Catching up

I've been rather neglectful of my blog, mostly because I look at the title and I just can't stand it. But I still haven't come up with an alternative...maybe one day...maybe.

I've not been idle though, nope, not me, the insomniac.

1mmx2mm micro faceted gemstones (mostly garnet and amethyst) and 10/0 silver lined crystal czech glass seed beads in a spiral beadweave.

 3mm Crystal AB czech glass beads and 11/0 czech glass black seed beads in a spiral beadweave.

I was actually experimenting with making a frame for a lamp shade...then...well, I don't really remember how I got here, but I like them :-)
This was the first dreamcatcher, the frame is 26 guage silver colored wire, the web is 32 guage silver colored wire, with an amethyst bead chip to represent the spider, and a green czech glass leaf...I've gotten better at it since this one.

I've done lots and lots of bracelets too...lots =|

Hair clippie for a co-worker's baby daughter, she probably won't wear hers either, my niece doesn't, but now her momma wants some for her own hair, lol. This one is 32 guage wire, 10/0 amethyst czech glass seed beads, and 11/0 emerald czech glass seed beads.

 See, told you I got better; turquois bead chip and silver colored wire dreamcatcher with an autumn leaf bead.

These are a surprise for my mother and her brothers and sister. Grandma wrote a poem/song, Red Roses for Mother I think it's called, anyway, I thought it would be nice to have some permanant flowers at her headstone. She believed in my talent, she would have been proud of what I've taught myself....and she would been tickled pink to know that I used some recycled materials for her roses :)

..and better...copper and peridot, I couldn't find feathers and looked it up, I saw that traditional dreamcatchers had leaves too, or at least one website said so...so I used leaf beads. I couldn't find any to match the peridot so I made my own. I really love copper and peridot, every copper top should wear green :)

Well, I did try...

...and I failed (sort of). I broke one of the petals off when I brilliantly added the crimp tube cover, just sqweezed it right off. It would have worked if I'd secured the wires first.
...if at first you don't succeed...

Vanilla

The beginnings of a vanilla bean blossom. I've got to find larger crimp tubes if I'm going to make it workon though.

From this...to that.

Seriously in love with french bead flowers!!

 Another tedious craft, but well worth the labor. I just can't believe how easily I picked this one up. I had to do three or four of the crocheted bracelets before I was happy with what I got, and everything else took gads of practice, but I just really love this!! Up next is a vanilla bean flower, one of my favorite customers at my other job gave me a bottle of homemade vanilla. She makes them for herself and her family and I thought it would be nice to give her something back, then I found these and now I can't wait to give her one to decorate her bottle with.

 Had to give myself a break from these, three of the five I have done...out of six that were ordered...plus one that I did till I could get more silver. I still like doing these, but they do hurt my fingers, so I needed a break for a day or two. I do love that blue though, I'm thinking I might need one myself, lol.

Projects and more projects

I don't know what's got into me, I've gotten tons of things done, even photographed, but I just haven't thought to post about it I guess.

Everyone liked the first pair I made, so I made a few more. Of course, everyone asked where to get them, then no one got them, lol.

Then I decided to try a layered necklace, I like it, but it rolls, I'll have to change the connector, right now all the chains end at a jump ring.

Now I'm finishing an order for six crocheted bracelets. But after that, I've found a new love...french bead flowers!!! Which, I hope I can incorporate into the crocheted wire, I'm thinking curtain ties, forever corsages...who knows what I could do with these!!

Cleared my plate

Another one finished...

...and now I have absolutely no projects waiting to be finished, just in time for a four day weekend. :)

But I do have an idea to pass by my sister, the sew-er <---how do you put that!?!?
...surely not sewer...
And she's not a seamstress, she makes quilts, so obviously she's a quilter, but I don't want a quilt...well, I won't be selfish since she did just give me one...hmmm.
So many ideas, so much time...

Not so much new...

Done before, but in pink. Just a bracelet and necklace this time. I might rearrange to get a pair of earrings out of it later, but this package came with less beads than the blue...they were sold by weight.


Only for the brave at heart...these babies are five and a half inches long!!! I love how they tickle my shoulders, and I don't know if I can pull it off, but I'm gonna try. Then I'm going to put a few in my Etsy shop for Valentine's.


Ok, enough distractions for me, back to the red sandstone and black seed bead necklace...then bed...maybe.

To sell or not to sell...

