my orchid blooms have come along. Okay, bad lyrical reference. Sorry, and apologies to Etta James, but that’s how happy my dendrobium has made me! Just look!
The photos do not do it justice. I may have to design a beadwork pattern for it. The shading is wonderful.
And speaking of beadwork. I finally got back into some beading. This is the Filigrana pattern by TrendSetter Melinda Barta. It was a pattern that is included with a shipment of beads from Red Panda Beads. They are a great online shop. They always ship very quickly and have a great selection of beads.
I also finished a repair/restringing of an antique necklace last week. It took a long while to find and get shipped the mother of pearl beads that were the same size and a close enough match to the little shells. They came from China.
Cindy, of Cindy’s Crafts in Johnson City TN, really came through for me in finding a match for the tiny seed beads. They are a garnet color which I didn’t think would be hard to match, but they were. I emailed Cindy and she searched and found two possibilities. I bought both tubes of rocailles and, hooray! one matched. Close enough, anyway.Thank you, Cindy! You see, the old seed beads are cut similar to 13/0 Charlottes only with a few more facets, but they were the size of 11/0 beads. They are really beautiful and interesting. I wish they were in production today.
The shells still had sand in them. I used a really fine beading needle and beading thread and barely got it through some of them. Some of them cut the thread. I have no idea how the original beader got the heavy thread they used through them.
As you can probably see in the photo on the left, the necklace was not the same on both sides. I left it that way when I restrung it. I thought it should be kept in the same aspect as the original. I love doing these projects. I hope the new owner, granddaughter of the original owner, loves it too.
