Flower Dangles

I must be ready for spring!  I sat down to figure out a new earring design, and these little little flowers popped up!  They are quite sweet, though rather small individually, so I decided to dangle them off of decorative chain.  Each flower is "compound" in that there is a smaller flower form inside the larger one.  It shows up best on the teal/lime and gold/white earrings.  I used gold-filled and sterling silver ball ended head pins to hold the sets of two flowers together.  There is also a 3mm bicone crystal in the center of each flower.

These fantasy flowers will brighten the days until our outdoors blooms again.

Translucent Vertical Tubes

A while ago, I made a sort of rock-look cane based on the lace cane concept.  I used lightly tinted translucent clay rolled into a bull's eye cane and wrapped in white. Then I reduced the cane, cut it into pieces, and joined them together in a large matrix cane.  At that time, I used slices from the cane to cover cabochon shapes and make irregular beads that looked like unusual stones.  The photo on the left shows some of the polymer pebbles I made.  For more information, take a look at my post of Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - Honeycombed Pebbles.

The other day, I was looking at a piece of this type of cane I had left and wondering what to do with it.  Since I've been playing with tube beads, I decided to make some tube beads using the cane.  I left the outer edges uneven as they were on the cane itself, and overlapped the rolled edges rather than cutting them to meet evenly.  Leaving the translucent tubes hollow makes them look like they glow from inside.  I found some peach freshwater pearls and some iridescent glass O beads, and set to work stringing the tube beads vertically.  Here is the resulting necklace.  It has a really soft look to it, and the rounded ends of each of the tube beads helps keep them gentle on the skin.

It's fun to visit "old" canes and do do something new with them!

Simple ~ with Shine

Here's a photo of a necklace I made recently with a holiday party in mind.  The glow of the pearls and the sparkle in the crystal rondelles picks up the glow and shine from the silver and translucent disks of the focal piece.  The colors of the clay and the pearls are much closer in person.  Light, and fun, it lies nicely on the neck. I find it especially fun to roll the disks out super-thin and then gently press the edges to see what shape the disks take. No two are the same, that's for sure!

Copper Lei with Swirls

I had to share this latest lei style necklace and earring set with you because I really like the way the colors worked out.  I'm showing you the close-up first, so you can see the outer copper clay color, and the translucent in-between the circle swirls of copper.  The translucent has been lightly tinted with a clear embossing powder and I added some copper glitter to the mix, too.  In person, there is a special sparkle and glow from the beads that is repeated in the glass O beads and goldstone flat spacers placed in between the ruffled beads.  It's really pretty, and perfect for that special outfit, or just for fun.  I'm also including a photo of the full necklace. The design just didn't come through as clearly as in the close-up.