Halloween Treasury

I was fortunate enough to get a treasury spot today. Since my most fav-or-ite holiday is fast approaching, I decided to spotlight Halloweeny items. (plus it's a shameless plug for my skull beads) :)

It was HARD to only pick 12 items. Etsy is full of spooky goodness right now. I would decorate my house in Halloween themed folk art year round if I had the money!
Please go check it out if you have a few minutes to surf:

More bird legs

The turquoise pair of birdies was so fun I had to see what they would look like in other colors. I got busy making all the little birds without considering...how many stinking bird legs I would have to make! LOL!

It was fun bringing each pair to life though. Seeing them together as a group really makes me smile. :) Obviously I don't need 7 pair of bird earrings...so I'm going to get busy taking individual pictures and adding them to the etsy store.

I have almost used up all my sterling earwires. Time to order more. It's been years since I've had to buy jewelry making supplies. No joke. Several years ago I stocked up really well for craft shows and then I stopped doing the shows, so I've been slowly using that up. Ideally I should sell a few things first before I spend...but what fun would that be?! LOL!

New Ronit Golan canes

New Millefiori Canes
Originally uploaded by Ronit golan

Ronit Golan is one of my favorite clayers. In my next life I want to have an eye for color like her. :)
I was excited to see she's working on new canes for her summer collection. Keep an eye on her flickr...I see beautiful beads on the horizon.

Hot dogs and cancer?

I just saw this CNN report on the possible cancer risks of eating processed meats. (it's a video clip, just FYI if you are at work) :) This is actually alarming to me.

Now let me preface this by saying, I am NOT a cancer-aphobe type person. Actually I get rather tired of hearing about everything that could cause cancer. If we avoided it all we'd have to live in a damn bubble and survive on IV fluids, ya know?
We wear our sunscreen and our seat belts. I quit smoking years ago. We just try to live sensibly, but don't spend lots of time sweating all the minutia.

But we are family of carnivores. Carnivores on a budget no less, so processed meats are a huge part of our diet. Since the American Cancer Society has even said to limit your consumption as much as possible, I think I'll listen to this warning.
Damnit. Hot dogs are for lunch in this house several days a week! As are meat and cheese sandwiches. Damnit, damnit, damnit.

I have been pregnant FOREVER

At least that's what it feels like. I'm in no hurry for baby to get here (b/c they are SO much easier to care for in the tummy!) but I'm also tired of being pregnant. But that's a whiny wagon I won't jump on at the moment. :)

Earlier today Emily hugged my middle and looked up at me, reminding me of an old picture I took of her and my alien belly when Lydia was inside. So we took a similar picture today.



Seeing as we have only 6 weeks to go, we are giving more serious thought to names. We've had a half dozen favorites picked out for months now but it's time to pick one already. Yesterday I had the Word document (with said favorite names) open on the laptop when Aaron came home. I had already picked a new favorite and was planning to tell him. He walked in, stood and read the lists, and pondered for a couple minutes. He looked up at me and said the exact same name I was keeping silently in my head:
Amelia Rose, he said.
I laughed out loud and told him it was a sign. (I'm big on signs.) :) It's in no way a done deal, but it was a cool coincidence.

Here are the other names we're throwing around, mixing and matching:
First names - Abigail, Josslyn, Jillian, Isabel, Natalie
Middle names - Hope, Faith, Paige, Elizabeth, Tatum

We already have an Emily Grace and a Lydia Joy. Got any suggestions?? :)

Bird Legs & new video

Take a look at my new favorite creation:

Aren't they cute?! I just adore them. The little wire legs swing independently of each other for some fun movement. I'm going to list them in the Etsy store (as soon as the camera batteries charge and I get a couple more good pics) but I think I need a pair for myself also. :)

I've been busy making my skull beads again. Halloween (and with it Halloweeny jewelry!) is just around the corner! Last year, September was a good month for selling my skull beads. But this September I'm going to be a liiittle bit busy. (with the newborn baby and all) So I'm trying to get a jump on things and I'm listing them now thru August. Or until baby arrives, should she decide to come early.

