shiny_omg

Another Christmas gift, this one for Ayn. One of the nice things about jewelry making is that less can be more, and if you have an great focal, like the ridiculously awesome Wonder Woman cupcake charm from The Bird and The Bee (I want all of their superhero cupcake pendants, especially the Thor one), you don't need or even want to do something complicated. So for this one I just added a few thematically appropriate beads, all acrylic (a bonus of making the whole necklace incredibly lightweight), to a silver-plate chain, and made an extender with the red acrylic star dangle.



( More pictures here )

Hallo. Long time, no shiny. My attempt to read 75 books this year sort of derailed my beading time, but here's some of recent bits and baubles:

( shiny ahoy! )

New stuff up on the Stellar Parallax Designs shop on Etsy. I'm still working on listing my back inventory, but new and nerdier things will start going up within a month. My workroom has to be turned back into the guest bedroom for my mom's visit this weekend, so actual beading time has been scarce. But I've got prep work done on some things for the pirate princess, chic gamer, and bad sci-fi movie fan in everyone.


I love Czech glass beads. They're versatile - coming in tons of varieties - and affordable, and are pretty much the main staple of my stash. And lately I've become obsessed with the Picasso finish Czech glass. It's a mottling effect that gives the glass the look of stone, in many cases, with beautiful variation and dept and effect of color.

I recently snagged these from another Etsy seller, destined for a mermaid or another octopus necklace, and spent a ridiculous amount of time drooling over others.

Put this together on Saturday to wear to my SIL's baby shower on Sunday.

Lavender glass squares, lavender freshwater pearls, silver plated brass squares, 4mm silver plate spacers. Simple silver plate hook and eye clasp (not shown).

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I also added a for sale sticky post at the top of this journal: http://shiny-omg.livejournal.com/4909.html Slowly updating that as I fight with my camera for decent shots.

So life got kinda crazy there for a while and everything not work related took a back seat, but with the holidays approaching, I kicked things into gear. I also have six pieces in the stage of "all strung, but need fiddly finishing bits," just ordered more beads (black labradorite) and a neck-shaped display stand for better picture taking, so expect more shiny in the new year.

Here's what I've been up to:





( bigger images and descriptions under cut. Images link to larger versions. )

The Dryad Is In: Olive jade serpentine pendant. Green and brown mix seed beads on French wire. Green Toho triangles, freshwater pearls and dyed green shell beads on jewelry wire. Brass cones and a gold-plate hook and eye clasp.

Man, this looks almost nothing like my original thought, but I'm really happy with it. It was a pain, mostly in figuring out the best way to get the various strands to twist and retain the twist. I ended up restringing the shell beads on thicker jewelry wire so they didn't spin quite so easily, and that helped a lot.

Not much. Lazing about, writing, a bit of vacationing. Buying way too many beads. But I did just recently do this:

Pink Lemonade: Large pink crackle glass rounds, yellow and pink lampwork squares, sterling silver square spacers on heavy jewelry wire. Silver-plate hook and eye clasp.

Pink Lemonade detail view.

I also finished up the bulk of The Dryad is In. Just need to get a big gold heavy gauge jump ring to hang the pendant. It looks pretty different from my original envisioning (I ended up not using the bark-like pearls, and I did end up adding some green shell beads), but I quite like the final version. Pictures to come when I get it completed.

And, I finally got a handle on the stash, which was taking over half the living room floor. After I bought a pink travel case (to the left in the first picture) for storage, and still had crap spread all over the floor, D said, "We should get you a cabinet." An excellent idea.

The shiny stash in its new home. Box and bin on top for miscellaneous/extraneous bits, and everything else tucked neatly inside.

Closeup of the cabinet: Top shelf has bead boards, second shelf has books, box of pendants, box of finished pieces, and stringing supplies. Shelf three has all my beads.

My nicely organized and labeled boxes.

Man, does this set up make a huge difference in working. I'm able to pull out enough that I can work easily, the labeling makes it simple to find what I need, and it takes just a few minutes to pack it all away when I'm done - having the shelf on top for the bead boards makes me feel so much more secure about leaving half-finished projects about. Before the board just sat on top of the rolling file box I was using, covered by a bead cloth, and I just hoped the cat wouldn't decide to investigate too closely.

Finished the in progress piece from a couple weeks ago:

Blue and Copper

A Murano style silver foil glass pendant hangs from peacock blue cultured freshwater pearls and mixed copper beads on tigertail and antique copper chain. Finished with a large antique copper lobster clasp.

larger image here


( More Copper and Blue )

Labradorite Spiral

I've had a string of labradorite chips for years that I wore as is, but recently thought, "Hey, I could get THREE necklaces out of this." This is the first one.

Labradorite chips, small sterling silver tube spacers stamped with circles, coppper rondelles, 2mm copper beads. Pendant is a base-metal 20mm embossed spiral square hung from a Thai silver curved tube, also embossed with circles. Finished with a copper Bali-style S clasp.


larger image here

The flash washed this out a lot. The colors are much better in the pictures below the cut.

( Labradorite Spiral )

So I went to an SF con over the weekend. Where I bought... beads. A cice little haul of semi-precious stones from a seller who's getting rid of their bead stock, including some gorgeous black and grey agate rounds (I'll post pictures of the haul later).


( New shiny things here )

I love coming home to a Fire Mountain Gems box full of shiny. I used my sister-in-law's upcoming birthday as an excuse to buy some awesome dyed freshwater pearls, and threw in some glass beads of various colors and finishes for good measure. I really like working with glass beads; they can be inexpensive, yet always look sturdy and nice. I got some two-toned crackle-finish, and some great foil finish that are big enough to make great focal pieces.

If I don't get totally sucked into the third Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series book tomorrow, I'll finally do a big update to Etsy.


( New pictures behind cut )