Bead Show Loot

I went to the Bead Stampede today. As stampedes go, it was very orderly. And petite. Not so much a stampede, as maybe a gambol in the paddock. A small paddock. With just six or seven baby cows. But there was a gemstone seller who had some earthy looking stones that I was in the mood for--and most of the ones I liked were in the 50% off bin! Right on. Here's what I got:

Clockwise from top left, big prehnite nuggets, Botswana agate, Bronzite (I LOVE these rounded disc heishi), and more prehnite (all half price--uh, YEAH.)

From the outer strand working in: Dragons Blood Jasper, Red Picasso Jasper, Silver Leaf Jasper, turquoise, and Yellow Jasper.

From the outside strand in: Recycled glass, turquoise, Brecciated Jasper, and multicolor Rutilated Quartz.

And lastly some really interesting pendants: From top Crazy Lace Agate (I think), Dragons Blood Jasper, then I think more Crazy Lace Agate on the left and not sure about the one on the right, maybe Fossil Coral Agate? I've never seen it in black before. And at the bottom, more Dragons Blood Jasper. I've never seen rectangular pendants drilled like those top two, that's why I got them. Hopefully I can do something interesting with them within the next 10 years. Haha.

I have lots of beads at home but they were going stale. I needed fresh ones.

Earring Challenge Reveal 16 weeks 33-34/52

I'm jumping into the AJE Earring Challenge as a late-comer. I just finished these today!

Southwest Savory

I'm calling them Southwest Savory. The enameled keyholes are from Gardanne Beads--they have a lovely soft turquoise base color, liberally sprinkled with butternut and persimmon. Or as I like to think of it, cayenne and turmeric! I'm wanting Mexican food now! I paired them up with antiqued copper and stones in the colors from the enamel--turquoise ovals, tiny turquoise roundels, carnelian nuggets, and poppy jasper saucers . These are long, but lightweight.

Check out the rest of the participants by clicking below:

Baubles and Beads Design Team

I was recently invited to join the Baubles & Beads Design Team--if you haven't checked out the Baubles & Beads online store, you must! I especially like their selection of faux sea glass beads, vintage-style metal flower elements, glass domes, and floral collage sheets (they carry a lot of Nunn Design items, so their supplies present tons of creative possibilities!)

The design team completes design challenges using a surprise packet of items sent to the participants. Here is a little sneak peak of some of the items I received:

The reveal of the participants' designs will be September 18 on the Baubles & Beads blog--stay tuned!

New Stuff

I've been having fun with color and metal!

One of my favorite ways to bring color into my jewelry is with enamel. Anne of Gardanne Beads is my new favorite enamel artist!

I just love these little butterflies, and the color scheme was divine: soft lime and juicy berry. I didn't even have to think about what beads to use, it's like cheating!

I'm in love with these keyhole charms too. I keep gravitating to this green/yellow and berry color combination. These are more of a pale lemon yellow with berry:

I combined them with moukaite ovals from Lima Beads, handmade lampwork spacers in pale apple from The Spacer Bead Shop, and Czech glass (on the earwires) in pomegranate--that is my current favorite color of Czech glass bead!

These earrings below are in another color combo I can't get enough of--butternut and fuchsia! I made a bunch of these aspen-leaf-shaped etched copper components and paired them up with lampwork and gemstones. These lampwork beads are from my stash, made by a local lady, Pat Redinger, and the gemstones are pink quartz from Fine Gems. The etched damask patterns on the metal focals for all four pair of earrings below came from a digital file from Aesthetic Addiction.

I also did these, with lapis and green aventurine. The wonderful lapis sticks were a gift from Lori Anderson--she has sent me all kinds of fabulous beads!

These earrings were made with some gorgeous snakeskin stone roundels, from a bead swap with Alice Peterson. I just love the soft green and subtle patterning. The sticks are of shell, and I put little white pearls on the earwires.

These are in the same style, with new jade sticks, impression jasper roundels, and green aventurine nuggets on the earwires. This is the same pattern as above--it's a lovely damask, and I just use different parts of the pattern.

I have been wanting to try a kind of folded beadcap for a while. These below were my first experiments. The first pair is with Czech glass drops in transparent red, with an interesting, mottled golden finish. I just happened to have just purchased some Czech glass roundels from BobbiThisnThat, in the Same. Exact. Color. Go figure. It was fate! Or just one of the many, many upsides of compulsive bead shopping.

