NEW PENDANT DESIGNS FOR THE NEW YEAR!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas Holiday!  WE SURE DID - and with the December Christmas spirit came the birth of our third grandchild, a little girl, Lily Viola.  What a wonderful feeling it is to have grandchildren.  Truly, it is the best thing in the world.  Three will be it for our little clan, and we are grateful for each of these little people.  They bring us so many moments of incredible joy. 

I'm ready to take on new challenges for the new year and of course my favorite bead shop, Bead Street, carries me on this journey... Here are a couple of new designs by Vezsuzsi -- the first pendant below she named the "Ohm".  Is this beautiful or what?  It uses the new piggy beads on the corners.  I had an "ahhhhh" moment when I put those on and then added the rizos thereafter.  It's such an incredible design.  Some designers just have a gift and Vezsuzsi is one of my favorites.  Thanks, Sandy Taylor for teaching these wonderful classes and being such an inspiration.  :)

 

The second design by Vezsuzsi is below, named "Szirmos Misi".  I have no idea where the names come from... but I'm sure that would be an interesting story in and of itself!

SNOWMEN AND DUELING BRACELETS

First, some snowmen to add some smiles to this stressful time of year.  These can't help but make you grin!  Their scarves keep them warm too, don't ya know!  :)

 

 

Next, a fab, albeit very time consuming, bracelet design by Marcia Balonis named "Whistle Stop", taught by Sandy Taylor @ Bead Street.  It's a gorgeous pattern, and well worth every moment I spent beading away...  I wanted a mixed metal look, so used matt silver lentils on top/gold sb and copper/orange/redish fire polish w/reddish/brown bricks.  I don't know the exact color names of what I used, so don't you love how precise my descriptions are? Ha. This bracelet feels really nice on the wrist too - it's one of those that feels great next to the skin and it moves with you.

 

 

This is a Vezsuzsi design named Leo Bangle, also taught by Sandy Taylor at Bead Street.  I'm having a devil of a time getting a decent pic of this bracelet.  It doesn't matter if its taken inside or outside.  It wants to show more pink tones, but it's really a true beautiful red--disappointing.  It drapes beautifully around the wrist because it is designed to be a bangle, but I made it a clasp instead.  I like to be able to size it closer to my wrist size and bangles don't work so well for that.

Snowflake Inspired Necklace

I love this modified tubular herringbone pattern of Eileen Barker's design - from a previous post - named Tubari.  In this version I added 3mm rounds to the 8mm sb and rizzos.  And, this beautiful pendant by Tracee Dock at the Classic Bead .  Perfect time of year for a beautiful artisan ceramic snowflake.  Tracee does beautiful work and I have several of her pieces, still waiting to be attached to that perfect stitch!

 

For the back part of the necklace I added some incredible Czech glass stones, and wire wrapped inbetween.  You can see the marbling in the stone in the closer up photo of the earrings below.  I also added little silver snowflake charms for a contrast to the copper wire.  I think that makes them stand out a bit more.

 

 

NEW CHRISTMAS DESIGN!

Learning a new beading pattern or technique is such a gift to my mind and my soul (especially this stressful time of year!) and I am so grateful to Eileen Barker, owner of my favorite bead store, Bead Street, and those who work beside her, Sue and Irene, and Sandy Taylor, who teaches many of the classes I take!  Thank you SO MUCH!  I enjoy my time in that shop so much!!!  So... getting back to the beading at hand... here's what we learned last weekend - a bracelet pattern which I made into earrings (Fritch bracelet) designed by Vezsuzsi.  I also made a necklace, and unfortunately,  lighting is difficult this time of year.  When I took some of these shots, the sun happened to be out for a minute, so I hurried for some natural lighting.  These earrings are not quite as light as shown, the second picture reflects better color.  I also used 4mm FP for the round circle in the front, and on the the pendant I used 4mm Swarovski bicone crystals around a coral gemstone center.  Again, color slightly less bright in reality.  Kind of fun to see what a difference a bead makes in a design.  Both equally beautiful, just different.

And, some darlin' little light wreath wire wrapped earrings to match the necklace.  SO CUTE!