One track mind

In a previous post, I shared one of my many "didn't quite work out" experiences with a piece of beach glass my girlfriend had given me.  Actually she gave me three pieces to see if one of them would work out to make a necklace.

Today I sat down and tried to work out a design with the remaining two pieces.  Since they were both part of the neck of a bottle, the curve of the pieces was a challenge.  Nothing seemed to work and then the "light bulb" in my brain came on.  The entire time I was designing for these pieces, the focus was on making the metal clay piece.  The beach glass was secondary.   

Since my friend found the beach glass while she was on vacation in Florida, the glass should have been the focus of my design and not the metal clay.  Also, my friend wanted something small and my usual method of design tends to be on the big side.  

Once I realized those two things, the design became easy.  Rather than try to "encase" the glass with silver, I glued on a sterling silver bail and added a silver palm tree to represent Florida.  Simple, but I think the right solution.  I hope she likes it.  

One thing leads to another

Last week I made a piece with beach glass, which I showcased in another post. Usually I fire the beach glass with the metal clay, but this time I tried another method of connecting them with wire. (Originally I had planned on making metal clay components to hold them to the backing, but that didn't work..... I miscalculated the space necessary to fit the metal clay pieces around the glass.)

This particular piece looked like it needed some companionship so I designed two more necklaces to be worn with it or by themselves. The patina on the original piece ranged from copper to blue so I focused on making the other necklaces with copper beads, clear beads to pick up the clear glass and green adventurine to echo the green glass.