Puttering In the Studio, Part II

I'd hoped to get this up sooner, but the last week or so has been pretty crazy.  I've had all these random opening shifts at work, which is pretty funny, since some of the openers have had equally random closing shifts.  It reminds me rather a lot of that time I got picked to sing back-up for the Backstreet Boys.  Anyway, this week's feature is some more puttering.

 Yay, beads and stuff!  This was actually the work of one evening, minus the bracelet, which i found lying finished in my bead board.  In spite of my BFA in jewelry and metalsmithing, I actually started off beading.  Believe me, they are two completely different worlds, with jewelers looking down on beaders and beaders looking up to jewelers, wanting to make "real" jewelry.  That's how I got started myself.  So, anyway, let's take a look.  I'd like to point out that 95% of the design work was done prior to the evening of assembly.

Lost bracelet!  I had found these sweet brass numbers a while back and thought a charm bracelet using the numbers from Lost would be the perfect way to use them.  Some ready made chain, findings and enough patience to count and properly place the numbers made for a pretty fun piece.

I almost feel bad saying I made this, since it was a ready made pendant and all I did was cut a length of chain and put a clasp on it.  Sorry it's sideways, but I forgot to rotate it prior to downloading and I'm too lazy to redo it.  Ditto for the rest of the necklace pics.

The green beads are NOT neon green, they just caught the light badly in every pic I took.  This was actually a restringing project, since I had initially made it too large.  The beads are acrylic.

I love chandelier earrings, and I really liked these components.  The only tricky bit was picking out the beads from my too large stash.

Another add chain to ready made pendant piece.  Definitely an instant gratification piece.

 Yay, earrings! The top pair are glass and fluorite, and the bottom pair are glass pendants I found and removed the bails from.

This guy's been in the works for months, but I had to wait to string it because the hole in the centerpiece wasn't drilled properly and I had to go back and redrill.  The green bit is stabilized turquoise, the blue ones are regular turquoise and all the metal bits are base metal.  It's strung on waxed linen, a particular favorite stringing material of mine.

Anyway, this  all got me thinking about the attitude I've always had towards beaded jewelry, which is that it's not real jewelry.  Frankly, it's a really unhealthy way to think.  Sure, there's no fire and you're not manipulating metal, glass, or stone, but there are still design aspects and it's still quite wearable.  Technically, i suppose it would be costume jewelry, a term which has sadly fallen out of use.  Costume jewelry is usually made from base metals and glass, but there's a certain amount of flair it has that's lacking from so-called real jewelry.  Perhaps it's the low cost of materials that makes the difference.  After all, when you're paying over $600 an ounce for your materials, it's hard to really play around.  I'm not saying that what I've got for you today is on the same scale (indeed, anyone can do it), but that doesn't mean it's invalid, and maybe I should stop thinking so little of my throw-away pieces.