Unknown Taxonomy

 Remember when I bought that strand of jade cicadas? I finally created something with one of them! Of course, upon further thought I'm not sure if it's actually a cicada... maybe it's a firefly? Stone insects are so hard to identify!

 Have a closer look yourself. What's your vote for its species?

Here it is in the wild, being worn by me at the drum circle at the Arizona Renaissance Festival. I'm dancing with my friends Jen and Mary! Jen is also wearing a necklace that I made.

But the most exciting part is that this is my first piece as part of the Allegory Gallery Design Team! The two sizes of brown beads that I used in the necklace were provided by Allegory Gallery. They're very nice plastic. I don't normally use plastic at all, but I'm trying to overcome my snobbery. Besides, that stone pendant is SO heavy, it was nice to be able to cut down on the weight of the necklace by using lightweight beads. The plastic has a beautiful marbled appearance that makes it look like glass or stone from the distance; very classy.

In addition to the stone cicada (firefly?) and the plastic beads, I also used some antiqued jade beads to match the focal, some Afghani coins (including one that serves as a "clacker" turning the focal into a bell), a little Thai silver and a little red tiger's eye. I love it!

Jade Cicadas!

I can't believe that I forgot to blog about these awesome carved jade* cicadas that I purchased at the Rings & Things show in Scottsdale last month. They are pretty much the coolest thing ever. I had to buy them even though they were really expensive and I really only wanted one for me. Then after I paid I plopped them right down on a table and took a photo to post on Facebook.

I'm going to make some pretty epic necklaces with these. The first one will be for me, of course!

*I don't know if they're actually jade. There are so many stones that get called jade but actually aren't. These are an antiqued/aged (I forget what word the tag says) "jade" that has a cool mottled brown, makes them look like some sort of old Chinese artifact that I stole from a museum or something.