Two days left on my sale!

Only two days left to take advantage of my birthday sale in my Etsy shop. You'll get a free pair of earrings, in addition to the earrings in the necklace sets, when you mention where you heard about my shop. I'll make up a fresh pair for you!

Here's a photo of my one of my favorite sets for sale in my shop right now. One of my favorite color combinations and stones come together for a statement piece that could grace any red carpet in Hollywood...(patting my own back, hope you don't mind)

I started with Chinese Unakite, so richly textured that at first it looked like a beautiful piece of Corian countertop that I considered when I remodeled my kitchen. It just looks too cool to NOT be engineered. But, yes, it's real stone!
From Wikipedia: First discovered in the United States in the Unakas mountains of North Carolina, unakite is an altered granite composed of pink orthoclase feldspar, green epidote, and generally clear quartz. It exists in various shades of green and pink and is usually mottled in appearance. In good quality unakite is considered a semiprecious stone, will take a good polish and is often used in jewelry and other lapidary work such as eggs, spheres and other carvings like animals. It is also referred to as epidotized granite.

The rich rust-colored veins in this particular specimen of Unakite perfectly matched some poppy jasper coin beads and some ceramic saucer beads that I picked up. I also had some 10 mm Tiger Eye, and cute little copper lentil spacers that gave the whole collection just the right touch.

When I design a piece, sometimes I'll lay everything out and just look at it for a couple of days. Once the creative juices are flowing, the piece usually comes together really fast. This particular piece just didn't look right using the doughnut bead as the pendant. I have a couple of those, and they're nice, but I wanted to be more bold with this set. So I used ALL of the doughnuts. They're really nice-sized babies, too. Then I filled them with light green jade (keeping the Chinese theme with the Unakite) and copper seed beads. But it need more. I found some sea foam green crackled resin beads, and I knew I had it. I made a commitment to myself when I first started making jewelry that I wouldn't use plastic. I had to break that rule when I saw all of the beads together. Gorgeous! It was perfect! They're like little globes of light setting off the deeply colored and contrasting stone beads. It will be very difficult to sell this one. My daughter made me promise to make her one just like it. I hope I can find those beads again! My two year old will be disappointed when the "tractor tire" necklace goes away. But, please, if it strikes your fancy, buy it today!