Design This – Carnelian Necklace Upgrade

What do you do when a treasured necklace is repaired a couple of times and keeps breaking? You bring it so someone else to try to figure out how to put it back together so that it stays that way. I just happened to be that next someone and as sometimes happens with what seems like a simple repair request, it turned into a design this upgrade.

As I studied the pretty carnelian beads of the broken necklace, I tried to figure out a cause of the continued failure of the stringing material. The wire seemed like it should have been heavy enough. It did have a kink in it along with the frayed broken ends that looked like they would have been located at the joints between some of the larger carnelian beads. I suspected that the shape of the beads was causing pinching and rubbing that eventually lead to a failure of the beading wire. If I was correct, then the addition of some spacer beads might fix the problem.

I just happened to have some spherical carnelian beads whose color nicely matched the necklace beads. I proposed inserting them as spacer beads around the five large original central beads. As a bonus, if I also added a spherical carnelian bead to each end of the necklace I could keep the necklace essentially the same length as it had been by removing the four smallest carnelian beads and using them to make matching earrings. My customer loved the idea so that is what I did. It has been a couple of years now and I have not heard anything to the contrary, so I'm assuming my fix worked.

National Color Day - 2015

My inspiration for this week's blog post has come from tripping across a mention for National Color Day earlier this week. When I see mention of unusual national days I like to track down more information about them. It turns out National Color Day is an unofficial U.S. holiday of unknown origins that shares October 22 with National Nut Day. More information about these two holidays can be found on the National Day Calendar website.


That was a little background, now for the inspiration. National Color Day, what fun could you have with that? The website suggests wearing something colorful and sharing it on social media. I thought, CREATE something colorful! Coloring pages have been very popular lately for all ages and are a great way to have fun with color if you don't have some other media at hand to create something colorful from. So I thought, what better time to share that I recently created a set of coloring cards? I have had them with me at my last two shows and they were well received. I plan to add them to my EDCCollective Etsy shop too. What do you think?

Update 10/31/15: Here is my coloring card listing.

Holiday Show Season for EclecticDesignChoices

I started my show season off early with two photographic art pieces accepted for Art in the Garden, where one of my entries won a second place ribbon. Last Saturday really got things rolling with ArtsGoggle on Magnolia in Fort Worth. This Thursday, at the kickoff concert for Arlington Symphony's 2015-16 season, I will have my photographic art matted prints, note cards, bookmarks, purse hangers, CD clocks and a few of my ready to hang pieces such as this framed version of Finchedelic. The larger gallery wrapped version of this photographic art image was featured earlier this summer. You can usually find a list of my upcoming shows and in person events if you subscribe to my newsletter, check my offline tab on this site or my events listed on my facebook business page or click on my upcoming shows link in my Etsy shops.

I am also looking forward to two shows in November and two in December. Please stop by and say hi if you attend any of these shows and let me know how you knew where to find me.

Thanks for the Treasuries - September 2015

Three Etsy shop owners and one Etsy team let me know they had featured one of my items in a treasury during September. Four September Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one of my creations. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during September. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below a link to the Etsy sellers that let me know they had featured one or more of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like. In addition you will see information about the TexasFriendsTeam that also featured an item of mine.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the links of anything that catches your eye.


HotdogCrafts
This shop owner turns graphics into button dangle earrings, hair clips, keychains and more.

GirlieGals
Girlie Gals offers you sparkle and shine at affordable prices. "It's a Bling Thing!"

TheYellowRoses
In this shop you will find rag dolls, stuffed animals, small quilts, mosaics, and coasters.

TXFriendsTeam
Past, present and future Texans are welcome and encouraged to join this team. The only real rules of the group are to promote friendly, The TX Way, and be respectful to all who participate.