Jewellery I love!

As you might have guessed I quite like trollbeads... certainly enough to start a blog about them!  I also love pendants and rings and thought it would be fun to show you some of the jewellery I love and wear with my beads.

I regularly combine this bracelet with some amber to compliment my Baltic Gold bead (from the World Tour Collection).

Up until my recent holiday I didn't have an amber ring, although I've been on the hunt for the "right one" for many years.  Last month when I found this splendid chunk of amber in silver in a little shop in Gaois Harbour I was delighted.  I've seen a great many beautiful rings in my search for "my" amber ring but I find with jewellery I instinctively know when I've found the right piece for me.

The necklace pendant, by contrast, is quite a delicate piece, (and has it's own bracelet to match for when I need something delicate to match), it was only when I brought the ring home did I realise the twist in my necklace and the shape of the ring were a great pairing.  My pendant has huge sentimental value because it was a present from my parents-in-law, shortly before my father-in-law passed away.

In this blog post I made 2 more bracelets that have remained made up ever since, the first one I think of as my dragon bracelet.  This tends to get worn with another favourite of mine, labradorite.

I can't remember when or where I found the pendant, but Wales is probably a good guess!  This was the second labradorite pendant I bought, the first wasn't quite the right one (but still lovely) but at the time I bought it, many many years ago, labradorite was quite hard to find in jewellery, or at least it was for me.  The ring I found on a jewellery stall at a festival a few years ago, I love the strong, bold silver setting.

The next bracelet was a multiple attempt at using up leftover beads to create a colourful combination that I was inspired to make by seeing a rainbow bracelet made by another collector.  Whilst I wasn't trying to copy the design I wanted to create my own kaleidoscope of colours.

With this bracelet I tend to wear my all time favourite pendant, this one gets used so much and nearly always creates a comment from other people, there seems to be a great need to touch this stone and I too find myself caressing it's surface when I wear it.

The ring was bought earlier this year when I met a very old friend for lunch in Wales and we did a bit of shopping before parting company; just like old times when we were teenagers.  Just like now, I often bought a ring, or pendant, in some lovely independent shop found in a little side street tucked away from the main shopping areas.

Another pendant that I sometimes wear with this bracelet is my amethyst one, which in turn matches my wedding ring shown in the photo to the left.  My wedding ring was found in a jewellers that specialised in clocks!



The blue/green opal ring shown above also gets worn with this bracelet, (it really is a very versatile bracelet), I found this beauty whilst on honeymoon in Greece.  I'm also wearing this as I finish this blog piece, along with my wedding ring and the silver footprint thumb ring so I'm having a strange visual experience of seeing double from hands to screen.

I've had my silver footprint thumb ring for many years, where I discovered it, well that has become lost in the mists of time.  I'll take another guess at Wales though!  I almost lost the ring a few weeks ago when it fell off after I'd managed to knock it getting into my car outside a restaurant.  I heard that "plink" and then I could hear it roll away, on a very rainy night in a dark car park in Newcastle...  I'm not sure what passing folk must have thought when I was scrabbling around on my hand and knee in the rain under my car trying to balance on them like I was playing a solo invisible game of Twister.  Thankfully I did find and retrieve it; I would have been so upset to lose this ring, it's not in any way valuable, just precious to  me.

These are all pieces of jewellery that I love, and are some of my absolute favourites.  Those who know me well will not be at all surprised to see which pieces I chose to show you in my blog today.  In reality it was very hard to write this article and to bring it to an end as I have so many other pieces that could have been included too.  Maybe I shall write part II some day.