These are also Czech glass, in their "Picasso" style--I really love the colors in these beads! I THINK these beads, and the ones above, are old stash from one of my first purchases from Happy Mango Beads (if you are a fan of Czech glass, you MUST check out Happy Mango--they have a GINORMOUS selection of Czech glass right now. I just looked (dammit, why did I look...)) The etched glass seed beads on the earwires are "glass tile beads" from Fire Mountain Gems--I have tons of these in different colors and I just love them.

These are Crazy Lace Agate--I got them locally at Powderhorn Trading, and I couldn't resist all the purple in them! You don't see that much vivid purple in that stone very often. The wonderful Czech glass roundels on the earwires are also from BobbiThisnThat--they're an amethyst color with an awesome coppery finish.

This an old design of mine--I found the metal components all finished and ready to go in one of my boxes, and I thought well why the heck didn't I finish them? I decided to use some of my new gemstone ovals from Lima Beads--these are azurite malachite, and I've combined them with Czech glass in emerald. The greens and blues in the stones are quite vivid!

I just finally finished this necklace couple nights ago.

I got a strand of these fabulous fossilized coral agate rectangular beads from Happy Mango, and they never cease to inspire me. They range from deep ochre all the way to pearly gray and white (THEY HAVE MORE!!!). (They're way more impressive in person, by the way.)

I love the patterns in them, like fireworks or dandelions (look at them! LOOK at them). I've paired this one with every buttery golden/butterscotch/Grand Marnier bead in my stash--crazy lace agate, opaque butterscotch amber roundels (locally from Powderhorn Trading), golden jade, yellow jade, red creek jasper, bone (Happy Mango), golden lip shell, moukaite, and transparent amber ovals (from Fire Mountain Gems). I went monochrome crazy with the yellows! The dangling coil beads were based on a tutorial by Kharisma Sommers (Popnicute jewelry--you MUST see her work!! You will GASP.)

(Everything above is sold or otherwise spoken for, except for the fossil coral agate necklace, which I haven't listed yet).

I don't feel like doing anything at all today, and I'm trying to decide if I'm going to go with that. In spite of all the activity above, I'm kind of in a funk. And feeling funky. And not in a good way.

Two-Faced

That's how I like my pendants!

This side:

Verdigris Gypsy

That side:

(With amazonite, larimar, pearls, copper and leather)

This side:

Sunset Clouds

That side:

(With fire agate, amethyst, red aventurine and golden pearls--oh and a little drop of peach moonstone too)

This side:

Firefly

That side:

(With carnelian, amber, and jade)

This side:

Sunset Gypsy

That side:

(With amethyst, red aventurine, cherry quartz, carnelian, charoite and leather)

This one is reversible, but I don't think I took pictures of the other side--they look identical! You'll just have to take my word for it:

Red Creek

(With red creek jasper, green marble, amber glass, hessonite garnets and leather)

This little bracelet goes with the pendant above. It isn't reversible. Unless you count being able to wear it on either wrist:

Red Creek Part Deux

(With red creek jasper, lampwork glass, Czech glass leaf, and waxed linen. And copper (duh))

And with that, I bid you good night.

New Work

Considering how much time I've had off lately, I sure haven't brought much to completion. It seems I am always preparing...snipping, sanding, sawing, etching, coloring...It takes forever to get to the end product!

I did however finish a few things over the long holiday weekend. I finished this necklace yesterday--I sort of stumbled on a nifty way to make interesting caps for pendants (I just can't bear to stick a plain jump ring on a pendant, I have a compulsion to cover up that hole), and in my usual fashion I put these caps on every stone pendant in my stash. So now I have to start turning them into necklaces! This was the first:

Sold

The pendant is aqua terra jasper (also known as impression jasper), as are the big roundels on the middle strand (absolutely stunning roundel beads from Beads and Honey--fabulous shop and service). The sweet little cream colored beads in the top strand are encased khaki lampwork spacers by Kelley Wenzel (sadly for me currently on a bead hiatus--good thing I've been hoarding a bunch--SEE??? this is why we must hoard, because sometimes the beadmakers start taking pictures instead and THEN what will you do?), and the stick beads near the bottom of the photo are new jade from a local shop. Also featured are Indonesian glass beads from Happy Mango Beads in celadon (such a perfect match!) and oatmeal. The little copper heishi spacers are also from Happy Mango (they are a real staple of mine, I love how they add a little flash of metal, but are plain so don't interfere with the feel of the piece).

