Mini post-This weeks Bead Bloggers

Still under the weather, so this is gonna be a tiny post. I've spent the past few days web surfing and blog reading so here is this weeks Bead and Jewelry blog links for you to enjoy too!

A Bead A Day:  Looking for a great way to commemorate a special moment or gift? Design a piece of jewelry!

About.com Jewelry Making
It's like Wal-Mart, only you want to be there in this virutal tour of Shipwreck Beads.

Art Bead Scene:  Art Bead Scene is having a book fair. Read up on your favorites!

Carmi's Art/Life World:  Carmi has finally discovered how great polymer clay is.

Cindy Gimbrone aka the Lampwork Diva:  Not thinking about your holiday gift list yet? Cindy helps get you started with a Knot Ready for Prime Time Lucky Knots and Friends Projects so you can get started now!

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles:  Melanie shares her final Crystal Week necklace... a piece she calls Woodland Mermaid

Jean Campbell:  Jean celebrates her favorite holiday by showing off her costume and some very cool baubles

Jewelry & Beading:  Krystal Backer, beading artist, shares her creative inspirations with Cyndi.

Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio:  Have you been following Lorelei's Necklace Round Robin? Come take a look at the finished pieces!

Snap Out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!   Jean reviews a delightful book by the editor of BeadStyle: Cathy Jakicic

Strands of Beads:  Melissa shows off her favorite necklace created for Cynthia Thornton's Enchanted Adornments and winner in the metal clay category of the British Bead Awards

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween Everyone! Hope you night is full of treats and not so many tricks.

Halloween is extra-special in our house, because we have two pumpkin birthdays to celebrate - Rob and  my kitty Neffie. Halloween is weird this year in San Francisco. I haven't seen ONE person in costume either yesterday or today. Usually theres a bunch of people who dress up to go to work, and should be alot of club stuff going on but its like everyone forgot it this year. Just not the same as growing up in a small town in the midwest I tell ya. We kids would LOVE going trick or treating then to the church for a cake walk. Also sometimes different towns would do trick or treat on different nights so you could go to one town on Friday night AND  another on Saturday night and be in a full sugar coma all of Sunday. There aren't alot of kids IN SF and definately not in our neighborhood and wonder if they bother with trick or treating.  The last time I remember someone coming to trick or treat was about 12 yrs ago. My room mate and I had all kinds of stuff ready for the 6-8:30 schedule, but no one knocked at our door. I left at 8:30 and when I got home my roommate told me he had a visitor.  He said at 9pm the "lone wolfman and his mother" knocked on the door. That kid made out because he got all the candy we had. I know he was one happy little wolf. 

Today we are having low key celebrations since I got a vicious cold I'm nursing. We've been the last couple of days watching various scary things on tv, Ghost Adventures Live,  40's and 50's scary movies and having a good time. Unfortunately my gift for Rob hasn't arrived yet, and thats a bit disappointing but he'll be so happy when it does get here its worth the wait.

The final link in the Necklace Round Robin

Isn't this gorgeous! I was the final creative stop for the necklace round robin I was in. The group consisted of myself and 3 other fabulous jewelry artists - Lorelei Eurto, Mary Dodd and Kerry Bogert.  This is my necklace.  I borrowed the pic from Mary's blog but its been on my neck since I got it!  We all started with a partially started necklace, a note about our theme, color and length preference and what inspired the start. I started with a wee bit of copper chain, the soldered pendant and the red glass jewel dangle and got this gorgeous piece back! I LOVE it, L O V E!  Thank you ladies!

Now it was my turn to add my touch to their necklaces. I got the box and oohed and ahhed over each one. This was Lorelei's necklace as  when I received it.  I love the dusky color scheme of olive, coral and purple.

And is the finished piece! I really love it!!!!

 Because of all the colors and the gorgeous floral charm, I felt like it had a "Secret Garden" feel so I went in that direction with it. I added  my own handcrafted resin charms to pull it together. A small patinaed brass house with "secret" bezel charm, a small copper bezel filled with pearls and resin and a tiny sterling bird charm.

This was is Mary's necklace, it has a earthy ephemeral feel to it. Mary had written in her note about what inspired her necklace start, and talked about breath.

And this is how I interpreted that while keeping the necklace at the length she desired. I love her coppery browns and purples in this. I created a tiny bottle reliquary with a bit of purple moss in it. I also added a large tumbled amethyst bead, and a faceted carnelian briolette.

