YOJ: Week 20 "South Dakota"

Rats. I have really good ideas for this week's theme: Chinese Culture. Unfortunately I don't have any spare time, and I refuse to get behind on the weeks. So instead here is a piece I made 3 weeks ago, but has great meaning to me. I've named it "South Dakota" partly due to the color scheme.. it really reminds me of the painted canyons we saw last summer on our South Dakota trip.. and partly because I was with my very good friends ( Hi Cathie! Hi Sue! ) from South Dakota when I bought the beads. I could just as well call it " best friends" because that is their company name and well, recent life events make me realize just how important good friends can be.

Periodically I get together with Cathie and Sue to bond and bead for a weekend. We got together in Omaha in early April, at a bead show and Sue bought these 4 different colors of pearls. She didn't buy them with any peculiar plan in mind, but I was looking through her goodie bag and realized they were drop dead gorgeous together!! Thus the plan was born.. She went back and bought another strand each, and I bought 2 strands each and we decide to have a friendly competition: both of use would make a necklace using the beads and show off our work in 3 weeks when we got together again at MageCon. This is the necklace I made. I was thinking gypsy necklace, lots of layers almost choker like, with the long strand with the pendant hanging down to the chest level. I used almost all 8 strands of pearls, lots of sterling spacers and the lovely pendant is Duck Creek Jasper.. Sue came up with a multi strand necklace also that was gorgeous, and used a honking huge crystal square as the pendant... unfortunately I don't have pictures. But we had a ton of fun!!

The last 2 pics are recent jewelry pieces made spirals of various sorts. I really like spirals.