Fish on a string

With all the rain, I was feeling bored, and decided to play with my beads.  I noticed that I had a lot of larger beads that were sitting unused for years, and I thought they might look nice strung.  I don't normally do stringing - stringing is to beadwork what salads are to cooking; it's not about the technique, it's the ingredients.

I have had these little fish beads forever.  There are only seven of them, and the store where I bought them doesn't even sell them any more, so I either needed to come up with a design that would be good enough with those few fish, or get rid of them (never my first choice).  Once I developed the pattern for the necklace, I saw that I only needed three of the fish!  I decided the rest would go well on a bracelet.

I like the freshwater pearls and the silver filigree beads on the necklace better than the pearlized glass and rocaille beads on the bracelet, but I used a thick stretchy beading cord for the bracelet, and the holes weren't big enough on the better beads.  It's all right - the fish are finally out of my stash!

Challenges:

• Crafty-emblies - under the sea
• The House that Stamps Built - anything but a card
• Craft My Life - all crafts
• Craft-Room Challenge - oriental
• Ladybug Crafts Ink - things with a P (pearls, porcelain fish)