What I'm working on...

I've been working on a new necklace for a while now. I don't think it should really be this hard, but my real job has been busy, and we've had some family stuff going on, and I've been spending a lot of my time online, trying to figure out how to promote our business, hoping that if enough people see our stuff, more of them may buy it. Anyway, I had the idea for this necklace months ago, when I found these cool beads at a local bead store, Beading Dreams, and bought them at their half off sale. They're called dogtooth or chevron amethyst, and they're amethyst that formed with calcite, giving them bands of white and brown. Some of the beads are almost solid purple, and some have hardly any purple at all, but I love that variation between them.

Dogtooth Amethyst Beads, round, square & nugget shaped, being made into a necklace.

I searched and searched online until I found the perfect clasp for it, a sterling silver heart shaped toggle clasp with an amethyst accent, from a seller called Jazzy Jewels and Collectibles on Artfire. And finally(!), I actually started working on it.


Part of the necklace. You can see the part of the heart shaped toggle clasp on the left side of the picture.

I hope to finish it up this week and have it listed soon. I hope it looks as good in real life as what I've been picturing in my head all this time!

Also, I've been busy lining up vintage sellers on Artfire to participate in Vintage Thursdays, and I've got one lined up for this Thursday, Hand Me Down Treasures. Go check out her store, she's got some really neat stuff, and be sure to come back on Thursday to read her interview.

New beads! (and the bracelet I made from them)

It feels like it's been forever since I actually made anything. I've gotten sidetracked, trying to get all our stuff on our new Artfire site and trying to learn everything I can about Artfire and everything they recommend as far as marketing and branding - there's a lot of information, but it's been very interesting. However, one day last week, I had time before work to head up to The Artful Bead in Carrollton, Texas. It's a great store, and someday I'd love to go in and just buy everything they have, but I settled for a handful of new beads. As you can see, I was drawn to blues this time.


My pretty new beads!

At first, I thought I'd do one bracelet with all the different shades of blue, but I decided to stick with the brighter blues for this one, and I'll do another with the darker blue and the little purple butterflies later.
So one day, I sat down to start working.  I don't normally work in front of my computer, there's just not enough room, but I had some stuff for my real job that I needed to do too, so I was multitasking.
I pulled out the tools I needed:

The white plastic thing is called a Chain-Sta - it holds each end of a bracelet or necklace so you can place the beads a little easier. Sometimes I use it and love it, sometimes it just annoys me. The cloth mat keeps the beads from bouncing everywhere if I drop them, which I usually do. And yes, that's three pair of pliers - two chain nose and a round nose - plus the wire cutters.

I used a plain silver-colored chain, nothing fancy, and a toggle clasp. I started out placing the biggest beads, so they'd be roughly evenly spaced. You can see a couple of the white beads on it already too in the picture below.

I didn't have an exact plan beforehand, I just started adding things as evenly as I could, depending on how many of each bead I had. From this point, I just wire-wrapped all the beads onto the chain using headpins (there are lots of tutorials on wire wrapping out there and they're much better than I could ever explain it, if you're interested in that).

And here's my one more or less successful attempt to get a pic of me actually working on it:

I think I'm forming a loop in the wire there, but it's hard to tell. I just had to put the camera on a tripod, aim it in that general direction, hit the delay button, and hope for the best. 

Here's the finished product:

Click to see it in our Artfire store

I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please comment. If you didn't, well, please comment on that too. I'm still new at this blogging thing, trying to figure out what works best and what doesn't work at all. I don't want it to be just us selling stuff, I'd like it to be useful, or informative, or at least entertaining, I'm just trying to figure out how to do that.