Fashion Accessories: A Potpourri of Pieces

Saturday, November 1, 2008

A Potpourri of Pieces

For the most part, there is no rhyme or reason to the group of jewelry pieces that you see here although two were an experiment with colour (or perhaps the lack of it). I have been working on some custom orders and every now and then have to break from the gemstones and pearls I'm working with and use a completely different set of components. I don't use jade very often and since I don't I have an overflowing supply of some kinds of jade, so I truned to some rarely used colours for a change of pace. Above and below are a jade bracelet and a pair of jade earrings done with what is sometimes referred to as "candy jade." I had these wonderful lampwork beads by Suzette Celestin (I love the way that she combines colours and often has beads with a translucent effect in the middle of opaque) in colours that matched beautifully. I'm quite happy with the result - a bit too happy; I've already thought of two outfits I have at home that these would look great with!

I was intrigued with the lampwork beads, below, once again that mixture of translucent and opaque, this time in greens and aquas, and decided to mate them with faceted aquamarine rondelles. I really like these large genuine aquamarine rondelles; they have interesting faceting and colours; some are opaque and some a bit translucent, and because of their size they look great with lampwork beads, creating a very "even" aquamarine bracelet. The large gemstone bead is a banded agate that grounds the bracelet and picks up the taupe colour in some of the beads.

Below are two cloisonne bracelets I made for a real change. The first has cloisonee beads with a dark yellow background that I combined with vermeil and, happily, citrine nuggets. I really like this one! The one below is made with sodalite beads; these are a dark blue, almost reminiscent of lapis, but without the golden pyrite that one finds in lapis. This bracelet has especially good vermeil that I just received straight from Bali - very high quality.

Above is a lariat necklace made with pretty purple suede and the largest chunky amethyst nuggets that I've ever had on the ends. These nuggets have white banding on one side and then translucent amethyst on the other; I just love them! Below, two bracelets experimenting with all black with touches of white, and black and white and red. The bracelet with red has very shiny red lampwork beads laced with silver (by Robin Weber), black onyx, and white quartz. The bottom bracelet is double-stranded; one strand is an imprinted chain from the Thai Karen Hill Tribes; the major strand has banded agate (black and white) and some of my favorite matte-finished lampwork beads, and pretty Bali sterling.

Tomorrow may be a day of rest for some, but I think I'm probably going to spend the afternoon in the studio unless something unexpected comes up. Believe it or not, Christmas is looming close on the horizon!