Bubbles in the Frog Pond

I've really been getting into cascading and cluster jewelry. I really like clusters of bright colours but not over the top. I like functional as well as fashionable and this adorable little copper frog's been sitting in my box for months now.

I need to stop ordering druk beads too, I keep ordering them to use and keep getting them w/my art beads projects and I've completely and utterly failed at keeping track of what colours I have and what colours I need!

Anyways, this little guy's hung on an 18-inch copper chain surrounded by 4 and 6mm czech glass druk beads in rosaline, smoke topaz, topaz, light amethyst, dark green, olivine, and light yellow. I kept getting the chain twisted lol, I must've rearranged those druk beads a dozen times. It's a great time killer sitting at the pool at 6 AM on a Saturday morning XD

The bead products:

4 & 6mm czech glass druk beads

in rosaline, smoke topaz, topaz, light amethyst,

dark green, olivine, and light yellow were provided

to me by artbeads.com free of charge.

I am part of their blogging project

and have not been paid for my use or

opinion of the above product(s).

Cameo Ring

okay, so I don't normally make rings but I wanted to do something different. There wasn't a whole lot of rocket science involved in this one, just a 13 x 18mm resin cameo, some E6000 epoxy, and a silver plated brass ring setting . The setting's adjustable but I had some issues making it any bigger than a 9 or smaller than a 7 but it's pretty, it's simple, and it's understated and elegant :)

Apologies for My Long Absence

My apologies for being absent and neglecting my blog. I've been creating, I just haven't been online much. I work three jobs and in addition to that I've been dealing w/a lot of family drama (unexpected deaths and the dissolution of my parents marriage among other things), but I'm not dead.

I've been busy. I've got a facebook page now LA Felice Pesce Designs and my own website, as well as my own etsy page, I've got some listings but nothing's sold yet :( I'm working on getting my projects in order and updated. I'm also teaching jewelry classes w/a group of middle schoolers which is pretty cool.

Stay tuned, I promise there's more stuff coming soon. Feel free to check out the above links where you can see some of what I have yet to post here.

Summer Fun: Catch of the Day

Eesh it's been a while. . . I've been so busy w/work that the majourity of my projects got put on hold but I'm getting them done. I've got some pretty exciting news too. A friend of mine, having seen the necklace that this post is about, commissioned me to do a similar piece for his mother!!! Another friend of mine wants me to do some jewelry for him too but he hasn't decided what he wants yet lol.

Now, lets get down to business, this was my artbeads.com summer themed project. We had to create a piece that was symbolic of "Summer Fun" to us. Well, for me, summer was always a beach vacation, swim team, picnics at the lake. My summers always revolved around water and being in the water, so I tried to keep that in mind when figuring out this design.

I knew I wanted a nautical design, and I knew I wanted it to be somewhat classical/vintage in appearance- dated but timeless, simple and elegant. Originally I was going to do something similar to my Poseidon design but I just wasn't feeling such a heavy design for such dainty beads and charms so I ended up going in a whole 'nother direction completely.

I started by making long sections of chain w/my 4mm glass druk beads in light amethyst, smoke topaz, rosaline, dark green, and light sapphire. I love my czech glass beads, and I especially love the druk beads, however, I wish I had gotten them in a bigger size, maybe 6 or 8mm b/c as pretty as the colours are, I found that these beads are so small, unless you string a bunch of them together, the colour pales and it's very hard to distinguish one from another, they tend to wash out on their own.

After I had created these long double chains (pictured above), I used several 3" long lengths of bright silver chain to create the full length of the necklace and connected them to the ship's wheel pendant which is by Jollee's Jewel's (available at Michael's). To the bottom of the large pendant I attached the antique pewter anchor and sail boat charms (Captain Ahab, anyone?).

I still felt like the necklace needed something. After all, there's more to the beach then sailboats and ships wheels. One of my favourite activities, even now as a grown up, is getting up w/the morning low tide to hunt for shells. I mean, it's nearly impossible to go to the beach and NOT find any sea shells- even at the lake I find all sorts of snail shells and other fresh water mollusks and lets face it, sometimes sea shells are just too tempting to walk away from!!!

