One woman's eye candy...

In the spirit of clearing the decks for the weekend, I realized that in addition to being behind (WAAAYYY behind) on the book review thing, I’m also way behind on the bead/jewelry picture posting thing.

So, here’s some eye candy to get you through until Monday. Well, at least *I* think it’s eye candy – if it looks like eye vomit to you, well, sorry (oh, and don’t tell me, okay? I prefer to live in denial on anything having to do with vomit).

My mind does tend to wander down the most interesting paths, doesn’t it? I’ve perhaps had a little too much Diet Coke this afternoon (due to a night of not much sleep last night). Okay, then, back to the beads before someone calls the men in white coats to take me away.

We’ll start things off with a few goodies I purchased at a Bead Show back in February.

Pretty simple stuff here – just some interesting Czech glass beads I thought would make nice filler if I mixed them with stones or some of the ceramic beads I bought back at Christmas time.

Speaking of ceramic beads, I’m still on a bit of kick with those as evidenced by these two cute pendants. Mixed in with the ceramics are some unusual enamel (melted glass on metal) pendants and, of all things, TOGGLE CLASPS! I just thought they were so unique – haven’t seen any clasps done with enamel before so of course they had to come home with me. They’re pretty enough to become focal points of necklaces all on their own.

I also picked up a few strands of copper beads and these cute chandelier earring findings. At the same booth, I picked up a whole bunch of copper round beads, clasps, headpins, jump rings and other findings to round out my copper collection. Now I have enough of a copper supply to begin making some things. Oh, except chain. I need copper chain.

Lastly, I thought I was done at this show, but managed to get waylaid by the last booth outside the building where I found all of these stunning Boulder Opal cabs. I liked both the more traditional opal look (especially the big oval cab) as well as the dark brown cabs that are mostly matrix but have some small areas of deep blue opal “flash.” I’m picturing them with minimal bead edging and strung on leather cords for my first attempt at “guy jewelry.” We’ll see if I can force…er…persuade my boyfriend to wear one when it’s finished.



Then, just last weekend, I hit the traveling Rings and Things wholesale show when it came to town and picked up some great bargains. If you have a chance to go to this show when it comes to your area, I highly recommend it. Not only can you get 50% + 15% off everything, but it’s so much more fun to pick up the beads, handle them and peruse them in real life than it is to try to buy from a website (not that I’m not a big web bead shopper, but you can’t beat that real life experience)

Most of the items I picked up at this show are not things I would typically go for, but I was trying to match some of my finished beaded cabs so I can finally get them strung onto necklaces and, hopefully, entered into the Orange County Fair this summer. I’ve got this whole pile of finished cabs just sitting there not getting turned into final pieces and I’m determined to do something about that!
I have one cab finished that's all done in earthy shades of brown, gold and hematite so I picked up these nice strands of tiger eye, a strand of faceted hematite and some Swarovski pearls:

Another pendant that's almost finished (just have to weave in the last thread tail and make the bail) features a sodalite cab and white, blue and silver beaded edging so I grabbed these strands of sodalite beads as well as some faceted white cat's eye beads in two sizes. Another cab features dichroic glass in shades of iridescent white, lime green and dark blue and these twisted foil glass leaves and dark blue Swarovski pearls may go well with that piece:




Then, of course, I needed more copper and I don't have any keshi pearls in my stash and these were a "can't be beat" price:




They also came in pink and gold and I almost bought two strands in each of those colors, but then I came across this gorgeous strand of snakeskin jasper that reminded me of mint chocolate chip ice cream:

And really, who can resist mint chocolate chip ice cream? Well, maybe you can, but one look at the size of my ass will tell you I never met a bowl of this stuff that I didn't love and obviously, beads in that color scheme have the same effect on me. I have no specific plans for these babies...I just had to have them. But then, the best bead purchases usually start out that way in my experience.

And just to prove that I am, indeed, finishing some things, here's the first cab I managed to get strung this weekend:

The pendant has a dichroic cab in the center surrounded by bead embroidery in shades of blue, lavender and purple (scanned colors are NOT true to life, sadly). The necklace features the bluey-purple iridescent seed beads from the cab and some vintage lavender glass rounds. The clasp is a Bali silver "S" clasp set with an amethyst. The whole thing is really more in the purple/lavender shades than it looks here - the scanning process seems to have really picked up the blue (despite my valiant attempts to fix this).

Hopefully, if I can get some of these other things finished this weekend, I'll be able to put up a contest for helping me choose what to enter at the fair sometime next week.

Happy weekend, everyone!

KJ

Music: "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer (because I'm so au courant)