Beady eyes
It started with the Southbanks. I picked up some more fabric in a sale to make a few more of them, since they are so immensely useful, which means I'm going to end up with one in every colour I want to wear. Thankfully for my wallet, that is still a fairly limited selection; however, one of my favourite colours happens to be green, and there are quite a lot of greens. And while my favourite green is undoubtedly full-on Kelly green (I'm wearing a Southbank in that very colour at the moment), I'm also fond of olive shades, especially combined with red plus cream and/or gold. So one of the new fabrics is a light olive colour, and that made me think "ah! I can wear unakite beads again!"
Heh. Well, they are in this photo, but they're not easy to pick out. Unakite is not a very flashy stone and it doesn't stand out well. If you look right at the back of the picture, slightly to the right of centre, just below the white false pearls, you can just about see them. They're an olive green colour with hints of red (which is why I like them so much); they can look almost brown in the wrong light. And I should have bought two strands, because it's not a very long one, but if I alternate them with the gold delicas (bottom left) I'll get a necklace that works.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "you wanted unakite and you ended up with all this lot?!"
Um, well, yes. You see, to start off with, I thought "I haven't got enough spacer beads." If you do beading at all, you will very soon find that you never do have enough spacer beads. I normally favour 3 mm false pearls or the delicas for that purpose, but they didn't have the 3 mm pearls in either of the two colours I normally use; there's a frosted white or an iridescent white, both of which look reasonably natural, but the plain white just doesn't look like pearls to me. (I should explain here that I obviously use false pearls rather than real ones because I'm a vegan, but I want good ones. These are excellent; they're glass rather than plastic, and they have a coating that doesn't flake or chip.) So I had to go for 2 mm pearls, and, ah, they had some of those galvanised gold delicas in stock, those are really useful, let's have some more of those. And while I was buying unakite I also looked to see what other semi-precious stones they had, hence the green aventurine.
And then there was the whole thing of earrings. I had my ears pierced precisely six weeks before the General Election took place, which meant that I got to change my studs for the first time on election day, and I went round asking all my friends if this counted as election earring. This means that I don't get to wear danglies until about Christmas/New Year; well, not proper danglies, anyway. I have a few studs that are a little bit of a cheat because they have a small drop bead or similar, and I have to say I do like wearing those. Not that I ever want to go for the sort of dangly earrings that are so long they hit your shoulder; there is far too much risk of catching those in something. Nor am I a fan of enormous hoops. Nonetheless, there is a happy medium, and I don't want to wear teeny studs all the time; so I've made a few pairs already to match various necklaces, and I felt it would be nice to make a couple of free-standing pairs, as it were. There isn't much of a selection of pendant beads on the site, but I did manage to snag some red crystal hearts (very pleased with those, as I've been finding it surprisingly hard to find a good choice of earrings with red stones at a reasonable price) and some long green drop beads. There are a number of bead earring design patterns available, but I'm inclined to avoid them, as they look very nice but rather heavy. I'd rather design something simple but eye-catching myself.
So, while I was looking for beads that might work for earrings, I ended up looking at the Czech "fire polish" beads, of which you can see a few examples here: the crystals next to the aventurine, the green beads above the gold delicas, the red ones above those, and the dark grey haematite-esque beads on the right. To be honest, if they'd come in packs of six, that's probably what I would have bought; they'll make magnificent earrings. Instead, they come in packs of 100, enough to make earrings plus a necklace (with judicious use of spacer beads, of course). They'll make a change. I normally favour the false pearls, but I don't object to having a few necklaces that are a little more sparkly.
All told, I reckon I have here the makings of about seven or eight necklaces, give or take, plus probably about the same number of pairs of earrings; so, while my bead haul wasn't exactly cheap, it still ends up being a remarkably economical way to buy jewellery. Plus I get to design it myself exactly the way I want it. Plus I get the fun of actually making it (it normally takes about an hour to make a necklace and a pair of earrings, though obviously that does depend on the length of the necklace; I have a black one that is a flapper special, which I always wear in at least two loops and can go up to four, and that took ages to make).
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and string up the unakite!
