Beautiful Botswana necklace

A friend at work really likes Botswana agate, so I came up with this for her for Christmas...and as partial apology I haven't gotten her red tiger-eye tumbled stone pendant wire-wrapped yet.

 

Name:  Beautiful Botswana

Price: $25

Length:  22 inches

Roses in Stone necklace

I posted a couple of weeks ago in request for aid for a friend hit by the tornadoes that ripped through Illinois.  An update: she and her elderly mother have found a place to live close to work, and the money several of us raised has helped her a lot.
I wanted to do something special for her for Christmas since she is a good friend, so I made this necklace out of Indian agate and gold metal seed beads.  I sort of mimicked it after the quilt my Mom (fiberobsession here on BlogSpot) donated to her, as my friend had said the colors were wonderful.

 

Name:  Roses in Stone

Price:  $25

Length: 22 inches

Mama Botswana earrings

And here are the earrings that match the previous necklace and earrings to complete the Mama Botswana set.  I set the two rounds aside because they were nicely banded and matched, then made the earrings using sterling silver findings I had left over from other projects once the necklace was done.  I love the deep mauve shade of these stones!

Name:  Mama Botswana earrings

Price:  $10

Length:  .75 inch, not including earwire (about an inch with earwire)

Mama Botswana bracelet

This is the bracelet to match the previous necklace, part of a set for my Mom from the stones she chose at Von's this weekend.  I used the 6mm rounds left over from the yard-long necklace to make this.

Name:  Mama Botswana bracelet

Price:  $10

Length:  9 inches

Mama Botswana necklace

So I conferred with my Mom following my work on the rhodonite necklace (see project Winter Rose), and she decided she wanted the second necklace to be even longer--37 inches.  By the time I got it strung, it was dark out, so I couldn't get pictures with decent light.  Good news, though, is I set up to take the photos in my tiny kitchen on my dining room table and they turned out!  Usually the camera won't focus when indoors under just lamplight.  I had enough beads left over to make a set of jewelry to surprise her: a pair of earrings and a bracelet.  I set the beads for the earrings aside ahead of time so they would (relatively) match each other, but used the leftovers for the bracelet, so the stones aren't quite as fancy as those in the necklace and earrings.  Again, the clasp for it isn't here yet.
So here's the Botswana for my Mama.

 

Name:  Mama Botswana necklace

Price:  $45 (reason: amount of stone, silver, and time used)

Length:  approx. 38 inches (because I had to end the pattern to keep it equal) without clasp; probably will be 40 inches with clasp

Carnelian and agate cross-weave choker

     Today I did a project for myself.  I've had a unique oval red-and-black-and-white banded agate pendant for about three years, but had been unable to come up with a suitable design for it.  It reminds me of a clownfish, which was part of the difficulty.  I'd bought carnelian rounds to go with it (I read somewhere that banded agate is usually carnelian and/or onyx, both members of the chalcedony family, as is agate).
     I decided today to try just doing a simple round necklace using the carnelian rounds in the cross-weave pattern, but figured it probably wouldn't lay right unless it had a pendant.  Then I remembered I had the banded agate pendant sitting in my bowl of collected polished stones and dug it out to use at last.  I love the way it turned out, although where the necklace comes together over the pendant doesn't quite lay flat.  I didn't have enough carnelian to make a longer necklace, and because of the pendant's size I didn't want it too low anyway.  As things are, the V where the cross-weave comes together sits at the hollow of my throat.  I used size 15 black-lined red seed beads between the rounds, and a single blackstone round as embellishment below the pendant.

Name:  Clownfish choker


Price:  $40 (reason: tons of carnelian, time, and effort; personal collection)


Length:  15 inches; pendant is 1.5 x 1 inch oval

Banded Scarlet Necklace

This is probably the only primarily red necklace I've made I've ever been remotely happy with.  The pendant is a really neat piece of banded red agate from Von's here in town, the rest of it carnelian, white rice pearls, red seed beads, and white pearl seed beeds.  It sat around forever and I was almost ready to scrap it when a friend heard I made jewelry and asked if I'd done anything red.  I sent her pictures of it, then showed it to her in person; she absolutely loved it and bought it from me.

Name:  Banded Scarlet


Price:  $15 (sold to Felice B.)


Length:  17"