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by: Dwyn Tomlinson

The greens and golds of these remind me of those big zoomy dragonflies from when I was a kid. The Scarabeous green is a bright metallic insect green at some angles -and at some angles and lighting, more gold or purple highlights. They are fascinating to play with. Combined with the gold stardust beads! Just fabulous!

I wanted to play with a new product - the Elastic Cord Needle. I thought for sure that this was going to be a swing and a miss in terms of new products (you should see the pliers I just passed on! Ugh.) Yes - we do reject new products sometimes. Especially if they just don't work!

Anyway - the dealio with this "needle" is that it has a super tight hook at one end, and a little stopper loop at the other. You slide all your beads on in the order you want them, taking time to slide them off and rearrange them if necessary, and when you are done, you hook the elastic cord into the hook,and slide all the beads onto the cord in one fell swoop.

The first order of the day was finding beads with holes big enough to go over the hook. They need to have a 1 mm hole, and none of the firepolish I had on my desk worked. However, the stone rounds on the 16 inch strands do work, but on my way to make something - I got distracted by the baroque Scarabeous pearls.Distracted by beads - imagine!

To my delight and surprise - the pearls fit fine on the tool! I did have to use the flatter profile Opelon (.7 mm) - the fat, round elastic cords were not going to work.

But I hooked into the middle of stretch of cord twice the length of the finished bracelet and they slid on fine. Even the 6 mm pearls. I was pleasantly surprised.And having used this tool - the Elastic Needle - for a number of projects - I have to say - I'm sold!

Just slide the beads onto the elastic, and knot! Woohoo!

These 4 bracelets are all on the same theme - one accent bead in the middle,and a tassel opposite. Two are 6 mm pearls and one stardust. One is all stardust and an 10 mm pearl, and two 6 mm pearls down by the tassel. The fourth is 8 mm pearls plus two 10 mm pearls as the accent. It was about playing about with them. All in all, I used 54 of the 6 mm pearls, 15 of the 8 mm pearls, and 3 of the 10 mm pearls, and 31 stardust beads. I wear them all together in a"stack."

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