in the works this week and other updates

I've spent most of this past week working on my design piece for Kristie's team reveal, which is on Friday.  Here are a couple sneak peaks of my champagne herringbone rope for it.

The September EBW Challenge theme is Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My.  You can read more about it here.   You can take any element of lions, tigers, and bears and pair it with any element from The Wizard of Oz.  I am still obsessed with my right angle weave base that I've used for my last two challenge pieces.  I was planning on using Swarovskis as embellishment with a similar base for this challenge.  I had to go to Michael's last week to get something for my design piece and I picked up these beads instead.

I have used Swarovskis a few times, mostly because of the Art Beads blogging program.  They are neat, but they honestly aren't my favorite.  These beads won't have the same bling that the Swarovskis, too, but they will definitely be more colorful and fun, which also fits with this theme.  I am also very proud of the fact that I got out of Michael's only spending $16.  I had a 25% off everything coupon which helped.  Always go to Michael's with a coupon!

I finished my design piece on Sunday and have started working on my Wizard of Oz piece.

I asked Sharla if she had any good resources for paw print charms.  She very generously offered to send me one from her own collection.  Thanks Sharla!  It's on its way right now.  It will be my animal component for this piece.


Also, catching up, I finally found the picture of myself wearing one of Yvonne's pendants.  This picture is from November 2008.

And Patrice from The Soap Seduction gave me this award last week.  Thanks Patrice!  That's very sweet.

600 Hearts and some sneak peaks

I reached a new milestone in my Etsy shop yesterday.

I am really excited about this because it took me 6 months to get to 400 and another 6 months to get to 500.  I reached 600 in just 4 months.  Even though hearts don't necessarily equal sales, my views and item hearts have been way up the last couple months.  I've also had consistent sales in my shop for 11 straight months now.  Thank you so much to everyone who has helped me get this far!

I finished working with purple this week and put together a few new charm bracelet mixes yesterday.

I got these shell beads back at Christmas.  I've known for quite a while that I wanted to use some of them to make a charm bracelet, but I'm finally getting around to putting that together.  I want to layer some of the beads like I did here.

I also have a new green mix, which is what I'll actually be making before the shell bracelet.  I never get tired of these colors!

While I was sifting through my greens, I found enough light sea green and spring/lime green to make button charm bracelets with each of these colors, too.

sneak peaks

While I was on my metallic kick recently, I put together this mix for another skinny fringed cuff.

I may take out a couple of the finishes when I start to bead it if they make the piece too dark or just don't really fit right.  It's hard to tell at this point.  But it should be a neat color palette for me.  As I'm sure you know, generally I don't work exclusively with neutrals.

And while I'm waiting for my new Art Beads blogging package, I've also been working on this piece again.

I really don't have the patience to work on one delica cuff with no breaks for other projects right now, but it's nice to have one to pick up when I have a few minutes.  It's much easier to do this than get out my cross-stitch or try to squeeze in one small section of a right angle weave piece.  So slowly but surely, I am getting this piece finished.

In other creative endeavors, I made chocolate chip cookie bars this week for one of the conference nights at school.  My floor is cooking the meal for all of us teachers, and of course, I signed up for dessert because I still love baking over all other kinds of cooking.  You can get this recipe here.  I left out the nuts this time.

I also had my ever present little helper to assist with my most recent photo taking sessions.

starting new spring pieces

I have a couple new spring pieces in the works.  I have ideas for a few more as well, but this is what I have going on so far.

I laid out my next leafy bracelet, which will feature a lovely Lisa Peters ceramic leaf bead for the clasp.  I made one like this before for my spring 2010 Art Beads piece that sold at the Iowa Arts Festival before I could ever list it on Etsy.

I'll probably make another green rock garden bracelet after this while I still have all of those green leaves and seed beads out.

Over the weekend, I got my beads for my next EBW Challenge piece.  The theme is Spring Around the Corner.

