Mum's the word

I had yet another productive night drilling and stringing six (6!) bracelets but, first, I wanted to show off two of Mom's creations.

I love this green gingham set she did. (I drilled the tiles for her but she strung 'em with 8mm white fiber optic rounds.) She has a green gingham jumper and this makes an adorable accessory for it.

Mom didn't care for these ice-blue tiles ... until I held them against the blue and green 8x10mm tube beads. Now she likes it so much she asked me to drill a matching necklace to go with it! She likes the white Dragon tile with the "P" since that's the first letter of her name. Why a "P"? According to Sloperama:

Po means "white" or "blank." Some tiles come marked with a letter "B" or "P." Why "B" or "P"? In Mandarin Chinese, most people these days call the white dragon tile "bai" or "bai-ban" (sounds like "buy" or "buy bonds," er, I mean, "buy bon"), meaning "white" or "white board." In Cantonese, the white dragon is usually called "bok" or "bok bon" (as in "bok choy" which means "white vegetable"). In Cantonese Jyut Ping, "bok bon" is written as "Baak6 Baan2." In some parts of China, what we Westerners think of as "B" can be pronounced "B" or "P" depending on the word and the local dialect. Originally, white dragon tiles were all blank.

As for what I did, my first effort tonight was with pink tiles from an incomplete breast cancer awareness set. I made this to sell on Etsy but I'm so pleased with it I think I'll make another, larger version for me. (If you see five tiles in a bracelet it's pretty much guaranteed to be for sale!) It's strung with 10mm frosted red plum glass beads.

If you like to wear more than one at a time, as I do, then the pink bracelet looks great with this similar mint green bracelet with 10mm frosted green glass beads. As with all these bracelets, it's reversible so you can wear it either direction.

I was shocked by how much I liked this pairing. I'm more of a silver girl, but had five gold mardi gras tiles. I drilled them then stared at my beads trying to decide what went with them. Strands of metallic blue in the gold tiles caught my eye, so I grabbed these 10mm blue fiber optic rounds. Wow! As I said, I'm more of a silver girl, but if I had more of these gold tiles I'd make one for me, too. This is for sale on Etsy.

I then went on to patriotic and Christmas themes. The first set is a red-stripe tile with 10mm frosted green glass beads. It features 1-2-2-5 Bamboo tiles plus a Winter tile. All very Christmasy, no?

The patriotic bracelet is made with either lighter red or a very deep pink stripe tiles. Neither Mom nor I could decide but we loved it paired with the 10mm royal blue fiber optic rounds.

I ended the evening with lovely turquoise-stripe tiles paired with 10mm white fiber optic rounds. It's made with NEWS Wind tiles and the blue and white Dragons.

Not bad for a night's work.

Click on any photo to see it larger.