Big Damn Crafters Challenge: Ice Planet

I recently joined the Big Damn Crafters, an Etsy Street Team dedicated to the sadly-cancelled TV show Firefly. I shan’t try to explain Firefly here; either you get it or you don’t, and if you don’t, there’s nothing for it but to watch the thing.

The July challenge centered around a quote from one of the episodes —

“My food is problematic.”
“Girl’s a mind reading genius, can’t figure out how to eat an ice planet.”

An ice planet, it turns out, is a ball of ice cream on a string. I have to admit I’d find it problematic as well.

In any case, I figured I’d enter the thing, and the place to start was, for once, pretty obvious.

I got most of the stones in this necklace from another that I’d picked up a while ago, so this one’s an exercise in recycling as well. The big focal bead, a beautiful piece of rutilated quartz, made a perfect ice planet.

The quartz chips on the same necklace looked pretty icy to me, so I figured I’d use those as well (the original piece also had turquoise and amethyst, which I saved for another piece; about which more later). But it needed more, so I went digging.

I’d bought some glittery glass beads with the thought of making kids’ jewelry from them (which I still haven’t accomplished, alas). They looked icy and ice-cream-ey (or at least sherbet-ey) and it turned out they were just perfect.

I even had a couple of beads left to make matching earrings. :)

It’s a short necklace, almost a choker at 17 inches. I like how it hangs and how it feels — it’s heaver than I usually wear. In fact, this piece stretched me a lot — I don’t usually use beads as bright as the glass, and I don’t use chips at all. Or I didn’t anyway; I think I’m going to start!

All in all I’m pretty pleased with it. I’ll let you know if I win!