Cool Collaboration

For those of you who know me well, it will come as no surprise that I help my opal supplier run his booth for some of the winter trade shows. I love this winter gig for many reasons. One of them is that I get 1 st pick of all the new opals! Another is because I get to smooze with all of the designers who do wholesale only shows-a whole group of great people I never see in my show circles. And the best reason is because I always get to spend my birthday with my best friend Lisa Joy Sachs who lives near the trade shows! We take my new opal booty and spread it all out on her dining room table and have a design frenzy. (Lisa is also a jewelry designer and she makes glass beads. She is the most creative person I know-check out our Open Studio Show in December on the show schedule!) I love to use her handmade glass beads in my designs and in this series of collaboration pieces we discovered that her glass beads look very much like my new opals! So this piece was meant to be. Here is a gorgeous Sachs Design lentil bead with a remarkable pattern and colors similar to my new boulder opal! The pearl in the center is a color enhanced, lavender coin pearl. The construction is a marriage of metals with 22k gold bezel, and 14k gold accents and sterling silver under bezel. The facetted amethysts and iolites are strung on a durable wire to 17.5 inches long with a lobster claw clasp. What a pretty one of a kind piece!

$895.