Green and Blue Jewellery

I am making jewellery to match my green and blue eyeglass frames, as I seem to be wearing those colours more and more often, especially over these summer months.

My latest creation is a necklace, that started with a ceramic flower focal bead made by Jennifer Heynen and mixed bag of beads I bought from Anne Nikolai Kloss in Milwaukee. My work surface looked like this:

I was going to just use a rather plain strand of beads to hold the focal dangle but I was inspired by some necklaces that Andrew Thorton of Green Girl Studios made recently and posted on his blog (see his entry of July 15th): http://andrew-thornton.blogspot.com/. His designs gave me the idea that I should mix it up a little bit, rather than just string a bunch of similar beads in a strand and call it done. I was also inspired by a necklace I have made by Amber Higgins (a.k.a. Worn Beadies) with respect to the positioning of the clasp at the front of the necklace, above the focal bead. I'm really happy with the result, so thank you, Andrew and Amber, for inspiring me!!

Speaking of Green Girl Studios, I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew, his sister Cynthia, her husband Greg Ogden and their daughter Azalea at the Bead and Button show in June. They are all lovely people and they make the most amazing beads and charms, mostly out of pewter. I wanted to buy at least one of each of their charms (they have dozens and dozens to choose from) but in the end, I couldn't decide and just went home with a catfish bead (half cat, half fish). http://www.greengirlstudios.com/

Commitment update: 3 workouts in 4 days (took today off to rest my back after 3 days of workouts and because I was attending a family picnic).