camwyn | (no subject)

Ran out of energy halfway through the workday yesterday. Kind of aggravating given that I've been trying to pursue an exercise program at Darebee.com (thirty days of ab workouts, with an eye to adding weight training and some other stuff as I go) and had hoped to climb my building's stairs at lunch. As it stood I just did not feel up to even making lunch, although I did eventually manage that. I expect it was probably the result of multiple nights in a row of insufficient sleep plus a good-sized morning coffee wearing off at a bad moment. Possibly the tail end of a cold was involved as well. We'll see what I can manage to do today.

I've gotten a number of expired product notices from my Aftcra account- things I posted back in July that never sold. I'll relist them and see about new descriptions. I may wind up getting an Etsy account if I absolutely have to; I don't much want to, because I dislike what I've read of their pricing and I'm not happy with being one of literally eighteen thousand sellers, but people at least recognize the name.

I did, however, get a beading project done the other night. I'd been working on wire stuff more than bead stuff lately and wanted to get some beadwork done. There was a pattern at facetjewelry.com that I really liked the look of, so I got the remaining components (I had bronze seed beads in two sizes but nowhere near enough crystal bicones, and I needed some pendants) and set to work. The end result fit my neck more closely than I'd anticipated. I may go back and add two more jump rings for a little breathing room, as I think it looks best fitted closely rather than hanging lower on the neck.

A necklace of bronze seed beads and bluegreen crystal bicone beads. The beads are formed into square units of both bronze and bluegreen, linked at the corners by groups of four bluegreen bicones. At the front of the necklace are three dangling pendants, connected to the main necklace by groups of four bluegreen bicones. The central pendant contains a square unit and a bluegrey irregular oval drop. The pendants on either side are just the bicones and the bluegrey irregular oval drop. The necklace is being worn by someone with pale skin, and it fits very closely to the neck.

The dangly bits at the bottom of the three central pendants are Swarovski crystal, from a design line they worked on with Jacques Cousteau's daughter a year or two ago. They're supposed to be stylized radiolarians. I liked the look better than a more regular pendant shape.

I realized somewhere along the way as I was working on this thing that I could sum up my preferred jewelry style or look or whatever as 'Tsarina of all the Russias'. As much as I love doing things with seaglass and other kinds of jewelry, a really intricate repeating pattern of beaded motifs emulating fancypants fine jewelry will catch my eye every time.