Sue Beads

Over at AJE it's reveal day for the June Component of the Month!  This month, the wonderfully talented Jenny Davies-Reazor provided us with a pair of components.  Yes, I made earrings!  Jenny makes the most wonderful ceramic goodies, and when she makes jewelry she pairs her components with gemstones!  I love gemstones - if I didn't make lampwork beads, all of my jewelry would be made with gemstones!  As it was, I tried hard to make some beads to match Jenny's charms.  Jenny and I have very complimenting beads and components sometimes, and I thought it would be good to show that off.  However, I just couldn't get a good match and with the work schedule and tree disaster, I decided to go with gemstones! The charms have an ever-so-subtle hint of brown on them, and so I chose faceted khaki quartz rondelles. Jenny is very into myth and folklore, so I thought I'd tell you a little bit about quartz.  The name means cross vein one, and has a lo...

The beautiful Ms. Rita from Jewel School Friends blog is hosting a Summer Elements Blog Hop today!  I made three pairs of earrings for myself, in a summery theme, and thought I'd show you those! I got the beads from a bead show here in Pittsburgh over the winter, or maybe even in the fall, and just never got around to showing them on my blog!  These are faceted beads, have no idea the stone, but they are opaque, I'm thinking some kind of dyed agate. These are gorgeous faceted angelite beads!  They are just too pretty, I want to eat them!  And then these ones, I picked up from a table and the owners of the booth were probably pretty upset that they had to be at a bead show that day, from their attitude.  I have no idea what the "stone" is - they are not real stones, I hope they aren't asbestos or something like that.  But I did like the crackled effect and they are faceted as well!  I'm on a faceted kick right now! So here are some of my ...

I posted this whole tutorial on AJE blog yesterday.  Please check it out!  You can find an earlier version on my Tutorials page! Some of you may have seen ornament or suncatcher hangers and said, I can do that! Some of you may have seen them and said, How do I do that? This tutorial is for you. This is for a simple ornament hanger you can make all by yourself with a few tools and wire! Tools: Ruler Wire Cutter Round Nose Pliers Wrap-N-Tap pliers (large) Supplies: 18 gauge silver-filled or silver-plated wire 1. Start by flush cutting a 3" piece of wire with your wire cutters. Notice I used the ever-popular dinosaur ruler we got in a shoe-store many moons ago! 2. Using the round nose pliers, place your wire 1/3 of the way down the plier and make a loop. If you are making lots of hangers, you may want to use a sharpie to mark the place where you want to wrap the wire if you want them all uniform in size. 3. Finish the loop all the way. 4. P...