Made a new necklace

It's not up on etsy yet and it's not steampunk (but the next one will be) and it's human sized, not for a doll.
I'm pretty pleased with it.
I'd decided I wanted to work with more sterling, esp. after I scored some amazing focals to play with. If you've been around, you know I have a thing for faces--well, I got several in bone and this one in pietersite and sterling with carnelians.

(I tried to post the pic below the text, but that must be a trick I haven't learned yet.)

I had a nice string of pietersite ovals I'd bought a few years ago and had been saving for the right project, but when I looked at them with this piece I thought just stringing it with them would be too heavy, not to mention too obvious and too dark. 

So I dug around in my stone stash and came up with a couple of arrowheads (unakite?jasper? have to check my notes before I list!) , some lovely cherry volcano quartz rectangles, a few leaves (again I need to check!). I was playing with these but it wasn't quite working, so I rubbed a dab of "psychic power" oil on my temples and, voila! several of Karen Ovington's business cards (which I didn't know were there) fell into my lap.  Hmmm. 

For those of you who don't know, Karen Ovington http://www.ovingtonglassstudio.com/ makes absolutely fabulous beads which have inspired several of my other pieces.  In fact, if I go to a bead show with $ & know she'll be there, I have a Karen Ovington budget and an everything else budget, which sometimes has nothing left in it after I see Karen's beads.  Anyway, I have a small wood and glass showcase on a shelf in my bead room where I keep her beads, and I thought this was enough of a message so that I should go and have a look. 

Sure enough, there it was, that lovely black, rust, and white bead that looks like a lantern--just the thing! 
So I tried some reddish lave beads--way too pink, but the yellow ones were just right, picking up the tiger-eye-like gold banding in the pietersite and the yellow in the agate.

But something was still missing. I tried beadcaps--no go--separateing the beads with chain or wirework--nope.
Then I started digging through my stash drawers and realized I had these Indian beads, which I think are furnace glass, the kind where you pull a tube and then cut it into individual beads. They are, as I think you can see, white with swirls of black, copper, and gold, and the colors looked perfect.  Originally I tried a sort of fluted lantern shape, but that was wrong, as was the round one. But these tubes, with the colors swirling just a bit, were just what I needed.

So now I had center, left, and right side focal groupings.  Putting them together wasn't quite that simple, of course--the leaves were extremely difficult to attach, and getting a chain through the Ovington grouping required quite a lot of hole grinding in the Indian beads especially, but finally they were ready and I measured and attached pieces of chain between and after them to equal just about 24".

Then there was the question of a clasp. I had some small spring rings, but those wouldn't do. I searched etsy--and it's amazing how many people have commercially-made clasps listed under handmade, something etsy's currently trying to clrear up--but couldn't find on that looked right.  Then I remembered that I had some stuff from the last time I was playing with sterling and stones (years ago, that was) stashed in a drawer and, sure enough, there was a lovely little, but not too little, silver and carnelian clasp with a safety latch--just the thing. 

I put it all together, showed Seth, wore it to my craft group--I wondered about the length, but consensus is that it's right.

So, finally, I put a dress on my dummy, added the necklace, and took some photos.  I may need to redo them--the reflections make things difficult and I don't think I got the clasp--but I want to share some here and would appreciate comments. So here they are (hope I get the placement right this time!)