Last but certainly not least is Kerry's necklace. I borrowed this pic from Mary's blog.

This one challenged me. It was shy at first and didn't want to give me any clues about what to add to it.  I love the aqua silk coupled with sterling and gunmetal. I pulled out all kinds of things, yet nothing seemed 'right'. I added things, took them off again a number of times. After 2 days of not doing anything of justice to this piece I set it aside to let my subconscious mind work on it for a while. That night I had a dream about it and in the morning came up with this.

I wanted to tie in the rich orange with the turquoise so I created a double sided Patera pendant with vintage bird images and resin. Keeping with the asymetrical feel, I untied the silk from one side and doubled it up along with the gunmetal chain section, added a few Hyacinth Swarovski crystals, some glass beads and a sterling toggle clasp.  I think it fits Kerry's cheery personality.

I had a great time adding my own flavor to each of these necklaces. Thank you girls for playing with me!

Bead Bloggers!

Where did the week go?? Bettie wonders the same thing.

Is Mercury still in retrograde, because it has been a week of setbacks and frustrations for me. Sigh..... I don't like losing time to things gone wrong and do overs, makes me cranky. I didn't get to do a review of Enchanted Adornments yet, or put up my Round Robin necklace photos. Fear not, I will have lots to post this coming week.

I did order resin this week. I have been OUT of both quick set and ICE Resin©, how is a resin artist supposed to work without resin?? She can't, so she finally wrote herself a note and ordered some. And I got QB Pro 2010 thru Amazon Vine program. I haven't installed it yet, but will this week. I STILL don't get it, but my goal is to figure it out and use the dang program BEFORE the end of the year. It may kill me, but I'll figure it out.

BEFORE the day slips past me again and I neglect my beadblogger duties I better post my Bead Bloggers links right now. There are all kinds of great links, so get a cuppa, settle yourself in a cozy chair and do some jewelry reading!

A Bead A Day Does a simple design equal a "Zen" experience? Lisa would love to hear your thoughts on when simple designs are able to make an impact.

About.com Jewelry Making After posting a new jewelry book review for a very cool mixed media book, Tammy is looking a head to other reviews coming up very soon.

Art Bead Scene You've heard of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Well, this Sisterhood shares bracelets.

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts Barbe gets tangled up with Chain Style book review

Carmi's Art/Life World Carmi decided to finally use her bead stash from Paris.

Cindy Gimbrone aka the Lampwork Diva Cindy's got some new findings from Ornamentea. What's she going to make with them?

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles The inspiration for Melanie's Machinery of Nature necklace comes from science, steampunk, and nature.

Jean Campbell Jean struggles through the creative process while bezeling some unusual crystal shapes

Jewelry & Beading Little beaded flowers are addictive to make, and before you know it, you've got enough for a complete necklace!

Katie's Beading Blog Check out Katie's ideas on making your old beads new again- and make some affordable gifts along the way!

Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio Better get on board, Lorelei is having the last of the Enchanted Adornments giveaways. Leave a comment to play!

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done! Jean has a little Boo power going on for her in this hand made Halloween bracelet!

Strands of Beads Melissa shows off metal clay goodies from Rings & Things

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton Andrew revisits a bracelet design and creates six others.

good mail days

I've had a lucky streak of fun mail days since this weekend. On Saturday, I got my order from Glass Glitter and Beads. I wanted to try some small amounts, and they have really good prices. They came within a few days and all are really pretty. She also has a "Happy Holidaze" coupon code good thru 12/31. Get 20% off by using coupon code holidaze4. I am so excited to start covering everything in glitter.

I also got my the gorgeous pendant from Miss Fickle Media's blog giveaway. I won the "Red Branches on Ivory" pendant and was tickled to death.

Isn't her packing so pretty! I made myself stop to photo it before I tore into that package with my pendant I've been lusting over. I LOVE IT!!! It is so perfect. I have tried for years and years to work with polymer clay. My friend Heather and I got into it WAY back in the early 90's. Her's looked great, mine always looked like a preschooler, so I greatly admire the skill and talent of polymer clay artists. So go, RUN and order some of her gorgeous stuff for yourself. This pendant is so sweet, I need to order some more of the Swarovski Red Coral beads to make a necklace for it. And if that pendant wasn't generours enough, she also sent me a box of mixed media goodies to play with too, thank you so much!


And speaking of pretty packaging, when was the last time you ordered beads from a "big company" packaged like this?

