Bead Shopping

Hi everyone

This is my sea ripples necklace. A friend saw me wearing it and asked if would make her a necklace with a similar strap without the pendent.

My absolutely humblest apologies for my long absence from blogging - I would like to give you a highly creative and excellent excuse but I don't have one except that I have been continuously busy!
During February and particularly March submitting my thesis subsumed all my time including my beading time. There was a while there were working and sleeping as literally all I was doing! BUT I have been busy since, unfortunately all the projects are taking some time. I was doing to show you a nice ring I made using a pattern from an old Bead and Button magazine. I wanted to show the first and second attempts and assess my mistakes but for the life of me I cannot find the first attempt anywhere! If you ever see my flat you will understand why! So that will have to wait.

This is what I made for her. Gradiating blue agates with black bicone crystals between and some decorated silver spacers. Im wearing it now infact!

Anyway I want to tell you about a bead shopping trip I did yesterday. So there I was innocently (and responsibly) working in my office (we will pretend I wasn't surfing the internet!) when some friends knocked on my door.
"We are going to the bead shop" they announce
"Do I want to come?" like this really needs asking!
So I hop in the car and off we go to Melville. I dont think I have ever been bead shopping with anyone other than my mother and it was a lot of fun. I found some gorgeous "Ethiopian" copper and brass beads with a very interesting design.I'll take a picture for you some day. I had to argue a lot with myself over buying these as I simply dont have any money this month but I have learnt not to let these things go by because you will not find them again! Im still smarting over some other Ethiopian beads I missed out on! Anyway I dont need to eat lunch for this week do I? My friends had great fun with the huge selection of Chinese seed beads and I think we must have gone back to the till three times before we were all finished! Its really funny how we argue with ourselves and get inspired while shopping for beads. Now thats what I call retail therapy!