Arizona Beads

I told you this would become bead-related eventually :-)  I visited both of the Cocopah store locations while in Sedona and made some bead selections inspired by things I saw and experienced on the trip.

Here's what I picked out:

 

 

 

A mix of ceramic bead tubes and rounds - reminded me of the artwork on the interior of the Desert Watchtower.

 

 

 

 

Painted Desert Jasper - the name kind of speaks for itself.  Plus, the wonderful deep reds and browns reminded me of the landscape around Sedona.

 

 

 

 

Impression Jasper - the aqua looks like the Colorado River running at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

 

 

 

 

Bird's Eye Rhyolite - a nod to my newfound obsession with birding :-)

 

 

 

 

Noreena Jasper ovals...

 

 

 

...and teardrops.  Another reminder of the red rocks of Sedona.  I worked through an entire basket of these beads to try to get two that were close enough that I thought they could make a pair of earrings.  I'm sure the poor lady at Cocopah thought I was bonkers, but she was so nice and put out a padded tray to allow me to lay out the contents of the basket and look through them.  I think I got pretty close considering, of course, that nothing was going to be EXACTLY identical.

 

 

 

 

The store had a whole selection of different types of hand-carved fetish birds - there were quail and some others I don't remember in addition to these darling hummingbirds.  They had a cute pair of earrings made up with these in the store, but I felt like the birds were a bit too long horizontally to balance really well so I just got one to make into a pendant.

 

 

 

 

Pretty polymer clay disk beads by an artist named Patricia Quinn.  I picked this pair to remind me of the Arizona sky.

 

 

 

And this pair made me think of the Native American ruins we saw.

 

 

 

 

This is lampwork by Theresa McGill.  The graphic lines and dots reminded me of the petroglyphs.

 

 

 

More lampwork by Theresa McGill - the black background reminded me of our stargazing tour and the bright pink was a reminder of all the beautiful flowers we saw coming into bloom as well as the fruit and syrup of the prickly pear cactus that we enjoyed eating so much.

 

 

 

 

This set and the one below didn't come from Cocopah.  Just to show that you never know where pretty beads will suddenly turn up, there was a store in the Tlaquepaque shopping area that had nothing whatsoever to do with beads, but I was killing time poking around in there while Ryan and my mom were on a bathroom run when I suddenly came across this basket on the front counter full of these fun sets of ceramic beads.  They were slightly on the spendy side (it IS a tourist destination after all) so I had to squash the urge to pick up a set in every colorway, but they are just so bright and fun and summery.

 

 

 

 

This is the other set I bought.  The red is more of a deeper berry color in real life than what my camera has done to them here, but still...YUM!  The tag on both sets says the artist's name is D. Fulps.

 

 

Now, I've just got to find time to get started making a few of these up into finished designs.  Time to put on my jewelry designer hat for a while and put down the birding binoculars and camera for a bit!

 

KJ