Fairy Skirts and Butterflies

****Beepbeepdtdtdbeepbeep...we interrupt this blog post for some very important late-breaking hermit crab news. Summers has switched shells. Repeat. Summers has found a new shell home. Photos at a later date.

We now return you to your regular blog post reading... Beepbeepdtdtdbeepbeep****

(I knew you guys were all holding your breath over Summers' shell status so you can relax now).

A while back, I bought these GORGEOUS "fairy skirt" beads from Mermaid Glass:

They are just so pretty, I knew I had to come up with something special to put with them, so I ransacked my li'l stash pile (it's tiny, you know...I really have hardly any beads at all...cough...cough) and came up with these:

Delicious ceramic butterflies from Round Rabbit. Throw in some Czech glass, moonglow lucite and brass chain and wire and...

Welcome to the "Butterfly Garden." Aqua, purple and turquoise - pretty much my favorite color combo EVER.

Here's a closeup on the main butterfly focal. I TRIED to get a good shot of the amazing colors in the glaze on this. It's a pale seafoam green at the edges shading to a deep, rich purple in the middle with these explosions of blue and lavender popping up through it. I don't know how Nancy did this, but it's truly outstanding.

Closeup of one side - I knew I loved those mottled purple and aqua Czech glass rondelles when I bought them. This is why stuff has to go into the stash and just wait around for the RIGHT project to be part of.

On this side, I used the a fairy skirt as a dangle, added a large Czech glass flowe as a dangle and then I was going to do a rondelle, but I'd had this little lavender lampwork flower from Beeboo sitting on my workspace (it was a freebie that came with a set I bought from her) all by its lonesome and it just jumped up and demanded to be part of the design. I was skeptical at first, but it won me over and now I think it looks great.

I can't figure out why I spent so many years being afraid of brass (and copper and gunmetal) chain. There's no way this design would work with silver or gold. NO WAY!

Yeah, this shot is just to revel in the colors. Because I love them.

And what do you do with leftover fairy skirts? Make earrings of course! There's this scene in the animated Disney movie, "Fantasia", where flower blossoms sort of twirl up into the wind and ALMOST look like fairies and that was the inspiration behind these.

Plus, I will always and forever love long, dangly earrings.

And this photo I took just for fun - I dunno why, but I wanted to see one earring flipped up and the other down. I guess to look like they might look when being worn and flipping around with the movement of the wearer.

Oh, and just to show that most of the time I have no idea where I'm going with a particular design - I call it "beading by the seat of my pants" - here's a pic of the original version of the necklace:

I like the placement of the second butterfly better in this version, but the two sides of the necklace didn't seem balanced to me so I had to switch things around. That brass leaf component ended up not making it into the final version, but I'm sure it will show up somewhere else eventually.

Y'know, I haven't had a poll for a while...I think I'll set one up now. Check out the top right of the screen and vote to let me know which version you prefer.

That's it for today. Tomorrow - bead show porn! See you then!

KJ