Wire makes an amazing medium for fitting gems and beads to a pendant or necklace. I've been inspired by that lately so I'm making necklaces. These are two of my most recent designs. I've had a long term weakness for large amethyst beads, so I repeat their use fairly often. The brown tourmaline briolette is a beautiful thing I've been waiting to use. Here is it as a pendant on copper. I wanted to avoid over-embellishing this bead ... I hope I succeeded!

How are we inspired?

Where do our ideas come from? Some people are deliberate in seeking inspiration. I admire those people who take a quiet space, and fill it with things they find inspiring. Music, art, books, fabrics, natural artifacts. I know several people who keep a file in their computers, of pictures of things that are inspiring, from the internet (I do that too).

But when I'm planning to use a set of beads, often I sit them with my work things and just wait. I've been waiting to do something with the Czech glass melons in this bracelet ... wondering what they might be. They're a lovely bead, a mix of greens, some with a bluish haze, some lean toward a pink. Some of the green moves toward yellow. Since they arrived I've wanted to blend them with silver. Today, for some reason, I turned some of them into this bracelet. The focal setting is an aventurine nugget, hugged between Balinese style caps. I also used a couple of large, rhyolite beads (rainforest jasper). I think these Czech beads would be wonderful with greys and blues also but today I simply put them together. As if the inspiration had been in the back of my head lurking, waiting to take action once I stopped wondering what to do with the beads. Like a small thunderclap.

I wonder how it goes with other jewelery makers?

Balance, rush, crafting and business

Is it perfectionism? I think it's perfectionism with a splash of eager rush. These earrings appeared in my Etsy store with the small cloisonne beads hanging beneath the large, Czech cathedral beads. They're all beautiful beads. However, generally beads balance best if the larger beads are at the bottom. After days of looking at the original earrings, I decided that the beads deserve to be balanced, and balance will do them justice. I wish (yet again) that I'd balanced them this way around at the first manufacturing! Oh well, here they are. Skyflower earrings, the way they need to be. :) I hope this will be the last major edit of a listed item in my shop!