In the Pink

I've realised that I didn't actually get round to posting the jewellery I made for the pink colour challenge - oops! I realised that although I haven't been using a lot of pink in my designs recently and it's not a colour that I wear myself (unless it's just a little with my favourite brown!) I actually had quite a few pink beads, including several lampwork beads. So, here are a pink jade pair of earrings and a lampwork bead necklace. The earrings are a design that I've used before, but it's a popular one at craftshows so I thought I'd make another pair.

The necklace uses a bead by Emma Mason. I bought a set of three, plus some spacer beads, from her last year and this is the second one from the set. I love that fact that although all three beads are of the same style they are each unique. I used the first bead in a fairly simple leather necklace but for this one I took inspiration from the honeysuckle blooming outside my shed window and twisted 'vines' of sterling silver wire. It is, of course, called honeysuckle, and it should be on the site tomorrow.

While tidying up my beads this evening I realised just how many lampwork beads I've got, so expect to see some more lampwork jewellery over the next week or so!

P.S. My eye is much better now, thankfully! I've been looking a bit odd (okay more odd than usual) in the sun though as I've obviously been wearing my glasses rather than my contacts. The problem is that I haven't got any prescription sunglasses so I've been wearing my normal sunglasses over my glasses. I'm going to go to the opticians and order some prescription sunglasses tomorrow, so you'd better expect the sunshine to disappear completely as soon as I get them. Sorry!

Friday at last!

Usually my weeks fly by. When I was still teaching at school I (and most of my fellow teachers!) would count down the weeks until the next holiday, especially during the winter months, desperate for some time 'off' to catch up with some marking. Now I'm amazed that the school holidays seem to come round so quickly! This week has seemed long, though, probably because it's been so different than my usual weeks.

B's alot better today. No more sickness thankfully so the washing machine has been able to have a bit of a break! He's been rather tired and wanting lots more cuddles than usual, and hasn't wanted much to eat at all, but I guess most of us are like that after a tummy bug. Hopefully he'll be back to his usual cute cheeky self tomorrow!

Anyway, I promised you some photos so here they are. The first is a pendant I made over a week ago now using a beautiful bead by Izzy Anderson. I love this bead so the pendant is definitely staying with me! The bead has had lots of compliments so I'm hoping that Izzy might be tempted to make a set of them (this one was a one off). Hint hint Izzy!



The second is a rose quartz donut decorated with more rose quartz, sterling silver and purple jade. I've strung it on lovely brown soft leather, and made the necklace longer than I do usually, the leather is about 20" long and the pendant about 3".

T has promised me some work time this weekend (i.e. he'll look after Ben for most of Sunday) so hopefully I'll have some more jewellery to show you soon!

Chainmaille

This time last year I just didn't 'get' chainmaille. I'd played around with various patterns using silver plated jumprings, but it just didn't appeal to me. Then I saw some beautiful work on various jewellery and beading forums and decided to give it another go. I don't know whether it was because I'd started using sterling silver for all of my designs, but I finally got it and I'm now hooked!

The earrings below are from a chainmaille pattern I found on a forum (I'll let you know which forum when I find it again!). I had to play around with them able to get the purple jade bead hanging to my liking, but I'm rather pleased with them.

I've posted them as the first week of the Year of Jewellery 2008 challenge. I joined up to the 2007 challenge halfway through last year and really enjoyed it. All of my pieces of jewelelry were made on time, but not always posted on time! Once winter arrived I found it more difficult to take photos and I'm still not that confident with my light studio. Anyway, I've posted on time this week and started as I mean to go on!