Nothing to Wear??

Some people worry about what clothes to wear to a formal event. Lately, I've been thinking about what jewelry to wear to Bead & Button this year. Silly, eh? I may have mentioned this before, but I am more a process person in my jewelry making than anything else. I usually have difficulty wearing the pieces that I make, due to the fact that I tend to dress like a soccer Mom these days - tee-shirt, jeans and leather sneakers. (And I've given up wearing any jewelry at all when I'm with the Short One - ie, most of the day - after several rather expensive mishaps. The Short One is surprisingly gentle with my jewelry, but we do end up suffering from accidents more than I would like, due mostly to my toting him and his still-extensive bag of paraphernalia around with me.)

Having looked through my extensive drawers full of necklaces and deciding that I had nothing to wear for Sunday (the day I and my beading buddy Carolyn traditionally visit the B&B Marketplace), I set out to create a simple necklace just for this day. I decided I wanted to wear a koi pendant, but in a way that wasn't terribly decorative. I had picked up some nice heavy (about 6mm diameter) leather cord at Toho Shoji which I felt would work well. I made a couple of end caps for the cord and mocked-up this necklace tonight (the ends are not actually epoxied in yet, and one of the caps needs a little repair).

This is actually the pendant from that big piece I made for competition in April. I did disassemble that necklace - I've turned two of the links into earrings already, and I think the focal works very nicely here. The silver end caps give a nice finished look to the cord, but at the same time the piece as a whole is simple enough to go well with the usual tee shirt and jeans without looking ridiculous. Anyway, if anyone sees an Asian woman wearing this necklace at B&B on Sunday wandering around in a daze, clutching a handful of beads, that'll be me. Please do say "hi".

On other fronts, I've been meaning to mention this for a couple weeks - I've been invited to be a guest editor for Art Bead Scene this month, along with the uber-talented Jean Yates. Of course, I'm going to look like a complete amateur next to Jean with her polished and witty posts (not that I've been, y'know, fretting about this more than ten times a day or anything), but I'm going to give it my best shot. Jean has an inspired review of Jennifer Heynen's book Ceramic Bead Jewelry on Art Bead Scene today. My own post will appear later this week. Oh, and by the way, the theme for the Art Bead Scene Challenge this month is "Pearls of Wisdom". Why not enter?

Back to my exploration of the Garment District in NYC tomorrow. Thanks for visiting!