Chain Love

Tags

A Grain of Sand, B'sue Boutiques, Joan Miller, Miss Fickle Media, My Elements, One Piece at a Time, Sondra's Estate Beads Destash Depot, Who Knows What, You Are Not the Boss of Me

I am currently smitten with chain. I just love a long necklace with one or a few great beads. It’s elegant and boho at the same time, and I like being able to use the pendant as a sort of fidget device during meetings at work.

For years I’ve been collecting interesting chain. I have a few places I love to get colored, vintage or other types of chain. Let me share those with you.

My Elements for colored chain in a variety of materials and Miss Fickle Media and Supply Your Soul for hand patina chain. For vintage chain: B‘Sue Boutiques Supplies, One Piece at a Time, You Are Not the Boss of Me, and Who Knows What. Right now, A Grain of Sand is having a half price sale to move out the vintage products (coupon code VINLOVE) including some great chain. Recently, I’ve gotten both vintage and colored chain from Sondra’s Estate Beads Destash.

The first necklace I made uses chain from A Grain of Sand called very vintage white. It is a shabby chic look I love. I used it with a Joan Miller kitty pendant on a hand patina hammered brass hoop from Miss Fickle Media (great stuff besides chain too!) I wanted to keep the blue patina at the bottom so that and the blue kitty eyes could play off each other, so I wire wrapped four labradorite beads on each side to be stoppers for the chain. That also helped bring in another design element and sparkle, and take up some of the negative space.

When ordering from Sondra Jackson, she always sends a little freebie goody bag. Oh my, this last time when I bought some black acrylic beaded rosary style chain, the freebie bag contained this fabulous faceted glass crystal.

Judging from the wire loop and the heaviness, it was probably a chandelier crystal. I used it with the rosary chain for a simple and really elegant necklace. The light weight of the acrylic chain balances out the heavy crystal to make a comfortable necklace.

It’s easy to make pretty necklaces when you have nice, interesting chain. I’m also looking forward to using patina on some of my more mundane chain to fancy it up.

Bead in the New Year with Allegory Gallery – Week 4 Wrap Up

Tags

Allegory Gallery, Andrew Thornton: Project Destash, art abandonment, artist trading cards, Bead in the New Year with Allegory Gallery, Crafty Hope, Hope Smitherman, One Piece at a Time, Vintage Bead Vault, Who Knows What

As I typed that title, I realized I don’t have full weeks in my wrap ups necessarily, so there will be five weeks this month. 🙂 On to the Allegory Gallery prompts!

Day 21 – Get together with some friends to create

My mom is my favorite beading buddy. This is at her house last weekend. It’s nice to have someone else’s opinion and exchange materials. She also pushes me to try new things by proposing dates to use patinas or finally try epoxy clay. Thanks, mom!

Day 22 – Construct a non-jewelry piece using beads

Many moons ago, I got a pack of artist trading cards from Andrew Thornton’s destash as a prize. I had never heard of such a thing, but when I read up on them, I thought it was cool. I had done some paper crafts (cards, scrapbooks) back in the day. Fast forward to me enjoying art journaling and other paper arts that Crafty Hope posts about on her blog. Combine those two things with this prompt, and I give you my project using some vintage charms. I look forward to doing more elaborate non-jewelry projects.

Day 23 – Do a random act of (bead) kindness

My intention was to do art abandonment with these earrings. I used to do it more often, but I’ve gotten away from it. Honestly, I don’t get to that many places, and I can’t always find a good place to drop. There was a big snowfall on this day, so I ended up giving the earrings to a co-worker who happened into my office. That was random!

Day 24 – Create a piece using vintage materials 

I enjoyed making this piece quite a bit. I used a vintage brass piece as a starting point. The vintage  glass drop (that has a nice purple cast you can’t totally see) and those perfect wedding cake beads are from the Vintage Bead Vault. I got the vintage purple glass pearls from Who Knows What, a treasure of a shop, and the green glass from One Piece At a Time, also a favorite.

Day 25 – Put together a piece using seed beads

I use seed beads mostly as spacers. I wanted to do something a bit different, but I wasn’t about to do any bead weaving. That requires a whole day set up with moral support. But I had gotten the Allegory Gallery Design Challenge Day of the Dead kit. It came with a great sugar skull wooden pendant that had an open weave at the top as well as a tube of really pretty colorful seed beads. I imagined using wire to weave those beads at the top of the pendant. That is one of the things I love about these prompts; it gives some of us to time (or the understanding that we already have the time) to do things we’ve been thinking about. Now if I could only find the strand of beads that came in this kit that I wanted to use for a necklace with this. I’m sure I put them “someplace safe.”

Day 26 – Use a color that you don’t normally use

I don’t think there are a lot of colors I don’t use. I love brights, neutrals, pastels, metallics, etc. The one color I think I use less frequently is blue. But I do have a blue and turquoise box (I separate some beads by color). I looked in there and came up with a design I really like!

