Mixing it up

When I first started beading and being interested in stones, rather than buying a whole strand I would only buy a few beads of each type. So I have a great collection of beads that vary in colour, texture, cut, shape...just about everything! These two necklaces show a range of semi precious and precious stones.

Although the combination of blue and brown doesn't always come to mind as a natural combination, I find myself paring it up constantly. Rich browns with duck egg blue one of my favorites but I hardly seem to see it in clothing and jewellery.

For the necklace on the left, it was designed very much with this colour combo in mind. I collected stones until I was happy with not just the combination of colours but also experimented with texture, opacity and shape. I played with opposites: faceted and smooth; translucent and opaque; flat and chunky; bright and darkened darkened silver. Once I had the stones and the hammered silver loop (for added interest) I thought that putting them together would be a snap. Just as 'effortless style' and 'the no make up look' paradoxically take both effort and time, so does 'apparent randomness'. For 9 elements there are 362880 combinations (look for yourself). A nightmare for professional non deciders such as I. The stones in this necklace are (from left to right) amazonite, labradorite, jasper, smokey quartz. amazonite, grey labradorite, chalcedony and prenhite.

Using the same design principles, I made the red/brown necklace as a commission. It's both exciting and scary to make a commission, in this case it was for a special present for a person that I did not know. There is the added pressure of making a piece of unique jewellery that does not look like it was bought on the $10 sales rack in Myer! Second time around I enjoyed the freedom of picking stones from my collection, using some of the rarer stones like the triangular quartz druzy with a fine, sparkling crystalline surface and the round, highly detailed fossilised coral.

At present I have departed from asymmetry but more about that later......