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June Birthstones

Modern – Pearl & Moonstone   Traditional – Alexandrite  Mystical - Moonstone   Pearls, the beautiful and elegant organic gems, are unromantically but scientifically described as globular cysts of calcium carbonate (mainly aragonite, a relatively soft carbonate mineral (CaCO3) that also makes up the shells of mollusks) that form within the tissues of mollusks as nacre, a protective coating resulting from an internal irritation, such as a grain of sand. Most pearls on the market today are cultured by inserting an artificial irritant or bead into the mollusk shell to create the pearl. Coin pearls - such as the ones in the picture above - are formed around a flat shaped bead nucleaus that causes the pearl to form around it into a coin, oval or square....

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BSBP Hoarders Edition - The Sequel

I had some time this week to play with another one of the items that my share partner, Carla sent me.  The enameled pendant that she made was calling my name.  I wanted to pick up the colors in the pendant with gemstones and knew that Carnelian would be a nice match to the red. The yellow had me stumped though. I didn't really have anything that coordinated well.  There were some natural colored peridot sitting on my work space that caught my eye.  Serendipity! The green had just enough yellow in it to play up the yellow but they were not too matchy, matchy.   I oxidized some silver wire, chain and a clasp to go with the black metal...

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BSBP Hoarders Edition - The Reveal :)

  From the beginning, I knew I wanted to make a long wire wrapped necklace using the vintage crackle glass beads and the striped 1980s furnace glass beads.  I looked at the colors in the striped glass beads as inspiration for what else to use in the necklace - black, blue, orange, light rose and yellow.   Adding black seemed too harsh, light rose just seemed to not belong and I'm not a big fan of yellow. I decided to use some blue and its complement orange to add more color to the piece. I am madly in love with cobalt blue glass and had some long vintage tube beads in my hoarded stash (not knowing what to do with them yet)...

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BSBP - Bead Soup Blog Party

I'm participating in a something known as a BSBP. What is a Bead Soup Blog Party? It's a gift exchange of sorts, but with beads and then the added excitement of a show of the finished designs made with those beads.   Laurie Anderson, the organizer, is an online friend of mine who I have known for so long now I can't remember what year we first "met" but it has to have been at least 10 years ago. She has a similar obsession with beads of all sorts as I do - in fact so does every participant in the BSBP, a huge number of her online friends who like us, have a big stash of beads (our Bead...

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