Eggplant!

I noticed this week that I was on a purple streak, as three of my newest projects had purple hues to them. Two of my favorites include Eggplant Leaves, and Tiny Eggplants. I was instantly in love with the rich purple tones of these lucite beads, and thought they would look really nice paired with brass. This type of purple isn't overly bright, but more toned down, like many colors that remind me of fall.

Blue and Brassy Dangles

I was searching in the Etsy forums, and I found a thread from someone who was interested in buying earrings on Etsy, and had some very good tips for earrings sellers. Among those tips: she likes earrings that are elongated, instead of starting out thin amd widening at the bottom. I've taken a look at my earrings and see that most of my earrings have that particular quality~ the bouquet clusters do fan out at the bottom of the earrings. So I tried branching out a bit last night with these earrings. I've strayed away from these types of earrings for a while, but I do like the thin styled earrings as well~ they remind me of rosary chains.

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.