A little Stringing love...

At long last my fall 2009 issue of Stringing finally arrived! So many lovelies from all sorts of blog buddies! Lorelei has a few projects as well as Heather Powers, Jennifer Stumpf, Andrew Thornton and even a beautiful excerpt from Cynthia Thorntons forthcoming book Enchanted Adornments! I generally love fall and all it has to offer so who wouldn't LOVE this issue. It has my very first project with a write up with Stringing! YAY! As well as some "good and evil" goodies! It is such a beautiful issue and I'm honored to be in such good beady company!

Wired up!

This weekend I was playing with some wire and trying to keep cool. It's been in the 100's all week! They say it should break today. Fingers crossed! These are some of the ear wire designs that popped out. They will eventually have gems and ceramic beads on them. The ear wires are fun to make and remind me a bit of Alexander Calder, a favorite artist of ours, and our sons namesake. His work is playful genius! Check him out!

As discussed earlier today...

I spent the day with CarolAnn, AKA Aunt Cookie! We had breakfast and walk around town in the 100 degree heat. We both noticed what a great color combo turquoise and orange are and it seemed to pop up EVERYWHERE! So it will be no surprise to her that I found this bracelet after she left. The photo doesn't capture the earthy warmness in the turquoise but it is there. I love this bracelet!

I also did a few more sketches for gift cards. I like the idea of "making your own luck!" We should all make our own luck!



Happy Fall everyone!

New direction...

The Made In Ojai shop, has a variety of arts and crafts and as many of the members are jewelry artists it is nice to dangle toes a bit into other areas of the art/craft world. I have a few wall decorations and ornaments but have been thinking that some new ideas for wall tiles and gift cards would be fun. Even larger versions of the pendants would be a good place to start but here are a few sketches I did over the weekend...

Got my back...

Back of my card!


I thought it might be cute to reverse the image too. I still may!

Trial run...

This is the new card (well one of them, I have another design with a curtain to try too!) with actual jewelry on it. Yay! I love when a project is completed!

Pretty please!

PRETTY PLEASE!!! PLEASE can we go? Can we? Can we? Can we? I'll be a hell of a lot worse than my kids would be about wanting to go! How fun?!?!

A mermaid for a special friend...

Cookie. Just be.

Pick a card! Any card!

I've been rethinking some of my jewelry display cards that I use and have come up with a few new ideas....



These will hold a necklace with some holes punched in it. The card on the right, holes will get punched below the birds beaks to make it look like the birds are carrying a necklace.



This is a similar idea only a bit longer for longer necklaces. The card on the right was my old card. Dependable but needing an update!

Are you earring me?

The earring/ear puns never stop...

More on my plate...

It seems to be more of a visual week. Hope you don't mind If I let the pictures do the talking this week. I'm all talked out!

These were a beautiful gift sent from all of the lovely artists in the photo! Lynn Davis had organized this lovely trade a few months ago and had I not been harried or had my wits about me, I would have sent more than one lowly round bead to these talented artists! The idea was a beach theme trade and my thinking (in a pinch) was a "pearl". Their beads and charms are seriously wonderful! I hope they aren't terribly disappointed in me!

Too much on my plate...

I love this new color! A great Fall color!





I've been a bad, bad blogger! Not really bad just neglectful! Limited time means limited posts! But I've been working really hard on... things....

It's been a gifty sort of day....

Author and jewelry designer Denise Tucker has a newly published book! It is the first in a series based on famous houses and they are all mysteries! Denise was lovely enough to send me a copy of her book and it sits at the top of my reading list!

I am finding these little pebble beads to be a real joy to work with! They seem to just "fit" right in with out my having to think real hard and I need that right now. The earrings are made with pebble beads and have been color dipped to show off the crackle glaze!

It isn't a good time for us to take a vacation right now, even though we would love to take one, so we are having a fun movie "stay in and play" weekend! I have a few projects to start or finish up and extra time is always appreciated!



One of the projects that has been needing a good tackle is my jewelry tags. I was using 1/2 of a business card but it is a bit bulky to put on a more delicate necklace. I'm opting for a 1/6th business card size and have added a tiny pendant to each one in 6 different styles! Fun!

Have a fantastic weekend all!

Bead Trends Magazine

I just received my complimentary issue of Bead Trend Magazine (thank you Bead Trends!), which features two projects I submitted! It is quite a lovely magazine with some really beautiful projects. I'm pretty sure it's out on the news stands now....

Bead Trends pays their contributors with "product" which is very exciting, because thanks to the Beth Hemmila's of Hint, who has been lovely enough to share her techniques for silver clay on her blog over the last few weeks, I decided to use my Firemountain Gems gift check on some low fire silver art clay! I would have gone with copper or bronze to get my feet wet but they don't have it yet! My head is about to spin off of my shoulders with ideas! Focus girl! FOCUS! Stay tuned for what should be a most interesting experiment!

A happy accident happened over at Lorelei's blog! She is hosting a jewelry round robin and I was accidentally and luckily chosen to participate! Each participant will be blogging about their experience Stay tuned for that as well!

Nuggets

Or jems. They look like nuggets, but I don't really like that word. Pebbles? Still not hitting it for me. Stones! Maybe they are "Stone" bracelets. What ever. Happy September!