It will be in this design with a brown base and all green fringe like plants just poking out of the ground.  I'm going to include some lighter green seed beads in the piece so it isn't too dark.  There are two challenges that I'll have for this piece.  Even though I've worked this design about a dozen times, I still haven't written the pattern.  (This is the one that I attempted recently but messed up partway through the process.)  I'm determined to get the pattern done so I can list it as the same time as the piece.  The other challenge will be that I'm using a metal clasp (the metal leaf clasp pictured above) for a beadwoven piece, which I don't usually do.  I'll include instructions in the pattern for both a metal clasp and a button clasp.

sneak peaks, back in stock

As promised, I have a couple sneak peaks of new projects.

Now that I have a few more yellow leaf beads, I'm ready to make my next Indian Summer leafy bracelet.  I'll probably start working on it tonight or tomorrow.

This is my newest Bargello Ribbon cuff from Carol Dean's pattern (SandFibers).  The embellishment was my own idea, though.  This cuff will be for sale at some point.

I also restocked a couple pieces on Etsy tonight.  I made a new version of my green button embellished right angle bracelet, which is the bracelet that I used for my newest PDF pattern pictures.  I still have a lot of work to do before I finish the pattern, but the step by step pictures are done (not edited but taken at least) which is a huge component.

I'm going to retake pictures of a couple other button embellished cuffs this week for the final page of the pattern so I'll be updated some of those other listings soon, too.

Finally, I made a new version of my blue striped peyote triangle earrings.  They have had a huge following on Flickr already.  Hopefully I'll sell another pair in person or on Etsy at some point.  I'm still working on the propped pictures in my light box, but I think that the flat pictures of these earrings turned out pretty well.

sneak peaks, EtsyBloggers treasury curated by me

Here's my newest bargello design in progress.  As you may remember, I beaded a green version of Carol's design for myself this winter.  I actually took this picture yesterday and meant to post it then but I forgot.  Better late than never, right?

It doesn't look so garishly bright in more natural lighting.  For some reason, that shade of red delicas really pops and seems to pull the other colors with it.  I based the colors off of this set of bowls, and it does match them pretty closely.  I'm going to embellish it with coordinating cube beads...eventually.

I took a picture of my leafy necklace custom order beads this morning before I started putting it together.

It's still in the very early stages of development.  I'm planning to work on it more after I post here tonight.  I'm only going to use the three lamp work beads that are in the middle.  I almost always use four for my leafy bracelets, but I think that three will create a nice focus without too much extra weight.  The four beads in the corner are in case I decide to make a new Indian Summer bracelet after I finish the necklace since I sold the original bracelet at the Arts Festival.  I'm going to have to get some more yellow leaf beads if I decide to do that.

I signed up to curate an EtsyBloggers treasury for this Friday.  I finished it today, so I'm going to go ahead and shared it.  I decided to theme it Dots.

You can view this treasury live by CLICKING HERE.  Please spread the word fellow EtsyBloggers. :)

sneak peaks for the Iowa Arts Festival

As promised, I am going to post sneak peaks of new items that I'll have at the Arts Festival this weekend.  It's hard to believe that it's really tomorrow.  We were in downtown Iowa City earlier today, and things were already underway, which did help it feel a little more real.  To be 100% honest, I'm really nervous.  I think that I'll feel better once I get everything set up and get started, but I'm going to have a hard time waiting tonight.

For anyone reading this who is in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area: It will be in downtown Iowa City tonight-Sunday.  The art booths are up Saturday 10AM-6PM and Sunday 10AM-4PM.  Please come by if you can!  You can check out the Summer of the Arts web site for more information.

Before I get to the sneak previews, I have a couple other things to post.  The first one is that Sharla (BeadedTail) took me up on my offer to feature one of her items here for being one of my Top Droppers last month.  I picked her Copper Kitty - Moonstone Beaded Earrings. :)

This little bit of news is just for fun.  Angel discovered a new activity this week.

We have ended up pouring a cup of water in the shower for her a couple times because sometimes she wants to go in there when the shower isn't wet.  The things that we do for our pets!

I have a lot of new items for the Arts Festival.  I will slowly list whatever doesn't sell there on Etsy during the next month.  I have 24 pairs of button stud earrings, over 50 button magnets, and about a dozen new bead woven pieces.  Here are a few of them.

