Quiet Times On the Blog

It's been quiet because I imagine that like me, most people are scrambling to get ready for the holidays. I've got a lot of presents in the mail, so no pictures to show until the day. 

But I do have a couple of items I've been working on to show.

Old Gold button

A couple of weeks ago I put up some pictures and solicited some critique. I decided that the advice to change out the button on a previously completed bracelet was wise. So this bracelet went from gold to silver. The new button is slightly smaller and thus fits the loop better, and it blends more smoothly with the cherry-pop red and opalescent green/purple/blue of the small beads.

New Gold button

The silver is more understated. Good call, advisors. 

In other news, I've been netting my little heart out. This bit here is a trial to see what a 4.5-5mm bead looks like. I had a fair quantity of multi-colored various stones, and netted them with an opalescent crystal size 15 bead. Lovely. 

I'm not sure what this will end up as. Not a bracelet as it's too stiff to bend easily. Part of a necklace almost certainly. But like most of these netting bits, it's not long enough by itself, and when I was buying beads I didn't anticipate having to buy four times the length needed. I just simply don't have enough of any single bead to do an entire necklace in netted rope.  One thing I plan to do next time I get money to spend is buy enough 3-4mm beads to make a whole necklace.

Here's a sneak preview of something that I hope will be my Feb challenge entry. It's done in green jasper with gold netting and gold beads with green netting, with the larger rose-lined forest green intersection beads remaining constant. I've got some additional bits done but no pictures yet.  By combining beads I've got enough length for the central part of the necklace.  There will also be a big bead-embroidery component too. I think. I'll have to see as I get there. I really like the coordinating themes in the part in the picture. Something about forest green and gold is so...elegant.

And here, too late to list on Etsy for Christmas is another Cellini spiral necklace I finished. This was the one I started to explore a backless bezel for the malachite donut.  That part turned out well, I think. However, in the process of working that bezel, what happened was that in some sections, especially the top part, I passed so many threads through those tiny size 15 beads that the tension got very very tight, and a few of the beads just broke after one last yank! of thread through them.  Oops.  Live and learn.

So then I had to figure out what to do to connect the pendant to the spiral. If you just sling a single strand of beads over, even if you follow the spiral, the pendant hangs crooked. But  if you look at the close-up picture, you'll see that by doing one diagonal from left front, over the spiral, to the left rear, and then compensating with a shorter link of beads to the right front, it works. There's a matching short link in the back. It straightens out the pendant wonderfully, while not actually sewing the pendant to the spiral. Trying to sew to a spiral and get everything centered and balanced is a losing proposition.

In fact, the pendant can actually "screwed" down the spiral and off the necklace entirely, if you want.  It will come off over the flexible beaded catch. The spiral is done with 3-4mm drop beads which give a lovely look to it, with transparent red, christmas green, and nickel-plated silver beads.   I need better pictures to list this one. Still struggling with the camera. I'm beginning to think that it's not me, it's the camera. I just can't get really sharp pictures without a lot of fuss.