Experiments

I went up to Houston yesterday and went to Z Bead. The funny thing is that I haven't been there before, but I felt like I had the minute I walked in, and I guess it's not surprising, because it has the same owner as Nomadic Notions in Austin and San Antonio. It's somehow very obvious - the girls working there said they hear that a lot, even when people don't know ahead of time that it's the same. (I asked them if they knew why it wasn't just called Nomadic Notions like the other stores, but they didn't know. One possible theory I came up with: it doesn't sound hip enough. It's close to Rice U. so maybe they thought "Z Bead" sounded more young.) Anyway, I bought a few things - most notably, several stone donuts in different sizes - and I also signed up for a class in December; it's to make a beaded cuff. It's not all that far to go for a class, really, but I will have to make sure and go early to account for traffic, because it's always bad coming up Highway 288. Seems like no matter what time of day it is, there's always a slowdown somewhere!

Anyway, I don't have to worry about that for a month. In other news, I finished the donut (this is the non-stone, crystal and delica kind I'm talking about now) that I was working on, which was the vintage rose and clear one. (The Delica color may have been called luster crystal, actually, which is confusing.) It looks cute, in any case. Maybe I will do one set of the very pale ones. (I'm thinking of 3 or 4 of them as a set, strung on black linen cord, maybe.) Then I started another one, which will not be going with that set - it's erinite (green) and gold Delicas. That will be another set, the ones with gold Delicas, and the dark dark ones I did with the chocolate Delicas will be another. And then there's another set that's color-matched - pink crystals and pink Delicas, and so on. So I guess I will have four sets altogether if I finish all those.

Instead of taking pictures tonight, I worked on cleaning off my jewelry table some more. It's amazing how messy it gets for how few pieces of jewelry I actually finish. But I am thinking about finally actually working with the clay that I've been collecting up, so I figure I need a clear workspace for that.

I'm still experimenting with a lot of different techniques - you may have noticed. I have yet to really settle on one thing that I do exclusively - I don't know if I ever will, really, because what fun is that?

Here's one experiment I did lately: braided hemp. I tried little wooden beads and little copper washers, and I think they both look cute. I'm still working on how to finish things like this, though. I've had trouble with cord-ends that don't hold. Anybody got any advice?

Swag

Here is the aforementioned haul from the Houston Bead Society Show. (The flickr version has notes.)

I made a really cute pair of earrings out of those dark red rondelles. And I also got a finished version of one of the necklaces with the decoupage rounds, finally. I'll work on pictures tomorrow. (And inevitably, I started working on another donut. This one is Siam.)

The Bead Society, and other methods of stash enhancement

I came home from the Bead Society Show with a very small bag of beads that cost quite a lot of money, all told. I was trying to restrain myself, but somehow every time I bought something, it ended up being several somethings costing anywhere from $20-50 at each vendor. Really, I did restrain myself, because I could have bought so much more - I think I only bought things from four different vendors, and I spent something like $150 altogether. (Really, somebody needs to buy some of my jewelry, so I can tell myself I have an income to pay for this stuff!) I'll try to get some pictures of what I bought later.

It really is a nice show. It was on two different levels in a lot of different rooms - it seemed like the real business was getting done on the 2nd floor, though. I bought several different styles of things - I bought some charms, and some cute polymer clay beads, and then I bought some strings of glass that were on sale, and a cute clasp, and then my last stop was downstairs where I had seen some rather gorgeous pendants with bali-style silver on them. I forgot to ask about what kind of metal I was getting - I don't think it's sterling at that price. But it's damn pretty, whatever it was. (I didn't buy any lampwork, which I'm sort of sorry about. I love lampwork.)

My Fire Mountain order did show up today, which is good because I am intending to use some of that stuff for the class tomorrow. I got utterly carried away ordering Delicas - I wanted a range of colors but did I really need two tubes of yellows and three tubes of purples? (The yellows especially make me annoyed with myself because they don't look very different, unless you look very closely.)

(One yellow is "yellow silk" and the other is "lemon ice", as I recall. You can tell they're not exactly the same, and it's even more noticeable close up, but will it show up different in a piece? I have my doubts.)

I didn't quite get as carried away with the 4mm Swarovski bicones that are the other thing needed for this class - partly because I already had several colors. The colors I have are primarily pastel colors that I use for accents on earrings, and I wanted some brights.

One of those darkest colors is mocca; I'm not sure about the other one but I think it may be siam. The red-oranges on the right are padparascha and indian red. The pink is just rose, I believe. I'm blanking out about what the purple one is, but the blue is Capri blue AB because they were out of regular Capri blue. And the two greens are palace green opal and erinite, I believe, and they really don't look that different from one another in the picture, but they are.

(Obviously I don't really think I'll use all 14 delicas and all 9+ colors of bicone tomorrow at the class, but at least I'm prepared! And I have an idea that I want to make some more of these, maybe for Christmas gifts.)

Oh, also, notice the fancy-pants packaging that Swarovskis come in, now. I can see that it might cut down on theft in retail stores, but otherwise, I think it's kind of overkill. Even a single "cosmic crystal" oval or whatever they're called, comes like this. It seems silly.