Sue Beads

Today is the day for another reveal for the AJE Component of the Month!  This month, Francesca Watson provided us with her wonderful dichroic glass cabochons.  She gave us the choice of having them in cabochon form, or drilled.  Here are the very tempting choices she gave us! I chose the blue cabochon on to top second to the right.  I decided to keep mine a cabochon.   It is really hard to photogragh all the gorgeous dichroic colors that are in this cabochon.  My first idea was for me to do a beaded bezel with it.  Between visiting my 92 year old grandfather in Florida for a week, and a quick little getaway to Baltimore with my boyfriend, and Bead Fest prep, it just did not happen. My second idea, then, was put a bail on this cab, and do a beaded necklace.  Not too fancy, just a wire wrapped one with my own lampwork beads as accents.  That did not happen either.  I wasn't at all happy with that idea, and just about gave up.  It just wasn't going to do the cab justic

I just listed some of what I think are very pretty glass headpins in my SueBeads etsy store ! Take a look!

Another month has passed (my popular refrain) and it's time for another Art Jewelry Elements Design Challenge Reveal!  This month, Linda Landig provided us with brand spankin' new ceramics that she just started making!  How exciting - she's really doing great things!  I chose this leaf pendant, and as usual, didn't take a photo before I started working with it!  I consider what I made as a work in progress because, in theory, I like my idea, but in practice, it didn't turn out the way I wanted.  My idea was to use the waxed linen and wrap pearls in drops from knots as you can see. It's much harder, at least for me, than I thought.  It's very hard to get the drops to be the same on both sides of the pendant.  It was hard for me to work with the jump ring on the pendant as well.  I think the key is to do the pendant first, and work out.  I was working from the loop down, for the clasp.  Here's a photo of what I made, I'm not happy with it at