And that temptation proved too great, I just had to include those sea shells in this summer themed piece. I finished the piece w/two large TierraCast Antique Silver spindle shell charms and two small TierraCast Antique Silver spindle shell charms. I attached them in such a way that they drape down the wearer's chest w/o getting in the way or catching on anything.

The finished product is roughly 22" from clasp to pendant and, while not exactly something that a tween or teen would wear is a lovely and elegant piece that can be dressed up or dressed down and definitely celebrates the calm, peace, and tranquility of the beach, as well as the romanticism associated w/a life at sea and exotic places.

Stay tuned for the accompanying charm bracelet as well :D

The bead products:

4 mm czech glass druk beads

in light amethyst, smoke topaz,

rosaline, dark green, and light sapphire,

antique pewter sailboat and anchor

charms, and the TierraCast antique silver

spindle shell charms were provided

to me by artbeads.com free of charge.

I am part of their blogging project

and have not been paid for my use or

opinion of the above product(s).

Gone Fishing: Fathers Day Keychains

Okay, it's been way too long. I've been so busy w/the new job that I've had to put my beading on hold (stupid priorities!!!)

I'm still around though and I have plenty of stuff waiting to be posted.

Consider this a prelude to my summer bead project for the Artbeads.com design project. I had seen these two projects in the artbeads.com learning center and I had been wanting to get into resin jewelry for a while so I saw my opportunity.

The keychain on the left is my take on Rather Be Fishing while the keychain on the right is based off Catch of the Day .

This project was a combination of traditional beading, resin casting, and a process called "upcycling" which is where you take an object(s) and recycle them into something new. In this case, I upcycled fishing hooks, bait worms, lead weights, and a rooster tail fishing lure.

I also upcycled some old jump rings off some broken keychains that were slated for the trash.

The frames I used are Antique Copper-Plated Pewter Large Rectangle Pendant and the Antique Silver-Plated Pewter Grande Rectangle Link. Also from artbeads.com I got the bass fish charm and fishing boat charm as well as the ICE resin I used to seal the items into the frames.

For the resin casting I made sure to follow the instructions that came w/the resin and for the overall design, I tended to refer more to the pictures on the projects respective pages rather than the actual projects themselves.

Once I actually got down and dirty and started to put my keychains together, I found other than the resin I wasn't doing anything I hadn't done previously and I also found that surprisingly, a lot of fishing lures are put together in much the same way as jewelry. I found it kind of funny that I was recognizing certain stringing and wire wrapping methods on my dad's lures that I myself have used on my beading projects before!!!

Erin's Butterfly

This is a necklace I put together as a gift for a friend's bday. I wanted to give her something that was pretty and elegant w/just a touch of gothic to it.

I love cascades so I tried to create a simple cascade to focus on the central butterfly. On one side, I placed a skeleton key charm, a red glass wire-wrapped bicone, and a monogram "E" on the left side of the butterfly since we read left to right.

On the right side of the butterfly, I placed an "L" charm, another red wire-wrapped bicone, and a fleur-di-lys. I also placed a silver and red-enamel flower blossom farther up on the chain. Originally, I had hung it on the clasp but found it to be too heavy and rather annoying against the back of my neck (I always give my pieces a test run before ever giving them to anyone).

There's not a whole lot on this necklace as far as "beading" is concerned but working w/chains and metal involved a whole 'nother skill set and can be quite frustrating.

It doesn't help that I'm so beyond guilty of being a perfectionist. I take the charms and beads off the chain and re-attach it til it hangs just the way I want it to lol and it can get to be rather time consuming.

For such a simple necklace, I spent most of an afternoon putting it together before I was satisfied with it.

I gave it to my friend yesterday for her bday. I was a few days late but she was gone on her actual bday and I didn't see her in classes before yesterday. But even being late, she still absolutely loved it and was amazed that anyone would take the time to actually make something special, specifically for her.

Saturn's Rings: Wire Wrapped Pendant

So I've been playing w/wire wrapping a bit lately and this has been my most complicated design so far. I definitely bit off more then I could chew, overestimating my skills but I like how it came out.

This pendant consists of an imperfect rectangular onyx framed by 20 and 22 gauge silver-plated copper wire and garnet-coloured glass beads. The bead that dangles is wrapped separately and attached w/an "o" ring for free movement. I was thinking of stringing this on a black ribbon but we'll see.