I've also been slowly working my way through my stash of enamel from Anne Gardanne. Over the holiday weekend, it was beadcaps! I really love the pointy little tulip caps. This is my favorite pair:

Regular Garden Party

I love the colors on these caps--lemon yellow, strawberry and grass green. So inspiring! I combined them with pink quartz briolettes (from FineGems--got some GREAT stones from them), Czech glass in antique rose (on the earwires), and little pale peach seed beads on creamy Irish waxed linen. Now I want to make about a hundred things in pink and yellow. I love these colors with copper.

These are almost an identical design, but with violet blue quartz briolettes instead, and denim blue caps. The berry sprinkles on the caps told me PINK!!! I obeyed.

My Little Pony  Garden Party

I love the blue violet with the azure in the beadcaps and the pink tones. I never would have thought that I would fall in love with a My Little Pony color scheme.

I wanted to use cording with this pair below too, but I just didn't have the right color so I went with little copper headpins. These caps are an electric violet blue (so hard to photograph purples, they are more purple in person than they appear here.)

Psychedelic Garden Party

The little turquoise saucers sitting atop the green leaves are itty bitty handmade lampwork spacers by Meital, and the matte turquoise Indonesian glass seed beads from Happy Mango were a perfect match (I have two long strands of these beads, they are AWESOME, they are more like little stones than glass beads).

This last pair got its color inspiration from the wonderful fuchsia color left on my headpins after I torched them. I couldn't bear to pickle it off so I left them as is, and when I set them aside with these orange caps, I thought PLUM!! I had these wonderful Czech glass rounds in a "lumi" finish, and I loved the contrast with the opaque enamel. I added little fuchsia button pearls to the earwires to pick up the fuchsia on the headpins.

Pee Wee's Garden Party

I just love these darling little flowers.

There's something Seussian, or Willy Wonkian, or Pee-Weeian about them. Can't put my finger on it...They make me think of all my favorite childhood books and movies. I sort of went with a Willy Wonka color scheme.

That's all for now!

Scorched Earth

I recently stumbled across a shop I saw in my Etsy activity feed, Scorched Earth (apparently I was the last to know about this treasure trove of porcelain awesomeness), and promptly fell in love with everything I saw! So I tried to buy everything I saw. But then common sense prevailed and I decided to just buy 14 things instead. Here is a sampling:

Moss Creek Bobble Drops

I am obsessed with this shape. And the word "bobble."

China Sea Bobble Drops

Petra Carpreau is a genius. And a doll. (You must check out her blog--HERE you go.)

Sour Apple Bobble Drops-like tiny Bartlett pears!

I also love these eggplant-shaped drops so I bought a bunch:

Bronzy Droplets Dutch Blue

These are like creme brulee. I might have to faux-nibble on them, just a bit:

Bronzy Droplets Amber Crackle

I do that, the bead faux-nibble, with yummy noises. Nom nom!

I am thinking these might combine with the last of my "midnight" beads from Kelley Wenzel, in a necklace perhaps:

Scorched Persia and Copper Oxide Drops

And look at these fabulous things! Those are the colors of where I live! Glacial lake green, midnight sky, and white snow.

Glacier Porcelain Tips 

And these look edible, don't they? Pretzel Stix! I will do the Faux-Nibble Nom Nom with them as well.

Bright Orange Porcelain Tips

And lastly, perhaps the piece de la resistance, these little handbag shapes:

Wedge Droppers

I should have gotten these too, dammit:

Hoopy Wedge Connectors "Pillar Box"

So much fabulousness, I was nearly weeping as I filled my shopping cart. (One thing I really like about these droppers, is the heavier gauge steel wire Petra uses--sturdy enough for my peace of mind, and it will just look better with the heavier gauges of wire I tend to use in my jewelry.) And as if the fabulousness weren't enough, prices and shipping are also very affordable! Hence the 14 items. I'm going to have to buy more storage soon. I'm thinking something like this:

Baby Bjorn, available at Zappos