A Year in the Making, Day 34

Yesterday I received my first shipment of Swarovski crystals from ArtBeads, as a part of their Beaders Who Blog program. Swarovskis reduce me to gibbering glee whenever I hold them, I'll admit. They're so fantastic - the color, the sparkle. They bring out every feather of the magpie in me.

I waffled back and forth between choosing between the pendants and the beads, but I fell in love with the crystallized cubist beads. Didn't really have anything to do with the fact that they've got a burgundy one for the thumbnail! Really! I received 10 each of the 16mm and 12mm burgundy crystals.



It was a bit of a challenge for me, as I don't normally work in beads this big, so the necklace I'd originally pictured in my head when I selected these turned out to not be feasible, as my chain was too delicate to support their weight and still keep a graceful curve line. But that's okay. I started laying them out on the table playing bead tetris with them, and came up with a choker made up of the larger beads, with the smaller ones dangling, accented by some additional Swarovskis from my stash - 3mm aurora borealis clear bicones, and faceted briolettes. Here's the result:



A close-up of the center:



This took nine of the 16mm crystals and 8 of the 12mm. That left me two of the smaller ones to make matching earrings:



And that also left me with one lonely 16mm crystal. Poor lonely crystal.



It became a bracelet this morning, because as I was looking at it all by its lonesome I realized it'd been months since I'd made anything that used an obscene amount of headpins. So it became the centerpiece of a bracelet, framed by peach colored freshwater pearls.

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