Today is the day! The blog blog hop reveal! I can't wait to see what everyone else did with the sliders!
I wound up making three different pieces. This is the first:
This is a double spiral bracelet, using one of the spacers as the focal. I wound up taking this apart a couple of times. I had a hard time deciding between a single spiral stitch and a double. In the end, I decided the spacers needed something more substantial than the single spiral, and went with the double.
This is the second piece I made, and if I were to title it, I think it would be called "Not Your Grandma's Pearls".
In this, I decided to take something classic--a pearl strand--and jazz it up a bit.
And, finally, the third spacer:
I kept coming back to this design. The spacer is on a gold chain, and I envision this paired with a simple tee (assuming, that is, that spring will eventually get here).
This blog hop was a lot of fun! Check out what the others did:
Lola
Denise McCabe
Mustard Bead
A Polymer Penchant
Pearl and Pebble
Peacock Fairy
Beads for Busy Gals
Dawn Williams
Shirley Moore
B Street Studios
Sally Russick
Pamela770
Erin Prais-Hintz
Heather Powers
MirandAck
Lily
Karen Firnberg
Tanya
Mary
Rosebud101
Ann
Toltec Jewels
Micha
Terri
Okay, I admit it. I've been a bit blog-lazy lately, to say the least. It's been quite the week--we even had an unexpected day and a half off from work because of the snow. I love a snow day as much as (or maybe more than) the next person, but I think I'm over it now, and am ready for spring.
I've been so busy that it had probably been a good 2 weeks since I had been on the torch. I sat down to make a quick bead or two the other night, and made these:
This may be my favorite bead of all the ones I've made. I don't know why. It's not perfect, by far, but I love the colors, and it just makes me happy when I look at it. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised.
I like this one, too. Yellow is a nice, happy, spring color.
Tomorrow is supposed to be the reveal for the Lorelei Eurto blog hop I'm participating in. It had to be postponed for a couple of days because Lorelei has been sick. Tune in tomorrow for the reveal!
The other day I was out shopping with the girls and decided to make a quick run to Michaels (as if there is such a thing). As soon as I turned into the jewelry section, I spotted Jangles pendants and beads!!! I'm a huge fan, but had no idea they are now sold at Michaels! It's a good thing no one was in front of me, or I probably would have knocked them down in my excitement to get a closer look. This is what I wound up with:
I think the birdhouse is my favorite, closely followed by the starfish. I bought one of nearly everything they had. I cannot wait to play with them!!
I signed up to participate in a blog hop for the first time. As soon as I did, my first thought was "what was I thinking?!!". Oh the pressure of creating something unique from a particular set of components--in this case these:
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These are some cool sliders from Michaels. I first thought each bead was a separate slider, but as you can see from the back, four are joined together, which makes it more challenging, and completely changed my original ideas.
Lorelei Eurto is sponsoring the blog, and has more info and better pictures at http://lorelei1141.blogspot.com/. (My pics were spur-of-the-moment ones). Reveal date is March 27, which gives me a little over a week to come up with something wonderful. We'll see what happens!
I made this necklace last night using a blue swirled glass bead I made, some small crystals, a couple of flowers, and a leaf I picked up a while back.
I had seen crystals wire wrapped around a link before, but had never actually tried it. I assumed it would be harder than it looks, but it really isn't. It was quite easy, and the crystals behaved themselves and laid where they were supposed to.
Some good photo news. I've asked a friend of mine to take pics of my jewelry for my etsy shop and blog, and she agreed. Yay! She loves photography and is really good at it. I have to admit it's not my favorite thing--I'd rather just make the jewelry--so I'm happy to pawn it off on someone who enjoys it. I'm hoping to dig some things out this weekend for her to photograph.
You know, I really wish we had true seasons--winter when it's supposed to be winter, summer when it's supposed to be summer...but instead, we had softball weather yesterday and Christmas weather this morning. Crazy!
I started a new project last night. I found this pin on the Jennifer Jangles blog the other day, and absolutely fell in love.
This is a free pattern you can receive by signing up for her newsletter at jenniferjangles.blogspot.com. It combines two of my favorite things--jewelry and sewing. I choose these materials:
Not as cute as the materials she used, but I was limited to what my local Walmart had in stock. Last night I cut the pieces out and started sewing the petals. I'm doing all the sewing by hand because I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with my sewing machine. I figured I'd save time and sanity by just doing it by hand. The petals are small anyway, and I can work on them while watching tv.
I hope to finish this either tonight or tomorrow night, and I'll post pics. I think I have enough fabric in my stash to make another one in a different pattern. So many choices, so little time...
Has it really been a week since I last posted?! What a week. I finally broke down and went to the doctor on Monday, so now I'm almost over this nasty sinus infection. We got a little snow on Wednesday, so we got a snow day from work. Yay! Even better--I felt like getting on the torch that day for the first time in over a week.
Now that it's nearly spring (at least according to the calendar), I finally decided to use the pinecone bead Trav got me for Christmas. I don't know that I have ever struggled with a design as much as I did this one. I fought with it for a couple of hours, and finally wound up with this really simple design.
There is absolutely no reason something this simple should have taken so long, but it seemed like every decision was agonizing. First, I couldn't decide what kind of glass bead to use. Then, I couldn't decide which chain. I finally found some silver chain I liked, but didn't have enough of it. So, I strung some seed beads and then added the chain toward the end. Didn't like it, so I took it apart. Finally, after spending what seemed like forever on it, I found this particular copper chain, and noticed that it was slightly darker than my other copper chain. Perfect. Finally! I'm not the neatest beader, either, so I had quite the mess to clean up when I was done.
The weather this weekend is supposed to be really nice, and I've got my fingers crossed for a lazy weekend at home before softball season really cranks up!
I don't have any new jewelry to show today, since I've been fighting this cold all week, so I thought I'd post a few random pics. It's been a long week, and this is how I feel today:
This is one of my cats. Not sure what he's covering his eyes for! Camera shy, maybe?
I'd like to be doing this:
This is my Bichon Frise, Ralph, and this is his favorite activity. I never truly knew the meaning of the term "lap dog" until we got him.
On a non-animal note, I saw this gorgeous rainbow on the way home the other day:
The picture simply does not do it justice. It was the brightest rainbow I've ever seen. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see that it's a double rainbow. There were some really dark clouds behind it, which I absolutely loved. I'm a bit weird--I enjoy thunderstorms and the dark clouds that go with them.
I have two owl necklaces that I absolutely have to make this weekend, and several other ideas floating around in my head that I'm itching to act on. Hope this cold goes away so that I can get back into the groove!
