Tuesday 4 March 2008

A plethora of pretty things!

Shame 'plethora' is such an ugly sounding word or that title woulda worked better...

For all you jewellery lovers out there I have a tasty feast of eye candy today. Plus some stuff that I made :p

First off - I still haven't sanded & polished the weekend's lentil beads and realistically I can't see it happening before Friday now so here they are in their unfinished form.

First off - the best of the bunch





The beads I made out of the remainder of the red mix




Best of the blue/pink/silver



And the remainder



And these were made out of the scrappy leftovers from the previous 2 mixes (believe it or now, quite a lot of creamy gold went onto the red ones!)




Now... the Scheherazade necklace and earrings set - slightly better picture although blue goldstone is an absolute bitch to photograph. Its a little chunky for my personal taste.



And the first of the necklace connecters to go with the previously made red pendant (not yet finished)



And finally, these turned up today. I almost never use gemstones, partially because I sell Swarovski crystal for a living and so have lots of it lying around and partially because I'm not really an earth-tones kinda gel, however I've been looking for this stuff for ages - its titanium coated druzy (druzy is a generic name for the tiny little quartz crystals that sometimes form within rocks) and the titanium coating means it comes in a whole range of completely non-natural shades :p They're gorgeous. Far better than expected, I was absolutely blown away by this lot.













The druzy came from www.druzygems.com

Saturday 1 March 2008

My puppies!


Non-dog owners always look slightly incredulous when I refer to these two as my puppies. Callie we've had since she was 10 weeks old and she's a white-apricot German Shepherd. Sabre we've had for a year and was a rescue dog who has improved enormously from the scared little boy he was when he arrived. He's never going to be a social butterfly but he's much more confident and happy now. Both dogs are almost 3 years old.

Why the random doggie post? Because they're my wolf substitutes and Cyndi over at jewelleryandbeading.com just posted a GORGEOUS beaded journal page featuring a pair of wolf eyes.

Indecision!

You gotta hate it when that happens. Y'see it's the weekend, which is cool given that I'm on a strict no-work regime at the weekend BUT I'm at a total loss as to what to do with it. Not because I don't have any choices, but because I have too many choices.

  • I want to make a necklaces for the pendant I made last weekend.
  • And earrings to go with the dark blue necklace.
  • There's a set-out necklace in my bead tray that I wanted to do once I had some GF wire - which has now arrived.
  • I want to try some 30ga wire weaving stuff that's been floating around in my head this morning.
  • I have a whole bunch of different yarn and ribbons that I want to try some mixed media stuff with.
  • Last night, I spent FIVE hours (I kid ye not) sorting out all my personal beading stuff and threw up a whole bunch of beads & findings that had been dumped in little boxes with the idea of making jewellery to showcase the relevant componant products so that needs doing.
  • I also found an entire collection of half-made pieces / pieces that need fixing that I'd like to not be sitting in a to-do box.
  • I got my moulds delivered yesterday from the US so want to play with moulds and clay. I got them from madaboutmolds.com which has some gorgeous designs.
  • And I STILL haven't tried the cool lentil beads tutorial I intended working through last weekend
Damn.

Clay will be tomorrow I think - Geoff has to go out a couple of times today which means I'll have Finn running around and uninterrupted time is def better for clay.

A to-do box sounds a bit too much like actual work I think...

And product showcasing IS technically work...

...which still leaves me which a whole bunch of choices!

But look how organised everything is! The trays stack on the bead storage table so they don't take up anywhere near as much space as they do in the picture :o)