firecat

I got a 5 star Magpie from elisem as part of botmo year 11. The theme I picked was "focals and earring pairs." Elise included a card saying "I got a little carried away." I say OOH SO MUCH SHINY.


(click to embiggen)

Never fear, the cat got her condo back shortly after this photo was taken.

Three photos beneath the cut.

( adoptable cat! )

( another photo of the dragon's garden necklace )

It's wordweaverlynn's fault - she e-mailed me a little bit before Wiscon and asked if I wanted to participate in a group Fire Mountain Gems order. I thought I might, but of course in order to figure out what I needed, I first had to drag out and inventory my existing stash of jewelry stuff.

And while doing that I came across a bag full of beads and supplies that I had intended to use to make something along the lines of the "Floating Fantasy Necklace" from Beadstyle November 03 issue. I set that aside and started to work on it after Wiscon, only I found out that a number of the small beads I had chosen had holes too small to be strung on the waxed cord, and that I didn't have enough teardrop beads. What to do? I had received the botmo collection from May 07, entitled "Dragons in the Garden," and it had a lot of smallish flower and leaf beads, so I decided to use those along with the other beads I had set aside.

I made most of the necklace in one evening while watching my Two Fat Ladies videotapes. The videotapes are better than the Food Network version of the show, which cuts out a lot of fun stuff to make room for the commercials.

I used a dental pick to make the knots between beads. I got it from a guy who sells inexpensive hobbyist tools at the San Mateo County Fair.

The Beadstyle article doesn't explain how to make the macrame cord - it suggests a simplified cord with some overhand knots. I didn't like how that looked, so I did a web search to find basic macrame instructions. Somewhere in my search I found a tip that suggested you could tie the top of your macrame to the clip of a clipboard, so I used that instead of a macrame board.

( photo )