Sing Your Heart Out

More Labor Day jewelry coming up, but first, a little horn tootin'!

I had several items picked to be in Etsy treasuries over the weekend. This one features my "Mermaid with a Mirror" bead and other great beachy stuff. Or, you can go psychedelic with "Trippy Treasures" which includes one of my kaleidascope bottlecap pendants. And then there's "Death by Chocoloate" which sort of speaks for itself and shows off one of my chocolate and gold resin pendants.

Be Resinable seems to be doing quite well. Now, I just need to get that kind of action going at Silver Parrot and I will be quite the happy camper.

But, I'll keep on making jewelry whether sales pick up or not. It makes me happy to create pretty things and that's reason enough to keep on doing it. I do sometimes wonder what will happen to all this stuff when I go to the Big Bead Shop in the Sky. Will it get buried with me? Sold off for $1 a piece at a garage sale? Sent to Goodwill? Tossed in the ocean? This must be why wizards need apprentices ;-)

Okay, I know, it's weird that I think about this stuff, but that's just the way my brain works. I can't help it.

On to the jewelry:

Y'all are probably sick of looking at this design, but after I re-did it the first time and road tested it again, I decided it needed just a tad more length.

On second thought...is it really possible to get tired of Paris? Je dis "non."

I was out of copper chain so I added that small section of wire-wrapped teal Czech beads at the back. I've also realized (duh) that if I'm going to venture into longer necklaces, which I'd like to do more of because I'm tired of always doing such short ones, I'm going to need a larger necklace bust or mannequin for photos. These pictures just don't do justice to this necklace because you can't really see where the Eiffel Tower link hits, etc.

Okay, actually NEW stuff now:

I bought this pretty and unusual polymer clay pendant on Etsy a few months ago and have already featured it in a bead porn post so it was time to make something with it. I wanted to keep a delicate feel to the final design, play up the pastel color scheme and keep in line with the slight vintage feel of the pendant.

Again, I need a larger necklace bust because you can't really see the full color scheme in this picture.

I started with a brass bird chain that I found at Michael's and took a few birds off of it to use more as links than as actual chain. Next, I added wire-wrapped links using bronze Parawire and vintage etched pink glass beads.

Then I used the birds again to transition to the back half of the necklace - which is composed of more wire-wrapped links this time featuring coin-shaped pale green glass. It picks up the green in the bird picture quite nicely.

The clasp is a simple brass hook - patinated to match the dark tones of the wire.

And here's a better shot of the complete necklace. It's a simple design, but I felt there was so much going on with the focal that I didn't want to detract from that. And that's my "Sing Your Heart Out" necklace.

And now for a few random thoughts (because they'll keep swirling around in my head until I get them out):

1. Am I the only one who has been freaked out by the ads for that movie "The Devil" - y'know, the part where the girl frantically screams "TURN ON THE LIIIIIIGGGGHHHHHTTTTSSSSSS!" I suppose the worst part is that I often watch TV in my bed late at night with the lights off and kinda start to drift off to sleep and then one of those ads comes on and she starts screaming and WOW! Seriously freaky!

2. And speaking of commercials that are bugging me...could we STOP with the incessant media barrage about "The Event" series premiere? I AM OVER IT! And I'm SOOOO not watching it. It looks like a bad combo of "Lost" (which "lost" me after the first season) and "24" (which lost me after about the 3rd season).

3. Do not call, text, e-mail, IM, Facebook or whatever me tonight between 8-9 PM as I will be getting my Hugh Laurie fix on with the premiere of "House." The only way to get my attention will be to drop a nuclear bomb directly on my house and really? Unless you are my mother (because she thinks I should be at her beck and call at a moment's notice), that's probably overdoing it a tad.

4. There were more random thoughts, but I started thinking about Hugh Laurie and forgot the rest.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

KJ