Jewelry: Borealis Spiral

[hazliya]

So, about a month ago, I headed with elenuial, jingsaw, and buddhagrrl to the Scituate Art Festival, where they had a flea market. I scoured the jewelry section for vintage finds and things to cannibalize when I stumbled upon a triple strand Aurora Borealis-stone necklace, which is a goldmine of my favorite beads to work with. When I picked them up and felt their weight and looked at the fastenings, I asked the seller how much he wanted for them. I got him down to $20, then scurried off happily with my find.

Pssh. Not my fault he didn't know that the necklace was almost a hundred years old.

Eh, they still make borealis stones at beading companies nowadays, but they're not good quality or even well-cut. Usually they're just some combination of glass and plastic coated on half of the bead with iridescent paint. They're not real Borealis, just pretty fakes. So whenever I see the real deal, I get excited.

So, rather than let myself go crazy using all of the beads the very day I got them home, I made myself wait for a little over a month so that I'd be less "ZOMG USE THEM IN EV'RYTHANG" and broke them out for the first time yesterday.







I love this piece. It's the stones I love (in the center is a Swarovski), a shade of silver I love, and sits at the base of the neck beautifully. It's also so bright that the stones kept blowing out half the pictures I took, and those few little stones cast rainbows around the room. =)

Comments

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if you have more of those stones, we should talk about me giving you large reasonable amounts of money for something pretty made for me involving them.

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

Email me and we can chat!

[buddhagrrl.livejournal.com]

Oh sweetie it's gorgeous! Good work!

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

<3

[buddhagrrl.livejournal.com]

You were totally gonna walk away from those beads too. You were all "Naaahhh, I need a new theme" blahdee blahdee blah. You had to be strongarmed into it. Goober.

Having a signature material to work with is COOL, not boring. :-)

[hntrpyanfar.livejournal.com]

I second juldea... with the understanding if you want to keep some for yourself! :D

So gorgeous! Great job!

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

See what I said to juldea above. =)

[nyren.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of jewelery. It just totally disinterests me. However, I find that piece utterly beautiful :)

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks! =)

[contradictacat.livejournal.com]

Call me a dork, but as much as I do utterly love that piece, I'm also curious as to what the original necklace looked like. And I wonder why "real" borealis stones aren't made anymore.

Hm. Now borealis DICE on the other hand....

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

The original necklace was just three strands of beads in a size gradient toward the largest in the middle.

Just like everything does, they went out of fashion. And when they came back into fashion, there were newer and cheaper ways to make them. =/

[darkoni]

I don't think I've ever seen something like that before. It looks cool.