Luna's Baublebilities

My friend Suzy questioned rumors of my new beads because I hadn't posted any pretty sparkley pictures on my blog so I decided to go ahead and show off my new beads today.  I mentioned that I discovered a new supplier before the Holidays and was waiting for the new year to place an order - here are the results of that long wait.

I got some new shapes- daggers, spades and buttons - that I haven't worked with before.  Oh, I've had small dagger beads before and used them as dangles but never as a real design element.  As soon as I saw these variegated pink & crystal daggers, my mind went to daisies.  Bryan and Molly both say the daisy needs more green - I'm not sure.  I think this will become a pin and/or a pendant design, though I can see it making a rather funky oversized bracelet motif, also.

Spades make another lovely floral shape and the Buttons are just so cool all strung together.  They look like a fascinatingly constructed caterpillar!  They also make nice flower centers.  The dark buttons are a really gorgeous deep purple - it is hard to photograph the dark purple without blowing the other colors out.  I should have photographed them alone.

I also got some spindle beads in a few opalescent colors, some funky groved and distressed table cuts, more fire polished roundelles, a few fire agate barrels and some rich purple and cream smooth table cut rectangles. 

I'm not sure if any of these will end up for sale as beads.  Because this supplier allows smaller minimums, I have smaller amounts of these than most of the beads I buy.  I chose these not for perceived resale value but because I am interested in designing with them and I plan to begin a few lines of limited production designs for sale in local galleries and my online shops.  I'm sure some of them will eventually end up as clearance items when I am done with a production run but I'm not sure about stocking them as regular items for sale.  (Speaking of clearance, there are still lots of clearance beads over in GoblinsMarket, Etsy.)

I'm currently building some online shopping carts full of fabric and fiber.  I really want to experiment with dyeing fibers for embroidery work - partly because I want to play with it myself!  Now that I have a dye area near a water source, I feel a bit less intimidated about adding to my dye work load.  I've decided to put off preparing my breakdown printing screen until I have my new fibers, then I can jump in and do a bunch of dye work at once.  I also need to find some industrial felt to cover my dye table with before I can get good print quality so that represents a bit of a delay as well.












Time to bring in more wood and clean up the studio today.