Tourmaline Love

I really enjoyed making the tourmaline earrings and bracelet for my friend Tiffany.  I started dabbling with seed beads in an effort to bring down the cost of my hobby. Seriously, you can burn through $200 worth of stone beads and silver in an afternoon if you aren’t careful. I like silver, stone beads and pearls. Copper is cool too and I adore gold but I just can’t afford to go that route.

At any rate, I’ve got all of these seed beads,  patterns and kits just waiting to be made, but they just really aren’t me. Even if I ever finish making them, it’s doubtful that I’d wear most of them. I still haven’t worn Anne or Grace,  and while I have worn Waves of Pearls, that one is missing and it kills me. So much work, just gone.

But Stone beads? That’s my thing and once I got started with the bracelet, I just couldn’t stop myself. The three central beads in Tiffany’s bracelet, came off of a strand of beads that I bought well over ten years ago. It  was one of the first  strands that I purchased. The holes are deceptively small and many of them aren’t drilled straight so the beads have sat in my box collecting dust.  As it turns out, the DMC floss was the perfect fit for the beads, so in to a  necklace they went.

multi color tourmaline necklace

I love all the different colors of the beads.  The  strand of smaller tourmaline beads  that I used for Tiffany’s bracelet had multiple colors on it as well. I used quite a few of the pink and green stone beads to make her gift, so I had to add more beads to make a second bracelet long enough for me to wear. I went with silver..

I really like the simplicity of these pieces and I know that I’ll wear them over and over again. They also re-sparked my love of jewelry making. I have one more bracelet on my bead board that is almost done, it uses the remaining beads on the strand. It’s a beautiful range of blues and yellows, and is possibly my favorite of the three.

I’ve decided to go through my stash and make a few more similar bracelets from some of the other strands of gemstone beads that I have. I want to be able to layer different colors to coordinate with whatever I’m wearing that day. I should have the other one up tomorrow evening!