Welcome to my very first PINE RIDGE TREASURES GEMSTONE AND METAL BLOG HOP!!!
Anyone who know me at all knows I am CRAZY over gemstones!  So I was pretty stoked to get in this wonderful Blog Hop By Lisa Lodge! When I got my beautiful Red Adventurine

 I was even more EXCITED!!!  Love the color and shape and feel of all the pretty stones Lisa sent me!
I wanted to do something a little different that I personally don't do much of.
I wanted to do a bib of sorts.  Since I don't do them often [read never] I worked and reworked and reworked again the same basic design. This is the original design, a little closer to the bib than the other 2 you will see but not very wearable.  Still have to refine my loop and o ring assembly skills! I used most of the Red Aventurine  that I got and some of the bronzy metal beads [mostly out of the picture near the back].  I then added the filigree from my stash and the crystals from my stash.

This one is the second design . It flows better and wears much better but is to me a little bland! So I fiddled with it and played with it and left it on it's own!  LOL  Then I sat down and finished it.

 This is the final design!  I really like it!  It is much more what I was thinking and it seems to flow really well!!! It is a little vintage and a touch bohemian.  The filigree pieces make it very feminine.

I hope you have enjoyed my journey with this necklace!  It was a lot of fun and i learned some new techniques and found I need to learn more!!!  Have a Blessed Day!

Welcome to My Country Blog Hop, hosted by Nan Smith.  It is a great idea!  This is my first year in this wonderful hop and don't you know it...I am seriously late!!! Life just up and slapped me in the face!!! LOL  The good news is that I am still standing!!!

I live in the United States, In the State of Indiana.  I live in the Northern/North Western part of the state.  We are about 50 miles from Lake Michigan.

In my part of the state we have a saying...If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes , it will change!!! Our close proximity to the Great Lake makes our weather odd and quirky and just plain strange!  We have fabulous scenery whether it is Winter with the ice sparkling on the trees or in the summer with the heat shimmering on the pavements.

These pictures are of some of the  big storms we have had this month.  This June is one of the wettest on record.

I could go on and on about the weather in our area, how everything is tied to it.  We live in a very rural and farm filled area and the weather rules!!!

If it is too cold for too long and too wet, the crops suffer and it just ripples out from there, if it is too dry for too long the same thing happens.  So weather is a pretty big deal around here.




But wrapped in and around and through all of the what if's of the weather is the Amazing Beauty and the wonderful Majesty of all the weather in all of it's moods.  this mood is well...moody and got kind of threatening.

Then peeking around the edges of the bad mood is the blue sky and the sunshine of a better mood and a brighter day!!!

Life emulates the weather, with our capricious moods and our pouts and tantrums, our hot headed temper and icy  implacability.    And just like the weather, we sprout sunshine in our smiles and our optimism and our heartfelt happiness

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The Necklace I made is a representation of all of the moods and complexities of weather and life's emotions. This necklace contains a really beautiful and moody hand crafted lampwork bead [I am unsure of the artist], and some stormy grey and white and bruised metallic finish crystals that metamorphose into to a rainbow of sky and flower colors that mirror happiness and optimism.  I really hope you love it.  Sorry to be so late.  Have a Blessed day!!!

Well I am a little stumped!!!  I have my pictures and they are good ones and I can't get my phone to back them up so that I can upload them here..  So until I can get them uploaded I am going to post them on Bead Soup Cafe so you can see the necklace.  I will get this together eventually I promise.

Well I did finally figure it out, got them uploaded here and proceeded to lose 2 of them.  Luckily, this one is the most important. the left side [in the picture] is moody and grey and not very optimistic, but from that comes all of the brilliance of a rainbow!  The clouds are still there but the color really pops because of them.  This is the whole meaning of optimism, your rainbow in spite of and along of the clouds!!!  Thanks for being here and part of my rainbow!!! Have a Blessed Day!!!

YAY!!!  I found and reuploaded [is that a word?] the two pictures that I had lost yesterday!  These show all of the beauty of the Moody Hand Crafted Lampwork bead and the burst of color for the rainbow.  There are a couple of wonderful lampwork beauties in here too[the really bright blue tube you can see in the last picture]!  I am so glad I found these!  Have a Blessed Day!