Blue Statement Necklace for the FMG Contest: Sneak Peak!

It's been really busy for the past week and a half. I've had to do so many things it's not even funny. This weekend my baby brother graduated from Widener University as an engineer!!! So very proud of him. Anyways, we had to leave at 7:30am to get there by 8:30 so that we would be able to find seats and get situated by 9:00am when the ceremony actually started. It was a beautiful day, not too hot and not too cold but there was a chill in the air.

Waiting at Widener University for the Commencement to begin

 We couldn't stay for the whole ceremony, we waited until 12:00pm and when it was still not over we called my brother and told him to come out.  We congratulated him and took pictures with him and left because we had to go to New Jersey. It took us a good two hours to get there: traffic was just brutal.

Ok, rewind to last Monday or Tuesday, I can't remember, I woke up with intense lower back pain.  I was unproductive for a week! The first couple of days it was excruciating to sit, to stand, to lay down and to bend over to pick something off the ground but towards the end of the week I was doing so much better and then Saturday happened.  Sitting on those seats at the graduation, sitting awkwardly in the car for at least five hours and then going to the movies and sitting on those stupid seats for another three hours: IT. WAS. AGONY! But I'm better now, it still hurts but not to the extent that it did, I'm taking better care of my self so my beading has gone down to a minimum.  I have managed, though, to create most of the individual components for my contest piece.

This was my initial sketch of the piece that I am making, it started out with just an encased rivoli at the center and everything else just fell into place.  As I have made each component the piece has evolved. For example the central rivoli should be relatively small compared to the one that I made:

I just love the brilliant and magical blue of the rivoli which complements the subtle bi-cones that embellish it. This was my second attempt at the central component the first was as follows

The same brilliant rivoli but it is completely embellished with pyrite, I had to disregard this for the central component because it was just too subtle and small.

The smaller of the two main components does not have the same visual impact.

The larger of the two central pieces, two more of the smaller rivolis will be set along side the larger component.

 I have to make a couple of more components, six more to be exact (I hope), and then I need to connect everything together, take pictures, and enter the contest.  It's a lot of pressure because the first place winner will recieve a $1,000 to spend at Fire Mountain Gems.  This could possibly jump start my business!!


I was linking up to my usual blog hops and guess what I discovered??  I was featured at the Fine Craft Guild! It truly is a milestone for me!! Hop over to the Fine Craft Guild, she has a great selection on different topics!!



*Website update: we upgraded that platform that we are going to use so that I can add more items to the shop, however we hit a few snags when we tried to integrate a gallery of sorts.  It might take a bit longer to sort this out, especially since the hubby has started class again*