Don't get me wrong, I loved making these bracelets, and making a profit off of them wasn't a priority when she ordered them, because I like her and she said they were for gifts...but I have a dilema now. The husband of the woman I sold them too, who is also a regular customer at my 'real job', stopped by and in a friendly, not so discrete, but not terribly overt, way suggested that I make them for him to sell. He kept saying how beautiful they were, and how his wife just loved them, and that he could really sell them. The thing is, I'd never made so many in such a short time and hadn't really broken it down to see how much it costs me to make the kind that she asked for. I have gemstone versions on my Etsy for $15 and $20, but these were glass, and I thought, not really worth that much. But honestly, I really feel a $6 profit isn't worth the hours and hours I spent on them...or the broken fingernails and bruised fingertips. How do I tell them that without feeling like I'm being greedy? And the biggest dilema of all...how do I let it go so I can feel creative again?

Work in progress

A finished peridot bracelet and a necklace to match. I'm partial to peridot, so I'm tempted to keep this one, but I think I'm going to try and sell it instead, just because I want someone else to love it as much as I do. Is that narcissistic? LOL

A crocheted bracelet in gold for my sister who loves her some yellow...I hope she reaaallly loves yellow, 'cause it's YELL-OW lol.

And this is the next piece in progress, well, one among a few honestly. I get an idea and I have to try it out, even if I'm not done with the last. The only thing that's changed since I was a kid is that now, I actually finish them. In fact, I get an itchy feeling deep down if I leave something for too long, kind of like that lightbulb-in-the-brain-new-idea-itch...only, gotta-know-if-it-really-worked-itch instead, lol.

Snow Day!!!

When I heard we were to get four to six inches of snow, I thought I'd take an old fashioned snow day. On my day off I thought I'd stay in, curl up with a sweater and the quilt my sister made me for Christmas. I'd work on a relaxing project and maybe listen to the radio or a good movie and sip on a homemade hot mocha.
Well, so far I've done some of that, skipped the mocha, but I had to make some hot enchilada soup after the two hour trek through said snowstorm :)

These kids kept yelling at me to take their picture, which I'd already done anyway. But then a photographer with a professional camera came out and indulged them...I got on the other side of his lens as fast as I could, he looked like the staff photographer from the local paper that got me walking to my mother's house one day a few summers ago...I ended up as a silhouette on the front page of the paper the next day. :(

When I was a kid they used to put up hay bales so that we could sled down the hills without ending up in this creek.

 I wasn't the only one who took the scenic route through the park. When I walked up to the barrier to the old 'indian trails" I expected undisturbed snow, and found lots footprints.

by the time I was done, I was thoroughly frozen and my jeans were solid slabs of ice. Funny that my shoes repelled the snow though. I love these boots for that, and the fact that they're comfy furry lined, but they do NOT keep my feet warm...they look stubby in this picture because I took the photo myself, so the original is really upside down, lol.

New Year, New Projects, New Enthusiasm

Well, that's my New Year's Resolution anyway. I'm going to be more energetic and enthusiastic about where I'm going with my art...and I'm going to call it art, not just "my hobbies" or "just one of those crafts I do". Everyone else sees what I do as art, and then I stammer through some reason why it's just a hobby really. But, art takes on all kinds of forms and entities. I think the real difference between a work of art and a hobby is how far you push the boundries of a craft.

If you just like to learn the basics, follow the rules, you've got yourself a hobby. And there's nothing wrong with that. Hobbies are great for stress and mental energy, everyone should have a hobby. I have several, and collect more every year. In fact, I intend to re-learn how to sew this year. Perhaps even make a few new dresses for myself. I was looking at a wrap dress the other day and thought: 'I can do that'. And so I shall.

 But most definately I'm going to push myself more with my jewlery, encorporate it with other things, branch out a bit. I love finding new ways to do old things, like the crochet wire. By the way, just finished my first order of the new year, and my first mass order ever.

Right now I'm stuck on beadweaving. The only pattern I know is a rope, but I'm already changing it up.

This one is a neclace woven with a double strand of nylon invisible thread and thousands of tiny silver lined clear glass seed beads.

I've made ten bracelets and a necklace so far, and now I'm working on another. Right now it's bracelet length, and I might leave it at that, I haven't decided.

I love how great the perdot worked with this, and the uneven size and shape of the raw chips just makes it look that much better...way better than I expected. I can't wait to finish this one. But I'm gonna, think I'll go to bed before 4AM today, lol.

Goodnite world!!

Creative blitz, and one piece of chaos later...

I haven't posted anything in forever, but I've kept busy. Not really new styles, but new pieces none the less. Though one is a bit...different.

another necklace/bellychain...I made this one 35" and apparently that's just a bit too long to use as a bracelet...well, except on someone who's wrist is either smaller or larger than mine.

