April 16, 2006
junior regatta medal and necklaces
This is the medal Rudder designed and had made for the Arizona Junior Rowing Championship Regatta, along with the necklaces I've made (one last weekend, the rest yesterday and today) to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the regatta. Those charms from the Mexican guy I went through all the trouble to get haven't arrived (yet), but I ordered four charms from someone on eBay and they worked out well. The necklaces are in the colors of the various crews, one for each. Each is carefully made so that it can be comfortably worn while rowing - no rough edges, not too long or too short.
Below the cut are more pictures and a bit about each necklace. I was experiementing with my bead picturing skills, so these are with flash and without, in the sun and out of it. What I'd really need to do is to use our bette digital camera, but those pics are so large they take forever to download, so I just used my little 3.2 MPix Canon Elph.
Here's the medal alone: 
And the necklaces:
Here are the individual necklaces. I made most of them from stuff in my stash, because it's easier for me to let the beads themselves inspire the piece - the variety of beads from Elisem's Bead of the Month Club was a big help in this respect, and I think those beads appear in all five necklaces. The only things I went and bought specially were the necklace clasps and the purple beads, because I didn't have anything in that color. All necklaces are strung on Beadalon, a 7-cable plasticized beading wire that's pretty indestructible.
Ashland Rowing are coming all the way down from Oregon. I was going for a tailored sort of look with their crisp red and lack colors. Their necklace contains glass and sterling silver.
Xavier is a local Catholic girls' college prep, with a very large rowing program. This was the first necklace I made for this series. Their unis are blue with a white stripe; it's hard to tell from the pictures, but I think there's a narrow stripe of green down the sides, and their boats each have a green alligator, so I wanted to include a bit of green in the necklace. It contains sterling and glass including a few Czech fire-polished beads and a cats-eye bead.
Rio Salado is a rowing club that's been around long before there was even a lake to row on. Their colors are green and white, and they sometimes use a bit of yellow. I had only a few tiny white beads and no yellow ones, so I was worried this would be a boring necklace. But I sorted out all my green beads, let them talk to me, and ended up with what I'm thinking of as the Emerald City Fantasy necklace. It contains glass, silver, and Swavovski crystal. I only had four of the Crew charms; this one is a single oar, from an earring of mine. I'd lost one of the pair and this seemed like a good use for the other one.
This is for the City of Tempe rowing program.I like the effect of those long orange sead-shaped beads dangling down. They and the big orange bead (which may be lampworked) are part of my BotMo stash. This necklace contains sterling, glass, and Swarovski crystal.
This one does double duty: the colors for the local Tempe Junior Crew and the Tri-City College Prep school in Prescott are close enough for them to share this necklace. (Maybe that will send the bidding up!!) I saved this necklace until last, because while black and purple have some drawbacks as rowing colors (hard to see on the water) they're great colors for jewelry, and I knew I had a lot of beads that would work. This necklace contains sterling, glass, and freshwater pearls.
Posted by dichroic at April 16, 2006 02:48 PM