Not So Shabby After All

I did finish the earrings to match the necklace, but there's still a bracelet based on the same motif in the works. In my head in the works, not yet actualised.

These seem like a useful shape and size: bold enough to notice, but not too omnipresent.

Among the activities of getting ready for tomorrow's class and preparing the samples for the next set of classes, I was inspired to work on Something to use this bead that Denice very cleverly gave me (cleverly because I like it and because it's totally the sort of thing I'd buy for myself).

 Sort of unevenly oval. Sekla would work.

 It was very soon obvious (as so often happens) that although the tubes of seed beads arrayed around the lampwork focal were just perfect, there was something nasty about those green 11ºs, so I quickly switched to Amy's Hair colour beads (gold lustre cranberry).

That was better, but the matte teal 8ºs just looked dull, so I switched to metallic aqua, but then the teal fire-polished beads looked dingy.

That required me to switch to olivine zairit (it's a sort of dark gold-bronze finish), but those beads just got lost, so I etched them which made the green pop and I was set. It's a bit startling when you see the difference between the shiny and etched beads in the picture above.

An excellent example of the way not only colours but finishes on beads affect whether they recede or stand out.

The bail for the focal eventually worked too. It's always a bit of a battle for me to give up and use wire, even when I'm able to make seed beaded spacers. I'm fine with wires through the ears because there really is no other way, but it always seems like a cop-out when I can't get the focal in place with only seed beads and thread (or I can but am pretty certain that it's not a permanent solution). I can live with it, but I feel vaguely embarrassed at my failure.

So I made two links for another one of those twenty-hour necklaces. This one should be a bit more interesting (really only very slightly; right angle weave isn't actually more riveting when you switch colours - even if I try to convince myself it is) as I'm planning on doing a colour gradation for the links. The focal colour/colours elude me though.

And then I finished the necklace.

I had to cut something up because I ran out of the blue metallic beads.

I think I know what to do with my credit card to remedy that.