What's up with me

The weather the past few days has been beautiful. We went shopping several times and ate out several times and have just had a nice time recently. In between times, I have been doing my usual things... housework, laundry, listening to talk radio, and being creative.

I was quite happy with the agate cane from last post, so I put on the mad scientist lab coat to see what I could make with it. To start off, I sliced the cane into equal slices and flattened and elongated each piece slightly. This was done using a small piece of white PVC pipe that the folks at Home Depot gave me from a pile of ends that was next to their cutter. Never know where your next tool will come from, huh? Any hoo, I poked holes in the tops of the slices and baked them in my trusty toaster oven.

Side note to my Sis...I'm still using the same little oven that we placed a label on that read "polymer clay only". Upon seeing this label, our other partner in crime exclaimed "Where in the world did you find an oven for polymer clay only?" We hooted and hollered and Sister just held the label maker up, gunslinger style, blew the smoke from it and tipped her hat. Ok, well maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was really funny in a "duh" kind of way.

Back to the slices. This is what I ended up with.




On to another matter. I don't know if you remember, but a while back, I was contacted by Art Beads.com and invited to be a member of their group "Beaders that Blog". The way it is set up, they have certain beads that we can get from them, as a promo gift and then we review them. I have made several nice pieces using beads from this program and I have been able to try new items, that I ordinarily would not have tried. I took apart several vintage necklaces and made this piece, and then I tried my hand at resin and blogged about that here. Having not used the copper bracelet with the resin, I still had it and have just been looking at it and waiting for the right time to create something.

All of this is leading up the the creation of a faux scarab type bracelet from the ends of the agate cane. I love to challenge myself to use my scrap clay in a pleasing way, so I formed little beads and pressed them into that copper colored bracelet. TAA, DAA...


I still participate in the Beaders that Blog program and after choosing and receiving my latest beads, I got stumped. I had originally visualized making a sparkly neck piece using both the garnet tear drops and the purple faceted CZ beads together, using a wire wrap technique.



This last time I chose purple CZ beads and garnet teardrop shaped cubic zirconia (CZ) beads from their online catalog. As you can see in the picture, I was going to use sterling silver wire and wire wrap the tear drops to make a loop on them to attached to silver chain. Well, this was my first time working with this type bead, and they were too delicate for this technique, so I had to put my thinking cap on. I normally have no problem with design, but when I had to go back to square one, it took me a while. After several weeks of looking at these beads I designed this necklace.


I used amber colored crystal beads from my stash, and place the teardrop garnet cz's between them. It's really comfortable and looks quite fancy for such a simple design.

I really liked the purple cz's but they weren't speaking to me until today. I had used my beading board (which is a neutral gray) to try out endless color combinations and didn't like anything. It wasn't until I took a piece of hot pink fabric and placed the beads on it, that inspiration came to me. While it didn't involve pink at all, it did make me realize that these purple sparkly beads needed aged copper beads as their new best friends. Don't you agree?



Sometimes we need to just sit back and think about simplicity. This is the simplest bracelet ever. Copper beads and Purple faceted CZ rounds on elastic. I have it on right now and I love it.

Since I always wear earrings, I whipped these up, also.

Well, that's it for me today. A little bit of this and a bit of that. I should get my treadmill tomorrow, so that will be fun. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes. Take care and remember to have fun and be creative in your own special way.




*FTC compliance disclosure* the products attributed to Artbeads.com in this post where provided as a promotional gift by Artbeads.com in relation to the blogging program. My comments pertaining to these products are my personal opinion, no compensation has been received. It's probably a good thing, too, because I'm sometimes way too honest in my reviews.