ABOUT THE PROCESS (or lack thereof) -- Kathy Hogan asked me how many times I lay out a piece prior to making it, and I told her I don't. Because I don't. In fact, not much planning at all goes into my work, LOL. This is not the more gorgeous necklace I have ever made, but it is the one in front of me now, so I am going to use it as an example. You can see the necklace in it's entirety at China Page . It is the blue chinese vase bead piece. I bought the vase bead on auction, then emailed the seller to see if the other blue/white beads he had for sale, sold. Bought what was left because I didn't have any. The orange beads are vintage glass from China, and I only had three. Basically both of these packages showed up on the same day in the mail, and I opened them and laid them together. They looked good; therefore I had the beginnings of a necklace. The only thing on this piece that took any time or planning was this:

See the little blue seed bead on either end of this station? I spent hours picking out the right color of blue seed beads, LOL. Which I then ended up only using as an accent bead. I went through my entire collection of seed beads for this purpose. I guess what that says is that the details are important. Then, I wired up the centerpiece and just started stringing. Oh yeah -- those blue crystals showed up the same day also. It seems the postal service should get credit for my design ideas, LOLOLOLOLOLOL. Here are some details of the piece that I wish to talk about. This station is so pretty, it could be a necklace by itself. I often feel that way about a station, which is just the decoration to accent the centerpiece.

Then, last but not least, there is the clasp. If you have wire, you have a custom-make clasp. That is a page in itself.

Thank you, Kathy, for making me think through the process. Or the lack thereof.

And now, this is for Jen Kitchen. I want to talk about this donut necklace. This piece is 18" long and I sold it for $25. That sounds good until you read the rest of this, LOL. She wants it longer. Since it is strung on Soft-Touch (which does not get longer), I have to restring the whole thing. Making it once was already too much trouble -- those seeds are size 14 Japanese and TOO DARNED SMALL to have to string onto Soft-Touch. So, I screwed myself. But, I have a customer who is going to really love her necklace when she gets it. I will make sure of that.

I show you this for this reason -- I love fancy bails on donuts, and I realized that I "make" them all the time. By just stringing some decorative details on the front of the donut, and adding fancy things at the top. Easy to do. This scan makes it look as if you are looking up someone's nose, LOL. Excuse the bad scan but get the point.

. A crystal, a small bali spacer and a pearl is all the decoration I added on the front, then more bali and crystals at the top. This is a small (25 mm)denim lapis donut, so all the details had to be kept small in scale also. The part that makes this necklace work are the bits of "flash" -- the cuts on the seeds, the faceted bali squares on either side of the cheap clay beads on the necklace, and the nacre on the freshwater pearls. All small in scope, but a nice necklace. I could have sold this one twice if I had two of them that day, because both women who came over to go to the pool with me wanted it. Small details.

And now, just because I want to say it: You put the lime in the coconut, and mix them both together! Put the lime in the coconut and you'll feel better.....

And last, but not least, also for Kathy: I went to the thrift store yesterday. I cut apart and wash, well, what I buy there because I am funny about dirt and germs. Just don't like either of those entities. This porcelain egg and these glass pearls ended up next to each other on the towel, drying. Can you see it is more geography and luck than anything? Because there certainly is no planning process here.

I can tell you right now those glass pearls will be in the necklace, capped on either side by a bell flower and something small and gold, probaby a seed. I see the glass pearls as the biggest bead on the necklace. I will come back and post the picture of that one when it is done -- maybe tonight, maybe not. I have six loads of laundry waiting, 3 of them towels. It is swimming season in Ohio, LOL.