Out with the old

So as part of my New Year's clean-up, I am cleaning out my beading supplies.  I started by returning a metric butt ton of unused seed beads which I ordered online and haven't opened in the two years since I purchased them!!!  I don't have the original receipts, so we'll see if Artbeads will even take them, but if nothing else, they're out of my tackle box!

Meanwhile, I'll be featuring one of my destash listings every couple of days until I come up with better content.  LOL.

Here's a listing for 20 pressed glass flowers:

The flowers are drilled through the center from top to bottom (so you could see the entire flower laying flat if you string it). These are AB coated on one side. Would make a cute bracelet for your favorite little girl.

Look! Another Etsy Treasury!

Check out this treasury of handmade crafts, made in Hawaii!  (BTW, those are my earrings, on the last row, 2nd from the right.)  Cool!

 

 

 

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4d1a69903c236d91716322b4/handmade-in-paradise-team-hawaii

Another New Year's Resolution

Remember last year, when I decided to try "a picture a day" blogging?  Well, that lasted about a month.  :)  This year, I decided to ditch the minimalist black background and liven things up a bit.  

Here are my blogging resolutions for this year:

1. Post at least one photo a week
2. Include a tutorial or how-to at least once a month
3. Expand the content beyond just crafting projects

Simple enough, right?  We'll see.

Pearl and Brass Sparrow Double necklace

If you have Filipino family, you know that there are always extra people either living with you or traveling with you for the holidays.  The reason I explain is because even though I'm not Filipino,  my sister in law is.  On occasion, she catches me off guard with the assumption that her relatives are my relatives.  She is bringing her little sister to my parents' house for Christmas, and based on previous experience, I know the expectation is that the sister will also have something to open for Christmas.

 If you haven't noticed from my previous blogs, well, my budget for presents was pretty tight and I've more or less blown it already so I'm making gifts.

Brass is less expensive than silver, but that's not why I picked it for this particular piece.  These brass swallows are showing up all over the place right now... it's a really popular motif with the younger crowd.  You could, I guess, have a brass focal piece and use sterling chain, but I hate to mix metals and then add pearls and crystal in different colors.  I wanted a double strand look, and didn't want too many competing elements.

Of course, that being said, I think it needs a silk ribbon or something soft next to the pearls.  Time to dig through the stash and see what I can come up with.

Here's a shot for scale, so  you can see the length.

Another gift- Grandma's Angels Purse Charm

Earlier this year, I got a great deal on rice cookers. What does this have to do with beading? Well, I bought one for my family and another to squirrel away as a Christmas gift for my parents. Lo and behold, my dad was over for dinner after I ordered these things and says, "Your mom wants to go to COSTCO to buy a new rice cooker, because ours is dying." Five minutes later, the UPS guy shows up with my rice cookers. So anyway, my dad went back home with a new rice cooker and a funny story.

With interisland airfare being what it is, there's no expectation that we'll bring another gift when we go to my parents' house to visit for the holidays. However, I don't want to show up empty handed... And thus, I made my mom a purse charm with one angel for each of the grandkids.

I mean, really. What do you make for a person who doesn't wear jewelry? I guess you could also clip this to a key ring or hang it in a window as a light catcher...

Anyhow, these are quite simple. The dress is a pressed glass flower, metal wings are available in a number of different shapes, the heads are Swarovski crystal in birthstone colors, and a circular Bali silver spacer is used as a halo. They are hooked to a larger looped cable chain using 4.5mm jump rings. There you have it.

Fatima Earrings...

I'll admit, money's still tight around here so I'm making gifts out of things I've had in my stash for a while. Here's a pair of dangly earrings I made out of some laser cut Hand of Fatima focals.

I did buy the silver feather dangles and smaller (3mm) jump rings in order to make these, but they were relatively inexpensive. (Silver is sold by weight. Earrings need featherlight components.)

And to make a "card" to hold the earrings in its gift box, I took an old business card, punched some holes in it, and had my 2 year old scribble a "rainbow" on it. Voila! Hand made goodness!

My Entry in the "What Inspires You?" Contest

I decided against rushing the necklace and entered my best selling piece.  This ring is a real pain to make.  Pearls tend to have very small holes, shells are very fragile (read: large, irregular holes).  The other fun part is with the ring.  The original ring was made using a Thai Silver embellishment ring, and although I've since learned to make a very similar ring using wire, it is a bit challenging to make them exactly the right size. 