Anyway...I also made a little show n' tell video about the beads. And it accidentally turned into a little mini tutorial in the middle of the video. I get lots of questions about how to poke holes in raw beads without distorting the bead shape...so I went into a little detail about how I do it.
So here's a show n' tell AND mini tute video. It's been a while!

New (Etsy) Headbands

I don't buy on Etsy nearly as much as I'd like. My rule for myself is to only shop w/my Paypal money and that is generated by my own Etsy sales. So there isn't a lot of fun money to shop with. LOL!

Anyway, I recently found some cute (and very affordable!) headbands from Apple Blossom Bows and I had to get a few colors for the girls. (And a black one for myself, which I'm wearing right now and it's very comfortable.)

I had hoped to take a super cute picture of the girls sporting their new headbands, but, OMG. My expectations were too high. Lydia is such a PITA to photograph. The girl never.sits.still. Never! Her larger-than-life-attack-of-the-dimpled-chipmunk smile is neither here nor there. The squirming is impossible to work with.
In the meantime, Miss Emily has posed and smiled and been elbowed and squished by her sister until HER smile looks like a beautiful grimace. **big sigh** I just keep reminding myself someday it will get easier. :)

Until then I have lots of funny blooper shots! LOL!

Catch of the Day Necklace

Is this a revisited or repurposed idea? Actually it's an idea triggered by some the kids' toys and an old BOH idea. :)

Once upon a time I had what I thought was a fantastically fun idea for a BOH. It involved a couple of little sculpted fishies, a cat, resin, and various other cute things. Everything was going great with the project until the resin. (I had bubble trouble.) Long story short: resin problems and my children and life in general kept postponing my finishing the project and I missed the deadline.
Here are a couple pics of the original cute critters:


So this week I merged the old with the new and came up with the Catch of the Day necklace.


I so enjoy fun, not serious pieces of jewelry. :) I think it even qualifies for the current Art Bead Scene monthly challenge. Summer vacation makes me think about camping at the lake and fishing. Now granted we've never caught any fish quite this colorful, but everything looks whimsical in my imagination.
I currently have it strung on a buna cord necklace, but I'm thinking about changing to a simple seed beaded necklace. What do you think?

Summery sherbert donuts?

Obviously I could use some help naming these new earrings. LOL!

I think I'm going to play around with this design a little more. I like all the color possibilities.
The teeny little donut beads are a custom mix of translucent clay with inclusions. I originally made a couple larger beads with the new mix, but sadly the "quirky new shape" idea was a flop. But the inclusions really showed up nicely in the larger beads. Maybe I'll try it again for some pendants.

Anyway...I like it when ideas come to life. And I love bead clusters! I was letting the girls play in a box of old craft show jewelry leftovers recently, and I discovered some of my first cluster earrings. I was making trendy bead cluster earrings many years ago before they were all over Etsy. Go me! LOL!

Actually, I've been sifting thru lots of old jewelry and beads lately. I had forgotten that once upon a time (before internet surfing) I had lots of cool, unique jewelry and bead design ideas. The old stuff is pretty crude but the design ideas are there. I want to start revisiting those old ideas. It could be fun.

Shark tooth necklace

Yesterday afternoon I made Garrett's shark tooth necklace. He picked 3 favorite teeth from the bag of found beach goodies. Two of them had really wonky "gum lines" that I wasn't looking forward to wire wrapping. The largest one had NO gumline, but it wirewrapped quite well so we decided to just use the one.


I made 2 pair of experiment beads that were supposed to go with that found beach treasure look. Garrett liked both pair so we used them all.
I also used some free buna cord I received from IB Moore. (thanks to a blog post from Heather Powers. Thanks Heather!) I didn't have any cord findings, so I made some wrapped end loops courtesty of this tutorial. I doubled up on the wrapping both for strength and for that manly-boy look. :)