bead night

i've decided to cut myself some slack about not taking good jewelry photos. i mean, i'm using glass beads - and a flash. how can i expect it to not be a little crappy? for example, the front right piece of jewelry is made of these white & orange swirled beads that i LOVE, but they just look shiny in the photo. you'll have to trust me that it's cute.

i'm trying round two of the bottle cap necklaces tonight. the first set is doing well - but the resin isn't completely set up yet. so this time i actually measured the two parts & i'll see if it sets up faster. funny how things can come out differently when you follow directions. :) i also learned, thanks to measuring, that i can get 7 bottlecaps filled with each ounce of resin. there's 16 ounces of resin in the bottle - so 112 caps per bottle. at $14/bottle - that's about 13 cents per cap. not bad at all. here's hoping it sets up properly. then i'm off to buy bulk bottle caps. and maybe some ball chain. you know that chain dog tags are usually on? the same stuff used for pull cords on basement lights? that's what i've seen these necklaces strung on. i'm not a huge fan of ball chains ... but it does seem to work well. so unless i find something i like better, that's probably what i'll use. although i really want to make some chokers that are just rings of caps - and bracelets, too. maybe some ball chain in the back to make them adjustable. yeah ... that could be good. or i could have the bottle caps individually - and let people choose which ones they wanted for a choker or bracelet. they're string together pretty easily. charge per cap. and then use a basic necklace extender on the end for the clasp. it'd be more work to customize them as people bought them ... but it might be a nice feature. hmmm.

i love thinking crafty.