Not Knitting - Borg Jewelry

Have you ever seen those people who run a finger around the inside of their bracelet while they talk, stretching it out, maybe twisting it, maybe letting it snap back on their wrist? Yeah? Well I used to do that. Here's what broke me of that habit: I broke my favorite bracelet.

Sucks, but that's what you get, right? What I didn't deserve was to break my beautiful beaded keychain a few weeks later. Anyway, I gathered up as many of the beads from these things as I could find and put them away, thinking that I would soon repair both of them. But you know life gets when you try to have a little extra time...

Honestly, it's been so long that I don't even remember what this bracelet looked like before it broke. So it's not like I could put it back the way it was--even if I had all the beads. Same thing with my keychain. So I decided these two items would take a page from the Borg Handbook and assimilate each other.

I made the big blue bead from the keychain the focal point of this bracelet, framed by a couple of gold filigree balls that I had leftover from another project. Then I strung the rest of the beads from the bracelet and keychain--some blue and gold cloisonne beads, some small gold filigree balls, and some tiny blue seed beads--in pattern on some stretchy cord. (I still like stretchy bracelets. I just don't stretch them out any more.)

I thought that looked awesome. And I still had a couple of cloisonne beads and small gold balls, so I decided to make earrings. But, just those few beads didn't really look right. So I added some gold seed beads to frame the cloisonne and filigree beads. Then I thought "What the hell. I have some blue seed beads right here."

And this is the final product. I love the way this looks. And on a side note--I think I'm finally getting better at beading. There's less swearing involved, at any rate.