Bangles: Orange, Pink or Purple?

A few weeks ago we had an invite to go to dinner with some lovely friends of ours.  Dining out at home is one of my favourite things to do, food, wine, good company and when we can walk there, no arguments discussions about who's driving!

A lovely balmy summer's eve, just right for a rather eye catching patterned summer top I own from the now defunct Principles (original, not it's subsequent reincarnation) in vivid tones of orange, pink & purple!

Of course I couldn't miss the opportunity to make up a bangle to match... only whilst my top has managed to combine these three colours beautifully, that was more than could be said for me, as I attempted to mix the colours onto a bangle!

As I valiantly attempted to get all 3 colours onto 1 bangle, my other half reminded me that we really needed to leave, so defeated I gave up trying to combine all 3 colours and settled for 3 beads that combine just pink and purple, but oh so beautifully, in each bead.

I normally don't blog my "outfit bangles" as they change on a fairly regular basis.

However I realised that not only has my central bead on my chosen bangle for the evening, the Limited Edition "Be My Valentine"  never been worn or blogged before... but the pair of orange uniques on my discarded (but pretty) orange bangle have also never been featured... therefore, unusually, I give you not 1, but 2 of my recent outfit bangles!  

Even if the orange one didn't get worn that evening; there's always another time!

Trollbeads Bangle - Green & Orange on Black with an Lemon Twist!

There have been some lovely new uniques from Trollbeads recently and the centre bead in this bangle was one that was part of the UK set available from Macrow Beads.

It was the only one I bought (see I do try and be good sometimes) and it's taken a while to get around to using it in a new combo as I've been so enamoured of the bangles and bracelets I already have made up!

I knew I wanted it to feature prominently in it's first combo, and I love that it has a black base so I took inspiration from this and paired it with my new (to me) Onyx Beads.  I was lucky to pick this fab pair of onyx beads preloved and the twist was that I threw in some lemon prisms for contrast.

Once this bangle came together, I suddenly realised that it might just compliment another bracelet I have made up, what do you think?

I love my new orange/green/black unique.  I'm being good and haven't picked up any of the newest batches but I love all the variety, something for everyone!

What new beads & brands do you have your eye on?

I can't believe I need to cut back just as it's all got very exciting again!

Hit the comments and share what you're currently coveting!

Trollbeads Sunrise Blossom Bracelet - playing with multiples.

I made a promise to myself a while back that I would make the time to create some new full bracelet combinations as I've been focusing more on bangles and leather wraps of late and ignoring my silver charm bracelets a tad.

Also there was a slightly less glamourous practical reason for this; despite pimping my bead box with 10 extra super long rods to hold more beads... it's, er, rather full again so I have a storage need to have a few more bracelets made up, nothing like an injection of storage reality to give myself a kick up the butt to make good on my promises! A'hem, let's just skip over that part for now...

I initially bought many of the Trollbeads Fall Collection beads in multiples.  This was the first time I've done this with a new collection; a decision that was inspired not only by the collection itself, but the ease with which you can create new bangle designs when you have 2 of something.

That idea seems to have snowballed and I've also been slowly buying multiples of other beads too, finally I did get the time to focus on a bracelet, and what better place to start than with some multiples and a focal bead.  This bracelet is unusual for me in that I've not included any silver beads at all, just glass and stones.

I used Trollbeads Sunrise Blossom as the centre bead.  The retired green armadillos are becoming a fast favourite of mine after having seen them in real life in a friend's collection, I've gone from 0 to 4 in quite a short space of time and couldn't resist using them all together.

The carnelian orange faceted stones toward the front are artisan and are flanked by my two Green Jaspers which actually look very different to each other.  The rest of the beads are from the Fall Collection 2013, next are the Saffron Facet beads, the Masala Facets and finished off with Aqua Edge Pumpkin beads.  I've still to pick up the Aqua Edge Triangle bead from that set and yes I want 2 of those also!

I love the colours in this bracelet and I think it's safe to say; I've definitely overcome my previous reluctance with orange beads!

Trollbeads Limited Edition - Sunrise Blossom

Last year there was a flurry of activity in small releases of Limited Edition (LE) beads in the US... as these are never fully confirmed some have morphed from just concept stores, to oh okay, now other stores can carry them, to look here they are in Europe... who knows they may even make it into a local store I can catch a bus to in the UK.

Sunrise Blossom

Unfortunately for me, wanting one of these and shopping via the US to make sure we got one, myself and my good friend did end up paying over the odds for something we could have bought more cheaply more closely to home without all the extra fees involved (customs and UK post office "handling" fee) had we waited.

Bitter?  No I'm not actually; perhaps a bit exasperated with Troll at the moment, but knowing that Troll can (and do) change their mind about availability and future distribution of beads I knew it was a possibility; admittedly the beads crossing the Atlantic only a short couple of months later does make me wish that Troll would decide what it wants to do distribution wise with these types of beads, announce this and thus stop all the apparent faffing.

Confusingly Sunrise Blossom briefly appeared on the official Trollbeads UK website as Sunrise; along with all the other "US now Europe LE Beads" but has since disappeared again along with the others.

However, politics aside, Sunrise Blossom is a really lovely bead AND it's a flower which you don't normally find me saying in the same sentence!

The bead is a lovely combination of oranges and yellows, one of the reasons I was attracted to this bead was the background colours around the core; the colour is almost a stripy tie-dye effect, encircled with flowers; I think I'm embracing my inner hippy here...

Generally the first thing I do with any new bead is pop it on a bangle and have a play.

Sunrise Blossom paired with Saffron facet beads from the Fall Collection 2013 & silver lucky knot beads

Swap out the silver beads and replace with contrasting green armadillo beads (retired but you can still find them available to buy) and voila another bangle.

Swap out the silver luck knot beads & replace with retired green armadillos

I find having multiple examples of beads to use on a bangle really helpful, I've recently backfilled my silver beads with some new multiples, so when they eventually arrive you may well find some more bangle designs on the blog, er once I've showed you the existing ones, I seem to be designing them a lot more quickly than I'm blogging them!