I have had this dragon and phoenix pendant for years now, but never found stone that went well enough with it to make a necklace from it until two weeks ago. The seller I bought it from claimed it was "multicolor jade" but when I got it the patterning of the stone is clearly multicolor moss agate. I went to my favorite store looking for something to go with it and had almost given up when one of the girls working there got an idea and brought out some very flawed sodalite rounds. Given the pendant is mostly green and brown I was rather skeptical about using the blue, but it worked when we held them up to each other. There was enough brown flaw in the stones to ease the blue tinge, unlike any of the green we'd tried. I discovered when I got home that I hadn't actually purchased sodalite, but the strand I'd chosen (which I chose because it had a lot more of the brown in it instead of the vivid white-lined blue common to the stone) was actually sapphire. I matched it with some antique copper to draw out the brown.
I absolutely love the way it turned out. Glad this is now a finished piece in my personal collection!
Name: Dragon and Phoenix
Price: $20 (personal collection; not for sale!)
Length: 16 inches
I actually finished this necklace over the weekend, following the trip a friend and I made to Von's (when I got the fluorite for Galactic Glimmer and the magnesite for Bronze Lily). Unfortunately, it was dark when I finished it, so my pictures didn't turn out. Then I worked late yesterday, so it was dark again by the time I got home.
Good news is, I had my much-needed-removed wisdom teeth pulled this morning, so in between naps (very tired, but very little pain) there was some sunlight for me to get decent photos. It occurred to me to take pictures because I woke up in a sunbeam and thought "Oh! I still need to get those!"
I'm recovering at my parents' house, and Mom has a lovely antique table beside the bed (and in front of the window), with a trio of in-tact sand dollars from a vacation when we were kids. Given the colors of the moss agate, I thought the rich tone of the wood and the white of the sand dollars made a neat combination.
This necklace has been in the works for about a month. I used heavy-duty nylon-coated braided steel Beadalaon stringing wire because it was all I had left (my thinner stuff is gone [again]). This means two of the tubes couldn't work--their holes were too small despite the fact I used my bead reamer on them for over an hour. Maybe I'll make a pair of earrings to go with it from them...
The name comes from the fact that it snowed last night, covering everything still green or with leaves still on it in a thin layer of powder. Moss agate kind of has that same appearance.
Name: Winter Moss
Price: $30
Length: about 16 inches (a short necklace on me; choker on most others)
I've always loved moss agate--it ranks right up there with hematite, tiger's eye, Botswana agate, flame agate, malachite, and lepidolite. I did a little research on what meanings people have put with it over the years, and one of the things it's known as is that it's a warrior's stone (so are hematite and tiger's eye, by the way).
I bought a strand of moss agate rounds about a week ago, some leather cord, and a leaf button because I wanted to try my hand at cord-wrapping again. I did that technique a long while ago with some pearls and an antique button from my Mom's collection, and enjoyed it so much I came up with this idea. I also have a snowflake obsidian one in the works.
Inspiration for the name came from the fact that moss agate is claimed to be a warrior's stone, and when I got it done for some reason it reminded me of a Clan BondCord from the old BattleTech series (defeated warriors would be taken by the member of the winning Clan who bested that person one-on one, and they would have to wear a three-strand cord around their wrist until they had proven themselves to the one who made them Bondsman three times). While this is not a braided three strand cord, the name just seemed to fit.
Name: Warrior's Bond
Price: $15 (personal collection)
Length: 8.5 inches
And last but not least this evening is another older illusion necklace, done about the same time as my tiger's eye one. I love moss agate for its delicate color patterns that make each piece different. The first piece I owned was a triangular tumbled stone Charlie, a man who helped instruct a lapidary class I took at an old school in West Lafayette while Mom did pottery down the hall, gave me out of his supply box. I never made it into anything, but it's still in my tumbled stone bowl on my shelf here at home. Charlie was a wonderful man, and always had something for me to work with he "didn't want" anymore, as I was the extreme youngster of the group. I think he and his wife adopted me during those weeks. I still have several pieces of things I never got to work with--including a piece of stone with tiny emeralds in it, a beautiful slice of green goldstone, a piece of red obsidian, and the remains of a spectacular piece of gold tiger's eye with which he taught me how to tell tiger eye quality, and from which I made my first soldered necklace. I wish the pendant of this piece could have been made from the piece of moss agate Charlie gave me, but the classes were cut due to few new members and budget costs. I had to content myself with finding this beautiful pendant at Von's in West Lafayette, just around the block from Morton Center where I learned silverwork and cutting stones and spent wonderful evenings with Charlie, his wife Ruth, and good ol' storyteller Cliff. I used seed beads and hematite rice along with the pendant. I believe, actually, this might have ben tagged "seaweed agate" or "seaweed quartz," though I'm pretty sure I looked through the entire bin of moss agate looking for one with a lot of color and unique pattern personality. I could be wrong, but then it wouldn't fit my story very well...
Name: Forest Memories
Price: $15 (personal collection)
Length: 17"