I also have a pair of these in blue now.

As I mentioned above, I have lots of button studs like this in all colors.

I made a pair of these as studs as well.

I am so excited about this cuff.  I've been working on this design in my head for a year.  And yes, that is a Lisa Peters's button for the clasp.

I have at least one more new striped triangle earrings, too.

I love pink and black together, but hadn't done anything in this color combination in a while.

As promised, I also have a pair of these in lime green.

Remember the birthday cake sneak peak?  This is the finished product. :)

If anyone wants to reserve anything before tomorrow, let me know!

sneak peaks

Thank you much to everyone who has commented and clicked on my new leafy treasury already! It's doing very well. It's still up for a couple more days so please check it out if you haven't already.

Here's my green mix for my Red Bargello pattern. I was originally going to have two different transparent kelly green delicas as two separate stripes but they were too similar. So I mixed the two shades for one stripe and added opaque kelly delicas for the other stripe. I'm also going to use this mix for the base of my next flower cuff. I may add one more shade of lime delicas for that mix. The pattern is awesome! I'm having a lot of fun with it already.


I haven't been working on my other current mix as much lately since I got back into the delicas. I did start a dark blue/dark turquoise square stitch cuff, though. Here's that mix and my progress on the cuff.


I took pictures of the new red cuff today as well (with sunshine...finally!) so there will be at least a couple new listings this week. :)

sneak peaks

I got some beautiful pictures of my champagne fringed cuff and coordinating triangle today (see the most recent sneak peak picture of it here). I'm grateful for small amounts of sunlight that I have at home this time of year. And yes, I did finally finish the cuff! I will list both items sometime this week. For now, here are a couple sneak peaks of new projects.

Here's a look at my red striped cuff.

And here's my mix of beads for my next blue embellished square stitch bracelet like this one.

weekend progress/happenings

I didn't list anything this weekend after the Valentine's Day bracelet, but here are some pictures of a few other things that have been going on.

Posting the sneak peak pictures of my champagne/blue fringe cuff back at the beginning of October definitely inspired me to work on it more. Here is how much I have left. I just might finish it before Christmas!

Here is a picture of how the base of my "Peace Piece" for the next EBW Challenge is coming along. I restarted it twice which is why I'm not further along than I am. Thankfully the challenge piece isn't due until Dec. 5 so I still have plenty of time.

I finished my newest batch of magnets. All except the top one (which I'm keeping) are going to be part of my Christmas present for my two aides at school. Our district's colors are purple, teal, white, and gray. You all know how much I love teal/turquoise and how much I've been into purple this past year so I figured it would be a good choice on a couple levels. One of my aides also loves the purple/orange color combination so I made a few of those for her set.

I would like to do a pink/green/white set and a black/white set next, both for Christmas presents. :)

I got my most recent Art Bead's package on Saturday, thanks to my $20 gift card. I know that the cube beads on the top left look weird. They're both gold-lined beads.

Finally, my husband took some pictures of me with our cat Angel today. I don't post a lot of pictures of myself because I'm the one who's usually taking the pictures. Thus, I don't have a lot of myself. Here are a couple for you, though. I'm sure that most of you won't even notice this, but I feel like I should point out that my wedding ring is being repaired right now which is why I'm not wearing it.


Enjoy the last part of your weekend! :)

new girly bracelet and a few sneak peaks

I listed the bracelet today that I created with the pink/purple mix I had from my custom order the other week. I usually don't use such girly colors, but I love how this turned out.



I've been working on a non-jewelry Christmas button item that will be for myself. I got the idea from the button book that I posted about last week. I've been taking pictures of the entire process, which I'll share when I finish it. For now, here's a picture of my button/bead mix for it.


The button book also inspired me to experiment with button magnets. Here's my first (but definitely not my last) set, before I put the magnets on.


Finally, the December EBW Challenge theme is Peace Piece. When I read about it on the blog, the first color that came to mind was blue. I have an embellishment idea that I've been wanting to try for a while. This challenge will be the perfect opportunity for me to give it a shot. Here's my mix for the base.