If you feel inclined, please vote for my ring in the contest!
http://wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/61138/voteable_entries/10392896

Quick Sundress

It's coming up on Thanksgiving but we can still wear sundresses here.  :)

 So anyway, while I try to figure out what to do with the necklace, I decided to whip up this cute little dress for my daughter.  I started out with this tutorial from Martha Stewart's website and a yard of cute pink and green plaid.

Anyway, as it turns out, since this dress is basically one large rectangle, I really only needed 1/2 yd for a cute knee length dress.  However, there were these super cute skirts on all the girls in Japan which were using plaid in layers (like a shorter peasant skirt) but alternating with the pattern on bias (diagonal). 

So anyway, since I needed about 16 inches of length, I decided to make the top 12 inches with a 4 inch ruffle on the bias.  It took about 2 hours to make the dress from start to finish.  There is plenty left over for patch pockets and some additional things like a sash or small purse.  (I might end up making new shoulder ties- we'll see how hard they are to tie as is.  I really hate to have long dangly ties on my own clothes, so I deliberately made these short.)  Also, thanks to smocking, the dress can eventually be used as a top with some jeans.

We'll see if we can get the girl to wear it.  :)

Creative Paralysis

As you may recall, I'm working on a necklace to enter in the "What Inspires You" contest for Artbeads.com.   I'm done with the Right Angle Weave "base" for the collar, and decided to embellish using some leftover beads from one of my flat spiral bracelets... so there are two toned 4mm fire polished Czech beads and 5mm Swarovski bicones.

What comes next?  Well, there are a couple of design problems.  First of all, I ran out of the magatama beads so I can't make the choker base any longer.  It's approximately 10 inches long, so I need to figure out something decorative to attach the collar to the clasp.  If I ordered another batch of beads now, they might arrive in time to lengthen the collar but not in time to plan the scalloping. 

Which brings my to my next problem.  The original concept was to use 4x6mm red teardrops to represent the lava flowing into the ocean... which seemed great at first but when I laid it out there were just too many other things going on.  The scallops need to have larger accent pieces.  I actually have larger red teardrops which look better, but I haven't decided whether to incorporate red or to stick with the black/blue/gray... I do have some terrific briolettes in my stash, including labradorite, moonstone, and quartz.  I can't decide... but I guess I'd better make a decision soon since I have to get the piece submitted next weekend.  :)

Inspired???

Remember the Artbeads beading contest that I decided to enter? I decided to do a necklace loosely based off of this idea:

Instead of doing a simple scallop, however, I wanted something a little more significant as a choker style with scallops and drops. I've never learned to do the right angle weave, but I know how to sew, so I decided to try this Embellished Right Angle Weave using a tutorial I found from Auntie's Beads on YouTube.

The thing that caught my eye about this RAW pattern is that it forms a grid using seed beads.  There are all sorts of variations you can do with that base.  So anyway, I modified her pattern here by using 11/0 Miyuki Delica seed beads and also 3mm Toho Magatama seed beads.  The cool thing about the Magatama beads is that the hole is not centered, so it gives a little more random look to a highly structured pattern.  I have some 5mm Swarovski bicones that I scored on sale at Ben Franklin and two toned AB 3mm Czech beads that are left over from a flat spiral bracelet I made last year.

Anyway, the result looks great so far, but it's kicking my butt!  It takes me about an hour to cover 3/4" and since I want to do a dog collar type of choker, that sucker ought to be 12" with an extender chain but as it turns out, I only have enough Magatama beads for about 9 or 10 inches.  (Darn.)  So then I have to figure out some additional stitching on either end of the right angle weave. It also takes a long time to add thread since there are multiple passes through beads to begin with and the fact that I want to err on the side of caution with the weight of the finished piece... if I ever finish, that is.  My hands cramp after about 2 hours so you can do the math.  I've got about 6 inches done on the base.  At this rate, I'll be lucky to finish in time.

The original plan was to do a picot edge on the top of the choker and sort of a lotus type scallop on the bottom, like this pattern.  (With more and smaller scallops.)

I sure hope that part goes faster than this right angle weave.  At my current pace, I'm going to have to start working during my lunch breaks at work.