Tootage

Yeah, I gots more horn-tooting to do. I'm still riding high from seeing my stuff in "Stringing" and wanted to share some more of the publication giddiness.

I got a lot of mileage out of those beach inspiration pictures from last year and I discovered a lot of amazing new artists on Etsy around the same time - particularly ceramic artists!

After seeing this barnacle pendant on Summer's Studio's Etsy site, I had to grab it up (in fact, I grabbed more than one) and it quickly became a favorite shopping site for me.

I just love this pendant - it's gorgeous!

I didn't want to do to much else to the rest of the necklace so the pendant could remain the star of this piece. I also wanted to keep the feeling of picking up random treasures on the beach and having them all tangled together in your pocket on the way home.

Purple always makes a great contrast with aqua so I grabbed a frosted lavender "sea glass" style bead, some purple Czech firepolish rondelles and a couple of tiny amethyst beads. I'd also been hoarding a strand of Peruvian blue opal oval beads and I thought the aqua color streaked with the brown matrix not only reflected the pendant, but also the idea of sea and shoreline. A white shell disk bead, a couple of Swarovski crystals, and a brass starfish completed the look.

I had to work with brass chain, of course. This was one of my earliest attempts at using "base" metal rather than silver or gold. I'd always liked the look of it, but because of my own experiences with metal allergies, I'd been nervous about using it in my designs. I never wanted to have a customer come back to me complaining about a reaction.

Not much else to talk about today. I had planned to do some resin work last night, but I was just too tired when I got home. Tomorrow is my big Bead Soup reveal, though, so stay tuned for that!

KJ