love the desert! I think I was a lizard in a former life. I love lizards too. Someday I would like to live in the desert. Or rather near a desert in a town with good infrastructure. In fact I could live near the desert RIGHT NOW. This set below was inspired by the colors of the painted desert. It includes brecciated jasper, yellow jasper (in the bracelet--at least I think that's what that is), garnet, carnelian, moukaite (LOVING that stone), golden jade, Czech pressed glass and table cut glass, a little bit of Indonesian glass and lots of rich, warm brass. The necklace includes removable hand forged extender chain so it can be worn anywhere from 17" (or shorter, actually) to 24". Pewter cross with brass overlay by Happy Mango Beads.

For your alabaster, or ebony, as the case may be, swanlike neck:





For your graceful ballerina wrist:



For your fairylike translucent earlobes:



Please note the bracelet is asymmetrical. I'm working up to an asymmetrical necklace. And a button (I swear it, Erin, really).