I feel like this had the added benefit of helping use those very cute dotty beads I’ve had for years. I tend to shy away from color combinations that are associated with something specific: red, white and blue, green and red, sports team colors, etc. Now to me they just look cute!

I think I’ve been doing Monday through Sunday recaps, but I’m going to post this now and leave the last five days of this challenge for one last recap. Thanks for reading! I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am.

Collaboration with My Mom

Tags

Gaea Handmade, One Piece at a Time, Sondra's Estate Beads Destash Depot, Vintage Bead Vault, Who Knows What, You Are Not the Boss of Me

A while ago I got a face bead from Gaea. I don’t do bead weaving, but my mom does. I gave her the face and asked her to weave around it in any way she wanted. As you can see if you click on the previous link, she gave the face wonderful, colorful Medusa type hair! I love it! She also made some other components to go with it. 

I was looking for something else in my Gaea box, and I saw the face and components and an idea sprang into my head. I used a Gaea rectangular bead above the face and mixed some other Gaea ceramic tubes and beads along with some of my mom’s beaded components to make a necklace.

I knew it wouldn’t be long enough on its own, so I thought I’d add some chain. I had this metal tube chain that really echoed the look of my mom’s beaded components. I wish I could tell you where I got it. I cannot remember! I’ve just spent about 10 minutes trying to figure it out, but I’m sorry to say I don’t know. I haven’t even had it that long! I will just list some places I have gotten fab unique vintage (and non-vintage) chain. I thought it was one of these places, but I could not confirm it. 

Sondra’s Estate Beads Destash Depot

Vintage Bead Vault (where I got some similar chain in a beautiful green)

One Piece At A Time

You Are Not The Boss of Me

Who Knows What

So, probably one of those. Note to self: put purchases away more efficiently. I do label things when I put them away, but this one got separated from the herd. 

I think this necklace turned out great. It was really fun using my mom’s work in my necklace as well.

 

Clay and Metal Blog Hop

Tags

Andrew Thornton, Lisa Lodge, Metapolies, One Piece at a Time, Pine Ridge Treasures, Sharyl McMillian-Nelson, Sharyl's Jewelry

Lisa Lodge, jewelry artist at Pine Ridge Treasures and blog hop/Facebook challenge hostess extraordinaire has struck again!  Today is the reveal for the Clay and Metal Blog Hop featuring components from Sharyl McMillian-Nelson‘s shop Metapolies. Some participants got Sharyl’s polymer clay beads; some of us received Sharyl’s metal components.  Kits could also include some coordinating beads. Here are some of the coordinating beads I got (the only things left to photograph since I didn’t get a photo before I started working).

I received three of Sharyl’s wonderful metal components: a lovely sun charm and two rectangle charms with beautiful patina and texture. The necklace I made with the sun charm is all about mixed metal.

In addition to Sharyl’s lovely sun, I used some vintage chain I recently got from One Piece at a Time.  There is a very slight blue patina on the sun, so I separated it from the beads above it with some bluish sequins left over from one of Andrew Thornton‘s challenge kits.  I used some beads as dangles that I thought looked like sunlight; I think they are citrine and are a little more yellow than the picture.   I also used some heat-treated carnelian to bring in a little darker color that goes well with the chain.  I used spacers that Lisa included in my kit atop each bead.  I really like how this necklace turned out!

Sharyl’s rectangles are so gorgeous with their wonderful texture and slightly sparkly patina. I’ll admit that even though they are perfect for earrings, I kind of wanted to make something else with them since I don’t wear earrings.  But then I got over my greed. I added some blue crystals (also left from Andrew’s kit) a couple of gold spacers and two salmon colored beads with a really pleasing shape.  Those are from a nice batch of cool beads my sister’s girlfriend brought me from a trip to Colorado!  I am thrilled with these.

I was thinking about how you could take these components and make so many beautiful pieces of jewelry just by swapping out what else you use with them. That’s the wonderful thing about art beads and components; they are so versatile and always beautiful.  Thank you to both Lisa and Sharyl for a great hop!  Now let’s check out what all of the other participants made.  Have fun clicking on the links below to follow along and thanks for visiting.

Your hostess:  Lisa Lodge, A Grateful Artist

Melissa Trudinger, Bead Recipes

Jo-Ann Woolverton, It’s a Beadiful Creation

Carolyn Lawson, Carolyn’s Creations

Shaiha Williams,   Shaiha’s Ramblings

Toltec  Jewels, Jewel School Friends

Heather Richter, Desert Jewelry Designs

Marybeth Rich, A Few Words from within the Pines

Kim Dworak, Cianci Blue

Karen Grosset Grange, Ginkgo et Coquelicot

Ann Schroeder, Bead Love – You are HERE!

Lisa Prewitt Knappenberger, LiRaysa Designs

Carol Briody, A Beads Life

Miranda Ackerley, MirandAck

Kari Asbury, Hippie Chick Design

Susan Anderson, La Main Tresor

LeAnne Loftus, First Impression Design

Leithleach Seodra, Alainn Jewelry