Fossil Pendant

Hi everyone! Perhaps many of you have already heard about the devastating 200 mile per hour tornado in Oklahoma a few days ago. It tore a path over 1 mile wide and 17 miles long indiscriminately wiping out homes, business, schools & lives. I cannot even imagine a storm this wide! My prayers go out to those affected in OK and any area where weather strikes with a deadly force.

I managed to finish another pendant with a fossilized coral stone. It is very unusual, and, of course, I credit the layering technique and great beading fabric to Beadwright!




Admittedly, I am not a lover of the color green, but this green reminds me of a rainforest for some reason. I don't know how I make that connection, but I do like it and find it soothing.

By the way, I have two questions for everyone....#1 Is anyone finding it extremely slow loading photos onto Blogger? #2 Does anyone use the Etsy app for Android & what do you think?

What's been keeping me busy

Hi Everyone! This week has been so busy! Thank you for all the nice comments about our daughter's graduation. For those of you who remembered when we first took her to college...don't worry, time has not passed quite as fast as you think! She actually completed a double major in Psychology & English in three years, not four. Or five, as the man sitting next to me in the stadium lamented to me about his daughter! We originally had not planned to attend the University ceremony last Friday evening since she originally only planned to attend her individual college ceremony. Well, as kids sometimes do, she called us 8 am Friday morning & asked us to come up because she had changed her mind. With five colleges in the area all holding graduation the same weekend, there was little chance of finding a nearby hotel room, so we stayed in her dorm room with her. I did not go away to college, so this was a fun experience for me. 5,500 kids graduated--thank goodness they didn't read all the names at this! On Saturday, we went to a reception given by the Psychology Dept--she had worked as an adviser for two years and then on to her individual college ceremony to see her walk across the stage. Add to this that we also had to move her out, and you can imagine how tired I was by the time we got home!

I spent the bulk of the week working on a large custom order for the fern leaves that I showed in an earlier post. Here they are, just finished today:


Taking a deep breath now before I try to catch up with some clay work! Have a happy creative weekend everyone!

New Jewelry

I'm taking it a little easy this week to have time to do some much needed cleaning, laundry, etc. This coming weekend is our daughter's graduation and as we will also be moving her out of college, I don't want to be exhausted. Since I can never quit creating "cold turkey" I'm trying to do some smaller projects--I have the gold beads on order and still have to make those custom order fern leaves! Anyway, here is my newest beaded pendant. I love the color combination of pink and gray. To me, it is very feminine and romantic.

Of course, I used my favorite beading fabric--Nicole's Bead Backing and also techniques that I learned from Nicole's very generous tutorial on layering.

A Lion That Started With A Bead

A beautiful amber bead that was gifted to me by my good friend, Stacy. In case you don't know Stacy, hop over to her blog, MagicLoveCrow and you will quickly discover one of the most upbeat, kindest souls in blogland. You will also discover she is a talented painter with a passion for crows, and she sells her art on Etsy. So, back to the bead!

The Friesen Project wraps up April with one more project from Christi's Cats book. This week Katie created a wonderful tutorial to make a trinket box which you can read about here.
I decided to make mine a hanging sculpture.

Since some amber can darken when subjected to heat, I decided the best course was to add the bead in a dangle after the piece was finished. Better safe than sorry! Stacy's bead is the round one in between two ?amber beads that I believe are from Germany & were given to me by my Mom. I did antique this piece with brown paint & added a satin protective coat.

I'm still beading away on the fern leaves, and figured I should clean the house before I had to set more places at the dinner table for the dust bunnies!

Have a happy creative weekend everyone!

Cactus Update

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you may remember I posted about a year ago that I was trying to grow cacti from seeds. That first batch all died, but I decided to try again when I saw a packet of seeds in a gift shop in Arizona. I planted them last summer, kept them covered with plastic wrap to make little terrariums, and I am happy to say that they are doing quite well!

I know they still don't look like much, but take it from someone who has grown cacti from seeds before, they are looking good! I have another smaller pot with some more that look like they will survive, too.

On the craft front, I am working on a custom order for some fern leaves. Just finished the first one today:

Do you recognize the gold beads from my previous post with the large lilies? I am also working to reorganize/restock/revitalize my Esty shop.

Thanks for stopping by!

More Lilies

Hi everyone! Well, I didn't have time to do the next clay project, but I thought I would share the custom order I just finished. Remember, the garnet lilies with the gold stripe? Here are the larger ones all finished:

Have a happy creative weekend everyone!

April Friesen Project

New month, new book! The fourth book in Christi Friesen's sculpture series is Cats, Big and Small. As always, you can click on the link in my right sidebar to see Katie's tutorial.

I love large cats...Lions, Tigers, etc....small cats, not so much. Katie certainly encourages us to make something else if the current project is not our thing. For me, I am happy if I meet my personal goal of making one new clay figure a week, so I happily sat down to create my favorite, a tiger.

I put a loop in his head as I plan to hang him.

Hope to have my next "Cats" project up this Friday!