Adventures in My Backyard

So I wandered about my backyard today with my camera. I don't go outside too often, and am in awe of the beauty that is...leaf season. We call it this at the restaurant, because it is the season where everyone comes out of the woodwork (especially from the cities) to drive up here and look at the trees, and then go out to eat. :) I did happen to take a couple of pictures of the mums that Mike brought home a couple of weeks back. They are in full bloom, and they have such wonderful color. White is a color that is gorgeous no matter what season it is, and this brick red bouquet of mums just sings autumn.

Blue n' Brassy

One of my favorite reasons I love working with glass beads is the amount of colors I can work with. One of my favorite color combinations is a rich navy blue that is paired with antiqued brass. Antiqued brass has a burnished dark gold color that works so well with the dark blue. I have made a few pieces that have this.

The necklace is lariat styled, featuring a simple antiqued brass chain that ends in a cluster of navy blue flowers~ it is worn with the brass ring in the front, with the cluster threaded through it. I like how the earrings turned out~ they are bold, swinging, and dangling. These, too, end in a small cluster of flowers. I was going to go with a streamlined earring, with three flowers in a line instead of the cluster at the bottom, but I love how the cluster has more visual appeal.

I am very much inspired and in awe of costume jewelry from the past century. If anyone is interested in this subject, there is a wonderful book out there called "Fabulous Fakes" by Carole Tanenbaum. It has a gorgeous array of pieces that the author has in her collection and has included for show in this book, illuminating what women wore in the past decades.

Bouquet Lariats

I am still on my little journey through making necklaces. I had an idea for a necklace that fit perfectly with the style of earrings that I make. Glass flowers are one of my favorite mediums to work with, so I incorporated them into a lariat necklace. I really liked the end result. I made a couple of them to match my earrings.


The Caribbean Cluster lariat~















This necklace is very simple, and I believe that my focus is on how the colors, the copper and the beautiful opaque turquoise hue, compliment each other. I personally love the shape of these flowers~ they dangle together in a cluster so well!

Flowers...and more flowers!

I've been pretty obsessed with flowers these days. There can never be enough colors for them. I've been working on a few projects for my shop that I'm pretty proud of. I've taken those awesome little lucite flowers and paired them with brass caps and Swarovski crystals. The frosted flowers go really well with the opaque brass. A couple of examples of these earrings are below: