Recently in All that Glitters is Good Category

Look what I found on sale at FusionBeads....

Yummy!! No, I don't know what I'll do with them. Yes, I want them to be here already.

1. Gems, 2. Gems, 3. Gems, 4. Gems

How gorgeous is all that?! A few weeks ago when the MO was out of town on business, I was clicking through tv channels and happened across something called Jewelry TV.... Oh my. If they had been selling their finished jewelry at that point, all this could have been avoided, because I wouldn't have looked twice, but no, they had to be selling loose gemstones. Really yummy ones. In grab bags.... So yeah, I caved. AND I'M SO GLAD I WAS WEAK.

An amethyst sink? SIGN ME UP!!!

MSN Video: The Roach Broach

Rhinestoned roaches. Wrong on so many levels....

(After the commercial and the weird intro about melba toast and soylent green.)

Just look at these goodies!

My moms & I ordered together from Fire Mountain to get the quantity discount, and I got the shipment today. Some stuff was backordered, but still a gorgeous selection! I love love loooooove beadies....

In this picture: red aventurine, peach aventurine, red jasper, rhodonite, mookite, unakite, autumn jasper, jade, and jadeite. The red stuff isn't really quite as red as it looks (on my monitor, at any rate) but it is all beautiful. We tried to get stuff that "goes together" and we did a much better job than usual. In real life, the aventurine, jasper and rhodonite look quite smashing together. Also got some Swarovski crystals in what turned out to be fairly random colors that don't really go with the gemstones after all, but you can't really call a swaro bead ugly no matter what. So I guess it's time to put together a Bead Party and make some stuff! Woohoo!

Tonight, a little surfing trip on TMI.... How could I not keep exploring after I found an industrial wire weaving machine? Sometimes the MO should be very glad we're not jillionaires with a warehouse worth of garage space....

Pix from Saturday's Bead Party are on TMI: http://themagpieinstinct.com/2005/11/bead_party.html

But the only ink I brought home is the positioning marks they put on my earlobes. I finally decided it was time to try earrings again. I had terrible problems with knots no matter what kind of metal posts or wires I used and I gave up and let the holes close years ago. The knots went away, and so did all my earrings :-(

Well, according to the nice folks at Sacred Heart Studio, some or all of my problems could have been a result of having the holes made with a piercing gun. (Over 20 years ago, I certainly had no idea there was any alternative to going to the mall store and getting that horrid pointy stud thing blammed into my earlobe.) The stud isn't sharp enough to cut the skin--it just rips through. This hurts (why yes, it certainly did), causes swelling (oh yes, that too) and also leaves a wound that is going to take longer to heal (now I suspect that it never did really heal inside the hole, because sometimes even years later the holes would get weepy, and of course there were those knots).

The needle they use at a piercing studio, however, is super sharp and although they promised me it really wasn't going to hurt much, I didn't believe it. Happily, they were right! I mean, it's not completely painless, but it hurt way less than getting a shot (probably an overused comparison--something about the needle just brings that to mind). There was just a sort of twinge and it was all over. No residual pain and no swelling at all!

Also, now you can get a hoop instead of a stud, which is better in so many ways. I won't wake up with dents in the side of my neck from sleeping on the earring, and it's supposed to be much better for cleaning the wound while it's healing. And I got to pick out a little bead to put on the hoop, so how cool is that?

The third big difference was the aftercare instructions. No alcohol! No peroxide! Wow.... Times they have changed.... Instead, they gave me a bottle of some hippy-dippy soap, and all you do is wash your earlobe, turn the hoop a few times to get the soap through the hole, then rinse and use the hoop again to clean out the hole. Totally different. So I have high hopes that I'll be wearing fun earrings by Christmas-time without the frustration that I experienced before!

Beryl = Aquamarine = Heliodor = Emerald = droooooooool

Turns out the Houston Museum of Natural Science has quite an impressive gem and mineral exhibit. Quite impressive. Oh yes. Oh yesssssss.....

Forbes: Million-Euro Bugatti

Among the many options a Veyron buyer can order, are two one-carat diamonds, cut with 16 sunray facets (16 being the number of cylinders the engine features). The two diamonds reside, respectively, on the speedometer needle, and at the center of something Bugatti calls the "powermeter."

I found a nice source for jump rings: Spiderchain Jewelry. Some very helpful pages are the Favorite Weaves and Sample Pictures. The "shopping cart" is really a calculator that sends an email with an order number to you and to Spider. You then follow up separately with payment (PayPal accepted). You can include some comments about what you're trying to build (which I did) and Spider will sanity check your order (which he did) which is a nice touch.

My magpie eye got stuck on the niobium rings, which are especially pretty in mixed colors. I got these: air mix. Now I just hope they get here in time for the Bead Party this Saturday :-)

Lots of housecleaning--today was absolutely gorgeous so we opened all the windows that do that trick and got some fresh air. The cats spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get out....

(Yes, the dumb-bell ended up in the garden when I closed the window. Must remember to go rescue it tomorrow....)

Washed draperies and shower curtains. Bleached the tub. MO did a major renovation on the big fishtank. I made a necklace in tribute ;-)

I know the picture is fuzzy, but the splitter and pendant are Gita sterling enameled pieces that I bought years ago. Finally figured out what to do with them!

