Beaded Earrings

Wow, I can't believe that it has been over a month since I have posted anything new on here. All I can say is that I caught the flu and felt a little burnt out after that. Needless to say here is a pair of earrings that I recently made using red coral and delica seed beads. It's not anything fancy, but they did turn out pretty nice. I also made a pair with black onyx and gold delicas and one with white freshwater pearls and blue denim delicas. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of them. I will be posting more soon. I have a few projects that I need to get finished within the next month so until then enjoy!

Fire & Ice

Fire and Ice, that just sounds so cool, doesn't it. Luckily the day I finished the piece we had a little bit of fresh snow fall, so I was able to take some pictures in the snow. Thank you, Toni for the suggestion of fire and ice, the photos turned out great.

I made this necklace a few days ago for one of the guys that works upstairs from me. His wife loves amber and, as he told me, she really likes handmade original gifts. So here it is. The amber cab is the focal piece in this necklace and it almost didn't get here in time as it was on back order. Had I known this to begin with I would have ordered another size or something. It arrived just in time though and I was able to set it and bead around it just in the nick of time. I used delica seed beads to start with and switched to smaller silver seed beads at the end. On the outside of the cab I then used amber drop beads around the base of it.

As for the backing I decided to use the peyote stitch to bead back of the cab also. I started with the dark amber beads and ended in the center with the lighter yellow delicas. This gave the piece a nice finished look to it.

The necklace itself I beaded on my thinnest beading wire. I decided to use the thinnest wire for two reasons; one amber doesn't weigh a whole lot and two the holes in the beads were very narrow. For the necklace part I used an assortment of amber beads, delica seed beads, and round sterling silver spacer beads. I decided to make the necklace with a two strands of beads for aesthetic purposes. For the two strands I used a sterling silver slider clasp that allowed for two strands.

Bridesmaid Jewelry

These are some necklaces that I made back in November for a customer that just got married this month. Her colors were burgundy and champagne. She had asked for something simple and elegant in the colors of her wedding and she didn't want to go broke at the same time. So this is what I came up with. The necklaces are made up with an assortment of swarvoski crystals, swarvoski pearls, fire polished czech beads, and sterling silver delica seed beads. The pendant portion of the necklace has two sides, one with the pearl in the center and the other with the crystal in the center.

Grandpa T's New Tie

My Grandpa T. recently celebrated his 80th birthday this past month and we had a huge surprise party for him. My Grandma had asked me this past fall to make him a bola tie that she could give to him for the occasion. So off to work I went. I had never made a bola tie before, so this was something fun and new for me to attempt. My older sister Leora had made a few so obviously the first thing I did was to go to her for advice on what I needed to do. She had some great ideas and soon I was planning the design for the project.

Grandma hadn't given me a whole lot of instructions, just that he needed something that he could wear to church and for nice occasions. This was fine with me as I tend to do my best work when I get to just mess around and experiment as I go. Not too long after I was asked to make the tie I was in one of the local bead shops and I saw some green opal that just completely inspired me to make the tie. I bought the green opal and by the next morning I had dreamt about how I wanted the tie to look.

The stone itself looks as if it has a mountain scene on it with a spark of lightning coming out of the sky hitting the mountain tops. Below the mountains it looks like a river is running in the valley below. It's a pretty cool stone. So what I wanted to do was place evergreens in the four directions with a starry night sky above, seeing as we used to do a lot of camping with the grandparents when me and my siblings were all kids. I tried to keep the design simple yet interesting. I, myself, am very happy with the final product, in fact I am still trying to figure out how on earth I will be able to make something just as cool for my dad in the future.

My Grandpa T and me.