Art Beads summer piece

As promised, here it is, pictures ready in the morning!  Enjoy!

I am pretty proud of how quickly the final stages of this piece came together!  Nothing like a deadline to keep you moving. :) I'm also excited about how each square stitch cuff comes together more quickly than the last one.

For the Art Beads summer piece, we had three main section to choose from.  I pulled components from the glass beads section and the charms section.  I used eight different kinds of 8/0 Round Toho Seed Beads in a variety of shades and finishes for the base of the cuff.

The top embellishment includes a variety of pressed Czech glass, including glass buttons, glass pillows, glass heart beads, and glass leaf beads.  As I'm sure you already know, I love pressed Czech glass and have never been disappointed with the glass I've gotten from Art Beads.  I also incorporated a few fire polished pieces, Toho cube beads, plastic buttons, coral, rose quartz, Swarovski beads, and the charms, which are all TierraCast silver charms.  I always have so much fun with the embellishment for these cuffs (as I do with all jewelry embellishment/fringe), pulling together many more beads and buttons in a given color combination than I end up being able to use in one piece.

This cuff will be available in my Etsy shop in the near future.  If you'd like to reserve it now, please let me know!  I'm also open to other suggestions for color(s) for my next embellished square stitch cuff.  You can view all of the cuffs that are currently available here.

I will be MIA until Wednesday or Thursday next week.  Jake and I are taking a little trip during part of his week off.  Until then. :)

Disclosure - I received my ArtBead's products free of charge through their blogging program. I am honestly reviewing their products and have not been paid for my endorsement as it pertains to the products I received.

red/purple square stitch cuff

I listed the third version of my square stitch embellished cuff design tonight. As I was thinking last month, this one is in red and purple! I had a little trouble keeping the purple from hiding in the shadows in these pictures, but I'm still pretty pleased with the results. And I'm very pleased with how the cuff turned out.



I've been thinking about making a dark turquoise/dark blue one for a while, but I think that I'm going to make a neutral one next. I'm still on a neutral kick from my Natural Sparkle bracelet. :)

I had an unexpected opportunity to take some photos of my newest reworked design during the day because my meeting (not at school) this morning was much shorter than was expected, and I had a couple hours at home before I had to be back to work. I'll upload and edit them later tonight. :)

revisited design and more button magnets

Happy Christmas Eve everyone!

I have not had an opportunity to photograph in sunlight in a couple weeks now. Most of the time that I'm at home now, there isn't even any natural light. Since I'm at home more during the day now for Christmas break, I finally caved and shot in natural light sans sunlight yesterday. I was pretty pleased with the results.

I finally finished my blue embellished cuff (revisited) that I picked out the beads for back at the end of the summer. The listing on Etsy is now updated with new pictures and measurements.

The green version is still available here in my Etsy shop. I'm pretty sure that I'll be making a red/purple version next, but as always, am open to other suggestions, too.

I made two more sets of button magnets for Christmas presents. I did go with the color combinations that I previously mentioned: pink/green and black/white. I don't know if this is something that I'll be offering in my Etsy shop at some point, but I am having fun with them. Any thoughts about this would be appreciated! I would like to try some button tacks at some point, too.





Cheryl (littlestonedesign) posted a great message on the Etsy Beadweavers' message board earlier this month about her success with sending a monthly newsletter for her Etsy shop. It's no secret that I don't have a ton of Etsy sales and would like to do more with what time I have to promote my shop. Has anyone else had a lot of success with sending a newsletter? If you have, I would love to hear more details about it!

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.

a new treasury and a new listing

You know it's summer when I managed to snag two treasuries within a two week time period tonight. I just got this one tonight.


You can view it live by CLICKING HERE until Thursday August 6 at 4:38 PM EST. Orange is not usually my favorite color, but for some reason it has inspired me lately.

I listed another new piece today. I'm going to keep listing one new piece each day until I head to Chicago.


This is the cousin to my original blue square stitch bracelet that I sold so quickly. I was thinking about making a purple or red one next, but I'm almost definitely going to make another blue one first. I really love the look of the blue one and want to have another one on hand. I also don't have enough embellishments for a different colored one at this point. I can slowly work on building those embellishments, but I'm done with major bead purchases for the summer. I always have new projects in mind, and it will be fun to look for embellishments in other colors now over the next year.

I do need to buy some more white Nymo thread before I head to Chicago, but hopefully I'll be able to resist buying anything besides that when I head to the bead store in Iowa City tomorrow. :)