Christmas "Galaxies"

The Christmas Collection from Trollbeads saw the usual two kits of 6 limited edition glass beads.  One red kit called Christmas Love which is a kit of true reds and one blue kit called Elegant Christmas.

Trollbeads Christmas Collection 2013: "Love Sparkle" and "Elegant Sparkle"

Once again, many retailers are selling these as individual beads and like many collectors I gravitated to what I think of as the 2 signature beads, a true red and a true blue galaxy/mercury bead that follow the very successful pattern seen in the much sought after small and beautiful collection of uniques.

New Christmas red bead shown with the
small & beautiful cream galaxy/mercury beads

I quite like these 2 beads worn on their own on a bangle, the design is strong enough for that to look quite spectacular, particularly when layered up with my usual Story and X by Trollbeads combo as the only pop of colour in an otherwise black and silver ensemble.  However as I always do this I thought I'd play around a bit more.

Interestingly I found I had a bit of difficulty matching these two up with other beads in my collection, as I seem to have a lot more transparent glass and even fewer blues.  Leaving the bangles to one side for a moment I decided to try my hand with these beads on a fantasy necklace for a bit of Christmas Sparkle!

The beads themselves vary quite a lot in both size of glass and silver patterns; I've seen several examples from very pretty and neat beads to lovely messy ones like mine!  I would recommend if you're after a particular size or pattern you choose your own where possible, whether in person, or by photo, or certainly give the shop an indication of your preference if you have one.

I was able to choose my blue bead personally based on a photo and for the red bead I requested "a messy pattern of silver, size of bead is unimportant but the more the silver runs into each other or spills from one dot to the other the better!"  I think the shop chose very well based on my description!

Given the scramble for the small and beautiful beads, there are still people who didn't get any of the most sought after patterns, so I'm especially pleased that Trollbeads have included 2 galaxy/mercury style beads in the Christmas Kits.  As most retailers are splitting the kits it means that everyone has a chance to acquire one of their own, with or without the rest of the kit.  Now that's a nice choice to have to make!