Gallery 3 Cabochon Work, Image Designed and Beaded by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
The little owl bead is by Laura Mears, who does many wonderful beads in the shapes of animals and other symbols. This owl and others of her beads may be purchased here: http://www.beyondbeads.com/beads_LM/Beads_lmwingtotem.html
I have been collecting chrysocolla, especially matched pieces, for some time and the two tat form wings for the owl are ones I've had for years. The little bone moonface seemed to benefit from a halo of glass pearls and silver beads. The beautiful dichroic cab at the top is from Earthworks Gallery and unless I am mistaken, this one was a gift from one of my fellow admirers of this gallery, a fellow named Albert (or Joe) Sanchez. He took pity on me because I had been bidding unsuccessfully on a similar cab against a very acquisitive and apparently wealthy bidder so he commissioned Earthworks to do a similar cab for me. Thank you, Joe. I hope you approve of this piece. The little purple dichroic cab at the bottom just seemed to provide the right balance.
I have had the abalone beads I used in the strap for many years and I felt they really went well with the greenish silver background beads and the gray green of the tops of the chrysocollas. Somewhere I acquired these little white beads that have an opal or moonstone chatoyance to them and they made a nice echo for my moon. I interspersed these with Bali silver spacers and pieces of lovely blue green heishi my jeweler friend Ryk gave me. In the body of the piece, I did what I think of as the peacock stitch, surrounding a central Swarovski with scallops in four places, including a row of pale green 2 mm Swarovskis on the bottom as well as one of 2XAB emerald on the top. The strap contains two stations of Swarovski accents--a heliotrope 6mm flanked with 4mm amythest AB's.
For the earrings I used another set of smaller chrysocollas, the gray green beads, silver beads, and as in the necklace, bezels of irised bronze delicas. The fringes intersperse Swarovskis and seed beads to shower extra light onto the skin and repeat the lovely sparkles of the dichroics and Swarovskis below.
All images and patterns © copyright 2004 Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. All rights reserved.