Sue Beads

AAAANNNDDD another month has gone by, and this time it was Caroline Dewison's turn to provide the component for the Art Elements Design Challenge!  She sent these! Beautiful celestial beads!  As usual, I did not take a photo of my set, but hey, you'll see them below!  So drumroll..... here's what I made! I did another spiral stitch necklace, with Star Sapphire size 8 and 11 beads, and some gold plated hex beads (all found at Bead Fest because I remembered to bring the set Caroline sent me so I could match beads!!!!) Proud of me! The hex beads mimic the starts on the ceramic round perfectly! I used a ball-and-socket clasp, I really like these when I make a spiral rope necklace, easy to apply and easy to use! I'm not an "all matchy matchy" person but we did have these great round beads, and since I didn't use them in the necklace, I decided to make a simple pair of earrings with them!  I like them, I like simple jewelry so there you ha...

It's that time again - time for the Art Jewelry Elements Component of the Month challenge. This time, it was Melissa Meman who provided us with some morsels to play with!  She makes awesome copper clay components.  This is the one I chose. I knew I wanted to do bead weaving (again!!!) and I picked some awesome colors to go along with the copper - peacock blue and wisteria. I did a spiral rope with size 8 peacock color beads and size 11 wisteria. I have to say, I don't like this method of using 3 8s as the base and 4 11s as the spiral - it's too loose for me.  I will write about this for my Tuesday post on AJE.  I used some beautiful angelite faceted rounds I had as an accent to the necklace, with about an inch of spiral rope in between the trio of beads.  The color of this angelite is really amazing!  As I was toggle clasp deficient, I decided to make some.  I punched 22 gauge copper sheet with my disc cutter, cut a hole in it, textur...

I wanted to show you all what you can do with my ammonite glass cabochons, so I decided to make myself a necklace! I used one of my large cabochons (1.5 inches!) and made a beaded bezel from a tutorial from Sally Russick on her blog.    I made a spiral rope from directions from a magazine and a little help from fusion beads - their tutorials provide nice illustrations of what you are supposed to be doing.  I made the bail from Sally's tutorial.  She really did a fantastic job and if you are wanting to give it a try yourself, her tutorial is all videos and very easy to follow.  I'm waiting for a magnetic clasp to finish the necklace - the ones I ordered and received today are too small for my comfort! So, this is one thing you can do with my cabochons.  You can also bezel set them (like Patti Vanderbloemen) or glue on a metal bail, or .... who knows what else!  What are you doing with cabochons?