Fixing Things... - Liz's Brooch

My friend Liz showed me her brooch yesterday and it was in a very sorry state. It had come with a cardigan and was pretty, or would have been if it had been made with more care. Lots of bits of very thin wire had been used and the ends not tidied off so they'd caught and eventually come loose.

There weren't many beads left so I added more. Liz wanted to use it with a brown, black and purple cardigan, so I used the beads that were still on the brooch (the large purple one, the golden ones, and the brown tigereye [?] ones) and added more: garnet, amethyst, red jade and plum coloured glass chips, the pink bead, the deep wine coloured freshwater pearls, plum coloured crackle and amethyst coloured faceted beads and a faceted peach vintage bead.

However, first I had to take it apart completely. Two of the three loops at the bottom of the pin fell off when I took the wire off... Not much left of it, but I had fun using 1 (!) string of deep purple wire to string all the beads on securely. To make sure the wire would stay in place and not move (because I did only have a single loop left to hold it in place), I used some super glue at the back.

Here's the result:

Orders

I got a few orders at the last party - either to add to an existing design or a new design entirely.
Here is what I made over the weekend.

The first one was a matching pair of earrings to the "Renaissance" necklace.

Here's the set.



This was a necklace to match the green/blue/purple shell bracelet, for which I'd already made some earrings a while back.


Here's a picture of the set.

Another purple spectacle chain:


Skull bracelet. This is another one - I'd made one with a tan leather thong and brown beads, this one has purple and black beads and the same little skull beads. The purple is slightly stronger in day light. For some reason the flash seems to "eat" purple and make it look slightly dull.
Two lovely bracelets for boys with wooden and glass beads, and Tibetan spacers. The glass bead on the blue bracelet is a recycled glass beads and looks wonderful in daylight - full of little blue specks and a lovely frosted look.

Second Party - More Vintage

With the last party and work and everything else there wasn't much time to play with my new stock, but with a few late nights I managed to have some fun anyway, here's the result:


Firefly



All vintage beads on a beautiful antique bronze chain with a vintage brass butterfly.


Sparkly Heart
All vintage beads with vintage charms on a silver plated chain with a beautiful heart shaped clasp.


Blue Butterfly

All vintage beads with vintage butterflies and a few bits of vintage chain (between the two butterflies either side and the centre one and on the centre butterfly) on silver plated chain with a gorgeous toggle clasp.

Eternal Winter

My personal favourite. Mostly new beads, apart from the frosted flower beads but the bracelet looks wonderful and really, really frosty.


Now I am off to do some more tidying and cleaning.... so much to do so little time....