Mixed media materials

A couple of fun things I picked up last month at Two Gather Beads, our awesome local place:

The long spirally ovals are hand-painted leather rolls from Peru. The dark red and purple one will be joining some vintage buttons, a textured copper chain, and those hemp-wrapped rings behind it to become a big crazy mixed-media bracelet. The light green one -- I'm not quite sure. It kinda wants to be on one side of a multistrand necklace with the beaded strands all pulled through it.  I'm not sure I have the patience for this, though.  At any rate, the dark red-brown stripe look surprisingly good with leftover Swarovski Bordeaux crystal pearls. 

At the back: Navy Czech glass with this interesting AB effect that appears to have been applied through mesh.  It could go elegant or very industrial.  It will probably end up being part of something for M's next steampunk dress, one of the ones for Octavia: a pale blue velvety bustle gown with a darker blue polonaise, 1870s, with optional leather work apron.  In that capacity it will be joining another awesome find: mixed goldstone, which I found at the Artist's Market and Bead Store in the French Quarter.  The store, with its great selection and awesome proprietor, highly and thoroughly recommended; and some of the things I found there (including the mixed goldstone, which has exquisite desert streaks of dark gold and midnight blue with that stunning goldstone sparkle) I've never seen anywhere else before or since.

Odd lighting in that photo, no?  It was getting late and I ended up using the flash, which one really ought not; it oversaturates the colors and gives a slight film-grain effect.  On anything shiny, you get a line of bright white -- and just as you can lighten a dark photo but not darken a bright one, there's no making flash-flare on beads go away.  Ever.  You can see it on the leather even though it's satin at best.  And the leaves lying around were pinched off my flowering kale when they went crispy.  What would I do without fallen plant bits to stage photos?  Answer: not stage them.  But staging is such fun, even when it's a just a look-what-I-got photo.