Oldies but Goodies - Amber

Many years ago a lovely lady from California showed me her amber collection, both of genuine and faux amber. It reminded me of a showcase I had seen at a natural history museum, also with specimen of genuine and faux amber.
With amber being a desirable stone for jewelry it's not unusual for amber imitations to be sold as the real thing. In fact that's how I got a little bag of cabs myself, as a gift from someone who had bought them as real ones. If the seller did it on purpose or not, we'll never know.

My choices from this week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge are a mix of amber colors, again both genuine and faux. I hope you'll like what I picked.

1 and 6 MC Stoneworks
2 and 5 Cat's Wire
3 and 7 Violetmoon's Corner
4 RioRita

Tackle that stash - Faux amber and wire knit ring and earrings

A few years ago I got a little bag full of faux amber cabochons. They were different sizes, different colors, different shapes and over the years they have made for some big fun. I made earrings, rings, necklaces, pendants, in fine silver or in copper wire, in wire knit or crochet technique and sometimes I even mixed both.
Often when my muse was out of town I grabbed the little bag and matched pairs, sets or contemplated the best bezel for a unique shape like the little rounded pyramid.

Finally the bag is almost empty. There are a few last small round cabs left now after I took two of them to make this pair of starburst earrings.

Available in my DaWanda shop

And then there was the cab that had been haunting me from the very beginning. Shaped like half a circle it defied all my attempts to put it in a bezel. More than once I thought now was the time to show it who was the master and more than once I kept ripping up what I had made half way through. If I ever heard a cab snicker, it was definitely this one.
I don't give up that easily, though. Eventually the time comes when I put on my determined face and do the job, and that's what I did.
With this ring. Ha!

Available in my Zibbet shop

Raspberry and honey

I'm not the cooking type, just in case you expected a fantastic new recipe for dessert now, sorry.
It does sound good, doesn't it?
I'm talking about colors, however. Let me show you one of my latest pieces and tell you how it "happened".

I love color lined crystal seed beads, and one color that has grown very dear to my heart is raspberry. To make these beads even more fun, they also have an AB finish. Seriously, they look good enough to eat. Without knowing my crush on them a friend gave me a tube for my birthday, in a bigger size than I use for looming, so instead I began to knit a rope, with a crochet hook as always of course.

When I had finished the rope I felt that something was missing, something to compliment the light golden wire that seems to make fine stripes in the rope. I asked myself what beads or cabs I had that would go well with it and came up with my faux amber cabs.
I knew I had one that was very light in color, reminding me of that creamy Canadian honey that was a special treat when I was a child. The pyramid shape made it even more interesting. I tried it this way and that way and decided that alone it was not big enough for this rope, so I picked out another cab in a dark honey color for contrast.
While the light one got a simple bezel that wouldn't distract from its shape, I picked up the raspberry color in the bezel for the dark cab again by adding two rows of smaller beads which gives it a slightly flowery look.

It's available in my Zibbet shop now.