Treasures by Louise

"Welcome to my Blog" to new visitors. Here is my introduction for the purposes of joining the Swap 'N' Hop. I started by stringing beads after several of my store-bought costume jewelry pieces broke.  I looked at the methods of construction and the stringing materials. I was already a quilter, and had tried many other crafts, so stringing beads was the next step. Here are some early pieces, still some of my favorites:   The style of jewelry I make has changed over the years, from stringing to more mixed media, as I became a Michaels Jewelry instructor and started following blogs of jewelry makers such as Lorelei Eurto. I soon became aware of artisan beads and have started to incorporate more hand crafted beads and to move beyond store-bought findings to working with wire to create my own eyepins and connectors. Technique-wise, I joined a bead guild a couple of years ago, which has expanded my interests, so I am trying out bead-weaving and bead embro...

Here are the beads I recieved for my first bead swap: I love the silver and black glass donut and all the supporting beads. The carved glass beads with the silver spider-like design are both beautiful and challenging! The black glass carved rectangles  with gold will be set aside for another project.  Also included were silver spacers, black glass beads, and extra large silver seed beads!  I decided to add a pale amethyst crystal and pale amethyst seed beads as an accent color. These will be fun to create with, and also cause me to work outside my comfort zone. There are lots of possible alternate colors I could have added - Leave me a comment and let me know what you would use with this set of swap beads!?