This Hallmark Encyclopedia is pretty cool. It seems to be more oriented towards flatware and whatnot rather than jewelry, but the photos are great and it's still interesting.

[Link from Coudal Partners Fresh Signals]

I've finally admitted that I just don't "get" netting 'cause whenever I try to design a netted piece myself, it just doesn't work. Here is an attempt from a few weekends ago:

Great colors (really--I know you can't tell from the picture--it's carnelians and citrines with lime-green and rust-brown glass) but very stiff and weird. So I took that all apart and ended up with two single-strand necklaces that I really like.

Anyhow, since this admission, I've given myself permission to actually follow patterns instead of winging it, and now sometimes I end up with netted stuff that's actually good! Here is today's example:

This is a very-near copy of the "Lacy Loops" project by Lois Fetters (in the Vintage Style section of the April 2005 issue of Bead and Button). I used 13-0 charlottes instead of regular 11-0s, so I ended up with a more delicate net and more loops, and I didn't use an accent bead color in the net, but other than that, I pretty much followed the directions. And unlike my usual "I'm going to follow this pattern if it kills me" episodes, I actually finished it, and I actually like it :-) I'll be wearing it tomorrow, of course!

This is an update to a previous post about Lise Aagaard's BeadLiner, which doesn't seem to be available any longer.

Lapidary Journal published an article by Susan Silvy in June 2001 titled "Silver Core Lampworked Bead". I'm not sure if this is the article I remember reading (I don't remember that particular magazine cover) but I suspect it is about how to do this manually: http://www.lapidaryjournal.com/archive/jun01toc.cfm [Click on BeadLiner in the left column, then on the top left black square, then on the link in the word "here" to the right of the big missing picture.]

Mid-Atlantic Glass Beadmakers have a brief description of capping and lining a bead in their April 2004 Meeting Minutes: http://www.sgb-midatlantic.org/minutes/minutes_Apr_2004.htm [Scroll down to "Afternoon DEMOS"]

And finally, there is an archived copy of Lise Aagaard's BeadLiner instructions in the WayBack Machine (unfortunately without pictures): http://web.archive.org/web/20031005204558/www.liseaagaard.com/index.asp

For the curious, I'm also posting a picture of my BeadLiner and the "curving tool" mentioned in the above instructions:

(The ruler goes with the top picture, not the bottom one!)

I found the tool to be very persnickety about the size of tubing (diameter and wall thickness), but other than that it works well. Most of my beads were made on a much smaller mandrel, so it takes some time with a bead reamer to get them ready for coring. Learning to do it by hand would probably be more flexible, but I seem to remember the article warning that you should be prepared to break a few beads in the process....

Jeanne, hope this all helps :-)

Just saw these Schonbek Geometrix chandeliers on an HGTV show. They're being touted as "task lights for the kitchen." Well, la!! I want these in my kitchen for sure!

Yesterday's Bead Party was sooo much fun!

To lend an air of respectability to all the mimosa-drinking, I used the beautiful white table linens that Just Joe and Marianne gave us for Christmas.

The Man was in full chef mode, and insisted on plating the potato cake before fleeing the growing atmosphere of estrogen.

We had a very productive day--everybody made something, and most of us had time to make several pieces. Here Ann models her dangly earrings and I show off two of my necklaces:

And here is a round-up of the first set of bracelets:

TFLIH and I were last women standing, and we finished the afternoon with a lot of laughing as we tried to make beaded rings following instructions from a Japanese beading book. (Yes, the text is all in Japanese. Luckily, it has lots of pictures.) The results ranged from "Hey, that's pretty cool!" to "I'm just going to send this to my mother and tell her I made it. Then she'll have to wear it."

This morning I still had beads on the brain, so I got that book back out and tried one of the necklace patterns. It took for-frickin-ever but I like the results!

I do believe that The Magpie Instinct's motto, "All that glitters is good," has once again been proven true.

Just got the latest flyer from Nice People and they're not coming to Houston this time around. Austin, San Antonio, Midland (?!) and Dallas, but no Houston. So the good news is I won't spend several hundred dollars on beads this month. The bad news is I won't spend several hundred dollars on beads this month. Sigh.

Here is a pic of one of the necklaces that Mark gave me for Christmas. The centerpiece is very cleverly put together! Each flat pearl is on a headpin, which is wrapped around an armature that has little pegs sticking out for that purpose. The pearls completely cover the armature from the front, and even from the back it is very neat and smooth. As you can see, it lies well on the neck. I love to see inventive ways to use new bead shapes....

Yesterday Marianne and I shopped ALL DAY, initially fortified by a delicious Just Joe breakfast (complete with mimosas!) and resuscitated with a typically incredible Chez Mark dinner (and several rousing hands of Quiddler). We have such good men!!

First we went to the powwow, where I found a necklace and two (2!) rings. The chain on the necklace is kind of beat up, so I may do something a bit more attractive with it at some point, but I like the spiral links.

This ring isn't nearly as fuzzy in real life...
and I thought I'd show this one in its natural setting.

Then we went to the Houston Bead Society show at the Firehouse in the Heights:

I have NO idea what I'm going to do with those teeny tiny bugle beads. They are the smallest beadies I've ever seen. But they were just too gorgeous to pass up.

Oh, the glittery goodness of it all.... 'Twas a superlative day indeed.