Earrings, and a necklace

I made another pair of decoupage cylinder earrings:

Actually I don't know that I ever put a picture of the other pair like this here, although they're in the Etsy shop and you should be able to see them in the widget over to the right of this entry. Both of these are completely unrelated to the round decoupage beads which my sister has been making, and which I have not managed to get into a completed form yet. I bought these beads - the paisley cylinders - from Etsy seller ParrishLin a few weeks ago. I bought a wholesale lot of earring pairs, basically - there were nine pairs and they were all different. Furthermore, she said that this was a trial run, that it was her original design and she does not intend to make any more of these, which means that each pair is genuinely one of a kind. I like them, they have a fun sort of hippie-boho vibe to them. Hopefully somebody besides me will like them too! However, the pair above is the one I decided I'm keeping for myself. (You can also get a view of parts of my organizational system on top of my jewelry table, there. It's still not terribly well-organized but it's improved greatly from a few weeks ago.)

Here's a pair of earrings that probably will be showing up on Etsy - they are also a bit different, but I really like them:

They are rough-cut stars of some stone, and I put gunmetal findings on them. I think it matches perfectly.

This pair will also be going up, I think - dark red lampwork beads by Amy Houston:

 

Oh, and here's the necklace I was talking about the other day, with the crystal beads:

It's not anywhere near finished - I'm trying to figure out how to space out the beads and how far up to go with the beaded dangles. It goes pretty fast, though, and it's giving me a lot of good wire-wrapping practice!

Is anybody out there?

Just nodcomment if you can hear me, ok? I just get to wondering if anybody's actually reading this, from time to time! (I'm not intending to let it stop me, but some feedback would be most welcome.)

Here are some of the decoupage beads my sister sent me:

These are supposed to be prototypes - some of them are quite bumpy - but I think they are really pretty just the same. I'm intending to put some of them up on Etsy eventually if I can figure out how to get them into necklace form. The main problem is (I think I mentioned this before) that some of them have really huge holes - like, a 10mm rondelle fell INSIDE the hole! And then the smaller ones don't have big holes at all. I am experimenting with chain and cord and such, and we'll see what I come up with.

The aqua-colored beads that I thought were so beautiful turn out to have some fairly serious scratches on them - it doesn't stop them from being beautiful but I think it's going to stop me from asking as much as I would like to for this necklace, when it's finished:

Anyway, the beads are still awesome, and the scratch doesn't affect the color at all, so I'm intending to go ahead and list it - maybe I'll create a "SALE" category just for this, and say it's As Is. I would just take off the one that's got the most serious scratch, if I had more of them, but these five are all I have - I think these may have been Botmo beads - and I don't think it'd look as pretty with less than five. I have no idea where the scratch came from - I actually tried to mar another one up, and I couldn't even make a dent in the thing.

(I would rename this entry something like Imperfect, since that's what it seems to be about, except I sort of like the title I started with, too.)

Off to work on more jewelry!

Monday misc.

1. I had a minor freak-out yesterday about wrapped loops - mine are just not as perfect as I want them to be. I'll get there with practice, I guess, but I also decided that if I have to put some stuff up on Etsy with simple loops, so be it. I've never had any trouble with my simple loops coming apart, so I don't know why I think there's this unwritten rule that says I can't use them. I need to get over it.

2. (I've actually had these a week or two, but I know I haven't posted the picture!) Here's part of the stuff that came in the Beads of the Month package for October:

(Blogger's photo-downloader is being wonky, so this is direct from Flickr, and if you click on the picture it should take you to the bigger version!) There were some great beads - I've already made earrings out of some of the agate leaves, and I really love those moons. There were more skulls besides the small ones pictured - there were some more of the bigger ones like I had on my necklace, in the 1" range. Which is cool because I'm thinking I definitely want to make one or two more of those necklaces next year!

3. Today I got a huge package full of decoupage beads in the mail. They're beautiful but I'm going to have to figure out what to do with them. Some of them have really gigantic holes, so I'm thinking cord may be the best solution. (The person who made them, however, has voiced the opinion that they should be on sterling. I'm inclined to think that that would be a waste of sterling wire, since you wouldn't be able to see it under those huge beads, anyway!)

(There's a saying around the internets that "5 random things make an entry" - I've always wondered who made that rule. What, 3 random things isn't an entry?)

A family affair

My sister is experimenting with treating wooden beads with a sort of modified decoupage technique - these are early samples but I think they have promise!

She is going to give me some to play around with; if this goes well, you may be seeing jewelry using her beads in my Etsy store before long!

(Incidentally, the Etsy store is live, although there's only one item in it right now - the pink wire-wrapped piece I showed off yesterday. I am working on getting pictures of more items so I can add more listings.)