My answer is "ONLY from ArtBeads!" Look at how perfect this is, its almost Japanese in its presentation. I get a few orders from them and have been meaning to post about this little extra touch. I needed to get some UV resin, so ordered it thru them as well as the aforementioned Red Coral Swarovski and the Deep Indigo crystals I've been drooling over. I placed my order on Friday and got it on Monday=how's that for service! They are having a "Proudly Pink" sale this month for Breast Cancer awareness. You can can get 15% off select pink items by using coupon code SCW15P-PPS.

I also just finished working on the last necklace in my Round Robin exchange with Lorelei Eurto, Kerry Bogart, and Mary Jane Dodd! I just took photos, so I'll post them all tomorrow for you all to see.

Sunday and the living is easy...........

ok, I know that's not QUITE they way the song goes but it is the way my day has gone. I slept for over 10 hours last night. and got a VERY late start to the day. Which has kind of been par for the course all week. This stomach thing took more out of me than I thought, so I was slow moving all week. I have been at the worktable off an on, between laying down. I got a full box of stuff to photograph as evidenced above. I also made 12 pair of earrings not pictured. I also made all these lovely wearable shrine pendants. Not sure I will turn them into necklaces or just sell as pendants on Etsy. Need to figure that out ASAP.

It was a gorgeous day on Friday, and Rob and I took a quick trip over to Chinatown. I love going to my big herb store and chide myself for not doing it more often. I wanted to get some lotus seed paste mooncakes from Golden Gate Bakery but there was a HUGE line so I didn't. I can (and should) go next week and get myself some.

I also got my box of necklaces from the Round Robin to work on. OOOOHHH!!! they are all so beautiful! I'm still working on one but when it's finished I'll post all the photos, hopefully tomorrow!

This weeks bead bloggers:

A Bead A Day Do you have a distinctive style or do you go where the wind blows you? Lisa would love to hear about your design process.

About.com Jewelry Making Fall is in the air, at least in some areas of the world, so it is time to think about making fall jewelry.

Art Bead Scene ABS shares a motherlode of giveaways for October.

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts Barbe gets a mini artpiece from Artbeads.

Carmi's Art/Life World Carmi makes some resin filled embellishments quickly!

Cindy Gimbrone aka Lampwork Diva There's a new addition to the Heartz n Skullz Family. Come check out the new Skully Bowz!

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles Melanie heats things up with some fire inspired crystal and porcelain beads in her newest necklace from her Art Beads crystal week

Jean Campbell Jean reviews Wendy Ellsworth's wonderful new book, Beading--The Creative Spirit.

Jewelry & Beading Cyndi shares the instructions for a special necklace that she made for a friend, called "The Fourth Day of Creation"

Lorelei's Blog: Inside the Studio Lampwork glass beads always end up in Lorelei's work, and she passes on links to one of her favorites!

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done! Jean is wowed by the plethora of activities a beader can find this weekend, both online at Earthenwood Studio and also at the supergreat classic, Soft Flex Glass Art and Bead Festivals!

Strands of Beads Melissa shares her new work, "Natural Selection", that placed Second in the Necklace category of the Bead Arts Award 2009

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton See what Andrew whipped up when he sat down in the studio after a dry spell.

Book Review: Chain Style

Chain Style: 50 Contemporary Jewelry Designs by Jane Dickerson
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Interweave Press (October 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1596681500
ISBN-13: 978-1596681507

Chain jewelry is HOT right now. I'm not talking one little chain with a little charm on it, I'm talking big fancy chain, or lots of chains or a tangled web of chain. Chain is the star, not the pendant or charms. "Chain Style" has its finger on this hot trend with 50 creative ideas for how to use chain as the key design feature in your jewelry project. Some projects take less then 20 minutes to complete, others are more work intensive but all are gorgeous.

10 super talented jewelry designers created the projects in this book. They include 2 of my new online friends: Lorelei Eurto and Kerry Bogert. This book covers the basics like working with jump rings, wire wraped loops, hooks, oxidizing, hammering and cutting. The projects are well written, easy to follow and have beautiful photos. Another aspect of the book I really like, is all the amazing beads used in the projects. I think this is an unintentional but wonderful extra bonus for readers.

A few of my favorites are "So Soho", "Olive Twist", "City Side" and "Bohemian Heart" but they are all wonderful.

It's a great book for the projects as well as inspiration to spice up your own work. Whether brand new to jewelry or an experienced jewelry maker, this book is one you will enjoy and look through again and again.