Not a new style of necklace, but it is slightly different, I've never added a tail chain before. And instead of buying one of those preemade ones with the metal charm, I made one with a bead in the same color different shape.

 if you haven't noticed already, I tend to organize by either shape or color...keeping 'likes' together in some way. The one above, are all the same octagonal shape. To the left are all beveled, and below are round. All came from the same three packs of beads, I divided them this time by shape.




There's also symetry...each one has a center bead (or in the case above right, split evenly in the center) and then each bead is mirrored on either side

And then I wondered what it would look like if I stopped doing that, just once...obviously I didn't use several different shapes, I didn't have anything else like this bead. I love these, they're practically luminescent, I poured them out on my plate and thought 'they look kinda cool there in no particular order' and then I had a new style, lol. no order to the shape, size, number of beads in a 'set', even the lenght of chain between the sets is out of uniform...and I love it!!  I failed a little with the bracelet, it almost looks orderly, lol.

Getting ready for Halloween

Kind of interesting to get excited about Halloween again. Our family kind of just gave it up after our Dad died, I think it just seemed weird to everyone to celebrate a holiday that was also the anniversary of his death. But the next generation has brought back the spirit (pun intended, lol). Too bad mom doesn't still have her Vincent Price recordings.
 This year we grew small sweet pie pumpkins so my sister can make us all pumpkin pie, lol. We still had to have Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween, but we didn't want to cut up the pumpkins just yet, so my neice and I spent Tuesday cutting and glueing rather than scraping and carving.

Stirling silver

I actually started out with the base metals with the hope that I'd get good enough that I can work with stirling silver without it making me nervous...that didn't happen. But I have gotten good enough that I thought it was about time I made a few pieces in SS anyway. I have already done a few things, with a larger gauge SS wire, like the things I made for my mother. However these are all made out of 26 guage wire, a bit smaller than what I used for the jump rings and much smaller and more fragile than the headpins I regularly use.


All the pieces have perdot, but the one's with the amethyst also are part of a Christmas gift .

Yes I'm working on Christmas already!!!!

 Can't decide if I want to keep these two for myself or try to sell them...



Wrapped wire chain necklace

In two tone, copper wrapped wire links with a silver base metal chain that's been folded over twice to form a double U. Each end of a clasp is added to the top of the U; the bottom of the U is fed through one end of the wrapped links, then the clasp end is fed through the center and pulled to make a knot.

The links aren't perfect circles, and aren't wrapped finely like my rings, but personally I like it that way. I might try to make it with the closely wrapped rings one day, but I think that would make it look too perfect...and not hand made.

an October post

lest you think I've done nothing today...

 really I was just curious if I could wrap them within each other, I didn't expect to like it, and I've add three more links since I took the picture. I think this would be nice as a feature section on a chain necklace, maybe added as the middle or woven onto the chain, I'll have to think about it, maybe I'll even add more to make it a full chain by itself...though that would take me days, this was time consuming. And it seems that every time I complain about a project being time consuming, I come up with one that's more so.

Another of the light wrapped rings, this one with three simi-precious stones and 34 guage wire in silver color. I don't know what they are, I didn't ask when I bought them, but they're as small as the seed beads and are what I used in the crocheted watch band and matching bracelet.

For the record boys...just a short note on dating

It is ok to tell a woman that you love her ass...but not over the phone...while she's at work. And seriously, it would go over much better if you introduced yourself first, regardless of the method by which you deliver your message. And probably you shouldn't choose to go covert with someone who has a memory for voices :\ (tangent thought for any and all Hoosiers...irregardless is NOT a word!!)

Also boys, if you want to ask a girl out, and you present yourself while she's at work, after you've already established that she's too busy to chat over the phone because you called before you stopped, then's the time to ask...not over the phone ten minutes after you've left her place of work. I'm sorry I laughed at you pal, but you have to admit that's kind of on the rediculous side. I understand shy, that's not just shy, it's weird.

Compliment or creepy...it's all in the delivery.

For instance, establishing that a girl is old enough to date before you ask her out comes across as flirty...telling her after, no matter if she's accepted or rejected your offer, that you didn't think she could be a day over 18 makes you seem a bit like the dirty old man you really are.

And for the girls, if your girlfriends, frenemys, sisters, co-workers, etc. suggest wearing a 'fake ring' JUST SAY NOOOO!!! The one's you want to ward of with this talisman will not notice...and I guarantee, the one you absolutely, positively, do not want to see you wearing this token of a fake comittment is the only one who will notice. Add gentleman the list of what makes him so damn attractive...damn, damn, damn.

oh hell...
oh well...
I'll just keep making crap...

I'm going to call these barely there rings, because 'for real' (I stole that from my 5 year old niece) I can't feel these when I wear them. They take a lot more time and patience, but it's worth it, I just like them so much better than the other wrapped rings.