Beading with Lava

[crafty_packrat]

ellen_fremedon gave me beads made from the lava of Hekla last fall after her trip to Iceland. They're quite nifty and very solid compared to the lava beads available in the local bead shop -- which had a sale right before New Years for inventory reduction, to avoid the weird local tax on shop inventory.

So I made myself a very shiny necklace, using the lava beads, labradorite coin beads, pyrite rounds, coin metal spacers, and a pendant of silver and labradorite.






I bought a very pretty silver-and-copper-twist toggle clasp, a silver and labradorite pendant, a string of labradorite coin beads, a string of pyrite roundes, and a string of coin metal -- though my first plan was entirely different and included African trade glass in a pale blue. Sadly, the glass beads and the first string of labradorite I picked up did not match or compliment the pendant that I finally decided on as the focus of the necklace, so I had to sort through all the options again, and was lucky that one of the saleswomen at the shop suggested the pyrite, which I would not have picked up myself, considering it is a rather unprepossessing gunmetal shade.



It was pretty easy to lay out the beads, using the pendant and the lava beads as the main focus of the piece and the pyrite and labradorite as to fill it.



The necklace came out rather lovely, though sadly photos don't quite do it justice, since it's hard to catch the flash (adularescence) in a photo -- the necklace flashes pale bronze-green in light.