in progress/life lately

I got a few questions yesterday about the grid pictures. I don't really have a good picture of the entire structure, but it's a trellis that supports the sound system for the pavilion. You can see a fairly complete picture of the lawn, trellis, and pavilion right here.

I have been taking pictures of so many different subjects lately and have gotten out of the habit of shooting "in progress" pictures of my work. I made a point to get a few of them this past week.

Here are a few of the non-crafty things that I've been doing this month that I haven't already included in one of my Scavenger Hunt posts.

Check out all of that farmers market basil. I wish that I could capture the smell in a picture. I made it into pesto.

I took a bunch of pictures during the most recent Museum After Dark event at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Apparently they change the outdoor lighting sometimes. I don't ever remember seeing blue lights before.

This is Jake's favorite.

In case spending time by Lake Michigan in Chicago on Thursday and then at the museum on Friday, I insisted that Jake and I walk over to the lake while were in Kenosha at an event six blocks away from it on Sunday. Heaven.

Check out the front moving into the area.

You can see it even more in this picture. We did make it back to the car before the rain started. I'll have a few more pictures from Kenosha in my next Scavenger Hunt post. Stay tuned for that on Monday.

Now that it's finally cooling down to 60 degrees at night, we've been able to use our new fire pit that Jake got for his birthday. Since we don't have a working fireplace, the next best thing is that fire smell right in our own yard.

The one failing in all of this is that I didn't take very many pictures of people at any of these events. I do have some from the event in Kenosha, but we also saw a bunch of Jake's family while we were in town and ran into friends at the museum. I don't have pictures of any of that. I am not one to jump in front of the camera so I feel awkward asking others to do it. They are both things to work on I suppose.

What have you been up to this month and/or what have you enjoyed photographing lately?

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another edition of why I love my customers

Welcome to another edition of why I love my customers! One reason that I love to do custom orders is that they often get me to try something that I wouldn't have tried on my own. This recent custom order was no exception.

A fellow HubPages writer loves this design and wondered if I could make it with wooden beads and music note charms. It took a little bit of hunting to find wooden beads in blue that were a good size for this design, but I did. She also decided that she wanted a wrap style instead of a single strand.

This is what it looks like when it isn't wrapped.  It's long enough that it can be worn as a short necklace.

I was worried that the music notes would be too large for this design.  I usually use these charms, which are considerably smaller, but my usual source was sold out and this was the best alternative that I could find.  I think that it worked out just fine, though. I almost never work in a truly monochromatic palette, and the single blue paired with the silver is great.  Best of all, the recipient is really happy with the piece.  She'll be giving it as a gift so hopefully the final recipient will enjoy it, too.

I made a single strand version to list on Etsy.  Click on the photos to check out the listing.

As always, I can customize the size, charms, bead color, etc.

I may have to order some more wooden beads so I can experiment with this design in other color palettes.  For now, I'm working on a bunch of other blue charm bracelet designs in with my standard glass bead mixes.

Have you been working on any neat custom orders lately?

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Going Nautical

The May 2012 Etsy Beadweavers theme is Nautical Inspired.  This is a pretty straight forward theme, but you can read more about it here.  While April's Seed Beads Only challenge was a lot more fun than originally anticipated, I am glad that this challenge and the next one are much more open ended.

As many of you know, I frequently find inspiration from color.  I did a little nautical color palette hunting online to help me figure out where I was going with this theme.

Nautical Colors of Port Jefferson, Long Island

This post has several great palettes, but I've always liked light houses, so I went right for the one with the rich red.

I went for blues and grays that were a little lighter than the original palette, but I didn't add any other colors.

I loved adding the lampwork discs to my skinny wrapped design for my nest piece and decided to use this technique again for my nautical piece.  They don't represent anything nautical in a literal sense, but the colors tied together so well.

I got these beads from Jen of blueseraphim a while back during a big pre-holiday sale.  I try not to purchase in one of a kind beads like this without a project in mind, but Jen's beads are so versatile that I always find a use for them pretty quickly.

I love this embellished addition to my wrapped bracelets and will most likely make more in the future.  As always, if there are any color combinations that you're like to see, let me know.

This piece is available for sale in my Etsy shop right here.  Voting will take place on the EBW blog in early May.  Check back on my blog the week of May 9 for all of the voting details.  To get a sneak peek at the other entries already up and running, search EBWC on Etsy.

Has anyone else created nautical items?  Share your listings and blog posts!

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another edition of why I love my customers

I've had a couple custom orders this month.  Almost all of my custom jewelry orders thus far have been really positive.  I love working with customers to design exactly what they want.  These pieces often get me to try color combinations that I would not have tried on my own.  These recent orders were no exception.

The first order was from a return customer who had ordered a custom set for herself back in April.  She wanted custom sets of bracelets, pendants, and earrings of this design for her four granddaughters.  It took us a few days to finalize the designs and specifications.  Each set is tailored specifically to the recipient with custom lengths.

