Frog & Opal

Frog and Opal - sounds like the name of an upmarket pub! Anyway, here are a couple of necklaces I made last night. The first one is using the beautiful tree frog bead from Clearly Glass (check out their website on the link to your left) and it caused me a lot of grief! I had thought to do one of my vine/leaf creations, but after trashing my bead stash looking for suitable beads, shattering endless green glass leaf beads (I am not the most disciplined of workers to say the least...), throwing away mangled pieces of wire, I decided that simplicity would be the best way to go for this as the bead is so special it barely needs any embellishment. So it is on gold-plated wire, with a few little coils, and some vintage AB faceted beads that pick up the light.
Even that was a struggle, working out which way to attach each link so that the necklace would lie flat when worn - so it may look simple, but a great deal of thought and effort went into it!
£25 + p&p

At the weekend we went to a local craft fair, and on one stall with jewellery made from semi-precious stones, the lady had a little chest of loose stones for sale. In amongst them were three gorgeous milky opalescent stones - I don't think they actually are opals or they wouldn't have been 50p each! So I quickly nabbed all three and spent the rest of the day holding them up to the light going 'oooh...aaahhh..pretty......' The above is the first necklace with a cube shaped stone wrapped in silver wire with a spiral. It is then hung on a longer link with a clear glass bead and attached to a silver link chain with clear seed beads. This is slightly longer than I normally make these chains, so the pendant hangs just above your cleavage if you have one! It is for sale at £15 + P&P but if it's not snapped up soon, it might just find it's way into my personal collection!

Thank you everyone who posted kind comments about the black fluffy dog (Casper is his name according to my daughter...) - that doesn't mean I am making another one any time soon!