Thursday, February 11, 2010

How did you spend the week between Christmas and New Years - Part 2

Since it sure looks like Christmas outside, I figured this was as good a time as any to post the second half of what I was able to get completed and off my work table between Christmas and New Years.  (Clicking on any photo will bring up a larger version.)

The lovely stone in the pendant on the right is a Morrisonite Jasper from Designer Cabochons in England, as are all of the stone cabochons that I use.  I stumbled on their website several years ago and LOVE their cabochons.  They always have unique stones and fossils, with quite a few from vintage slabs.  Vintage and stone, two of my most favorite things!

I used a combination of seed beads to create the bezel and pendant embellishment because I wanted to keep the setting on the simple side.  I like the combination of the 11/0s and 15/0s in the bail too.  I'm an admitted pearl lover so seem to include pearls in almost all of my pieces.  In this case, I used the pearl coins as separators in the tubular Ndebele necklace and top drilled pearls as accents to the fringe.

The final pendant that I finished during my holiday week is pictured on the left.  Even though I am more of a 'green' person, I loved the colors in this Ocean Wave Jasper and how much it looks like a beach scene.

The surrounding fringe is a little on the wild side, but the colors are muted and don't (in my opinion anyway) take away or over power the beauty of this stone.  I used a combination of seed beads and a couple of different colors of faceted Czech glass beads.  I had exactly 12 of the little mottled red glass squares so used them to accent the red band in the stone and as highlights in the strung necklace.