Here are the four bracelets.  You can click on any of the pictures in this post to see the larger versions.

 

I'd never made earrings or pendants for this design before.  I'm pretty pleased with the result.  Here are the earrings.  One of the girls can't wear pierced earrings so I designed a clip on pair for her.  I also rigged up a way to attach them to my earring cards.

 

Finally, here are the pendants.

 

I included a pair of my Christmas button post earrings for each of the girls.  Again, since one of the girls, can't wear pierced earrings, I designed a pair of clip on Christmas earrings for her.

Many of you probably don't know that I actually don't have pierced ears.  This was the first time that I've designed clip on earrings, and it was pretty fun.  Maybe I'll design some for myself sometime.

The other custom order that I got this month was at the craft fair that I did.  She wanted a button embellished design in a specific length with purple and blue buttons.

Blue and purple are two of my favorite colors.  I can't believe that I never thought of pairing them for this design.  I found enough buttons to make a second version as well.  I don't know if I'm going to list it before my last show so if you're interested, let me know.

I included this post in Michelle's Delicately Constructed Friday 11/25.

November EBW Challenge Piece

I listed my November EBW Challenge piece earlier this week.  The theme for this challenge is Twisted.  You can read more about it here.  You can also see a breakdown of the glass beads that I used here as well as an in progress shot here.  To briefly recap, I've been designing a line of herringbone bracelets and wrap bracelets/necklaces for 2012.  When I found out that the theme was Twisted, I knew that this would be a perfect opportunity to make a sneak peek twisted herringbone piece for my line.  For some reason, I decided that it had to be in blue.

I was originally going to mix all of the blues together but I decided very early on that it would be better to do twisted stripes of light, medium, and dark blues.  It brought out the twisting in the design much more...and it made it a lot easier to follow where I was with the stitch.  Now that I've worked it once, I might be able to work it with a single color or mix of colors more easily.

As always, the embellishment work was a lot of fun.  I loved pulling all of the different blue Czech glass and adding it in after I'd completed the base.  Since I'd never made a twisted tubular piece before, I didn't know how well this embellishment technique would work, but I'm pleased with the result.  The beads follow the twisting pattern and rest comfortably against the bead work.

This piece can be worn as a necklace or a triple wrapped bracelet.  This is the first time I'd photographed a necklace with my new display in the light box.  I'm pretty pleased with the result.

I can easily add an extender chain of any length to this piece which furthers the versatility possibilities.  I've been wearing a couple of my new herringbone pieces this past month as part of my process to "test drive" the new line.  I am pretty picky about bracelet size, but these pieces really do fit a range of wrist sizes.  I haven't custom designed any for myself and have still worn several of them comfortably.

I'm not going to add charms to all of my herringbone pieces.  I love having the focal for these longer ones that can be worn as necklaces, though.  The herringbone works as a necklace on its own, but I love how the focal anchors the whole piece.  For the focal, I used a leaf charm with a piece of drilled sea glass from Kristina of akkricket.  I've been holding onto a batch of glass for a while and am so glad I have a new use for some of it.

My challenge piece is available for sale here.  I will do a preview post before Christmas of what else I've been developing for my new line.  I have a bunch of different color combinations and styles in the works.  If there's anything you'd like to see, let me know.

Voting for the challenge will take place November 9-15.  I'll have all of the voting information here when the challenge starts.

a red/purple addition and in the works this week

While I was reworking some older red/purple designs this fall, I decided to make a brand new piece with this color combination, too.

It's available here.  Before this fall, I hadn't made a wrapped design in quite a while.  It's been fun to revisit it.  And I love this color combination.  It is a tough one to photograph, but I'm pretty please with these pictures.  I don't have any more wrapped cuffs planned right now, but as always, if there's anything you'd like to see, I'm open to suggestions.

I've been hard at work on my November challenge piece.  Here are a couple shots of the completed base of the piece.

Remember my shot of the fringe beads?  After I completed the base, I went back and added two rows of embellishment all the way up and down the base.  I also added a focal with a large glass leaf bead and a piece of drilled sea glass.  One of the things that I love about this design is that the focal can hang as the center of the piece when it's worn as a necklace or it can hang as a charm when it's worn as a bracelet.

I'm planning to list this piece later this week so I'll have more information about it here next week.

In my recent pursuit to remake a lot of my made to order pieces, I've been working on a new button charm bracelet so I can update this listing.

I added coordinating seed beads to the bracelet as well.  I'll update the listing sometime in the next week.

In between other projects, I've also been working on some my button bracelets that I planned out earlier this month.

As I've done so many EBW challenges this year, I've put a lot of time into building up the higher end stock in my shop.  It will be good to have some new lower price end pieces for the holidays, too.

I included this post in Delicately Constructed Friday.