Thursday, September 11, 2008

I Hope it Doesn't Get to be a Habit

Missed posting last night, too. Again, busy with other stuff and very little of it was beading. I did finish stringing the gold glass and pearl lanyard, just have to add the hardware now.

I got an email from Accessories Susan saying they had the large copper lobster claw clasps I've been looking for in stock, so those are on their way now. Many thanks to Accessories Susan, not only for taking customer requests seriously, but for great service. I'm looking forward to playing around with design ideas this weekend and hope to make a few vintage style pieces I can show off.

I also found a source for tablet cut rectangular beads to match some of the ones I bought at the Arts and Wine festival last weekend so now I can make sets - thank you Mermaid's Cove! One set I bought from Mermaid's Cove was just beads I liked, no mates from the festival purchase, these are "Seafoam Opal" and I'm really inspired by the colors - thinking about matching them to some of my hemimorphite stones.

Still practicing loops - found a bundle of thinner brass wire (might be 21 or 22 gauge - it's not on a labeled spool) stashed away and have run about 8 loops with beads in a string. I'm still very clumsy, wasting a lot of wire, too, but the loops and wraps are looking better and the wrapped end is pretty snug to the bead. Before I start doing work with sterling wire (thinking about Argentium Sterling) I want to be confident and certainly not waste any of the wire - that stuff's expensive. I can't even think about gold filled yet.

There are two beading techniques I still want to learn - one is knotting. A number of my favorite purchases from this and past festivals have been made with lovely knotted thread instead of wire or chain. I'm going to wait to learn and practice that until after I feel accomplished enough with the wire loops. Lastly is chain maille. I have also seen some lovely work using a Byzantine pattern as well as some jewelry that has beads or pearls inside little cages of links, and I'd like to learn to do that, too.

Well, I'm going to finsh off the hardware on that lanyard and maybe play around in my beads until something inspires my next design.

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