Hello, my darlings!

So, you all remember another lovely sunday afternoon an embarrassingly long time ago when I sat down and spent the day with some of Potomac Bead Company’s AVA beads? Do you also remember how I completely failed to design anything with them? Well, my antagonistic relationship with these funky beads has finally taken a turn towards friendship. I present to you my Vistella earrings!

Click the photo for the pattern link!

I’m trying to get more creative with my pattern names, but OY! that could be a whole blog post in itself. It’s so tricky to find a name that is easy to spell and relates to the design, but isn’t already being used. I named these earrings “Vistella” because V is the Roman numeral for 5 and these earrings have five points. And then the “Stella” is Latin for “star”. Hopefully, it’s easy enough to spell that people can google it easily.

These copper and turquoise ones were my original prototype. I mostly just wanted to find a shape I could make with the AVA’s that hadn’t already been used. This slouchy star shape was a complete accident, but I love how it turned out.

I was a little worried that they might be a smidge too big or bulky for earrings, but it turns out that even though the AVA beads are a bit large, they aren’t very heavy at all. I’ve had no problem wearing these earrings around for an afternoon. They’re way lighter than I expected.

But! If large earrings aren’t your thing, this design works just fine as a pendant! I attached this one to a long piece of black chain and it hangs about mid-bust and looks great against a gray top.

I did some experimenting with the purple/silver and brown/gold set in the photo above and found out that GemDuos work just as well in this pattern as DiamonDuos. I also haven’t had any trouble swapping between Miyuki and Toho seed beads.

I am so excited to keep playing around with different color schemes. I’m thinking some Christmas colors with gold AVA beads might have a cool Christmas wreath / star look to it. The possibilities are endless! Do you guys have a favorite?