It's been awhile

I'd like to preface this by saying that having to take accounting classes is by far the worst thing to ever happen to my ability to blog. It eats up all my time, it's hard, it makes me cry. Thus, this review is long-over due and I am going to post it even though I am stuck on the design!

The theme this time was all about winter, and so I decided I would try a multi-strand necklace for it. For the outer strand, I envisioned little snowflakes wired on to circles and the inner portions would contain chain and wire strung with seed beads.

Well, I finished the other strand and I'm pretty sure I've used some of everything I ordered. Here's what I started with:

• My own blue seed beads
• Blue crystals
• A toggle clasp
• Bicone crystals in blue and clear
• Clear, faceted glass
• Copper rings
• Snowflake links

I have a bit of an obsession with glass beads, especially the selection offered at Artbeads. Yet, somehow, I always end up drifting back to the familiar. With the exception of the graphic crystals I have used every other glass bead before. I love the shapes, the sizes, and the affordability as well as the flexible. They word well with a variety of other products and look well with many textures and colors and shapes. I mean this for all of the glass beads pictured here. They're absolutely fabulous. Go buy them right now.

The newer things to me were the copper parts. I've never used rings before, though I wanted to, and the snowflakes seemed perfect for winter: that's my favorite part (unless I have to leave the house). The rings are beautiful. You'll see a good picture in a moment. They're light without being too light and have a gorgeous texture and a dark tint. I abhor shiny copper. It's bright and obnoxious like gold. This dark color adds some depth and good contrast to the lighter blues and whites.











The snowflake, pewter, copper-plated links were the only things that really gave me trouble. I love them overall - they're durable and pretty - but I had a harm time putting eyepins in so I could use them how I wanted to. That's how they started. Then I thought to myself, "Gee, that looks really hideous. How can I fix this?"

It took a bit of thought and a lot of experimenting, during which time I started to get really mad at the remaining links, but this is what I ended up with. I'm rather proud of how they came out and, to be perfectly honest, I think it was worth the struggle I had with the small holes on the links.

That's much better, right? The circles were easy to wrap once I had the eyepin hooked onto the snowflake.

In the end, this is how things ended up:

Now I'll just add a few more shots so you can see the details better.

And that's the first part of what will likely take many hours to finish after all the summer booths are over with.

I have more new items to add tomorrow after I go see my accounting tutor. Only five weeks left of this class!

(Let's go ahead and put the legal stuff here, shall we? I am not being paid by Artbeads.com for my opinion on their items. I have received the above pictured items free of charge and am reviewing them honestly. Anything else in these photos was bought and paid for by me from other locations.)

Hard work and no play keeps one busy!

Today I've uploaded lots of new jewelry. I'll post a few pictures below. I'm also trying a new thing with the store. At the bottom of each item's listing, I'm adding a "Why we love it" section, I guess to try to get across what I see in each piece. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but I need to come up with some way to get my products selling. :/ By the way, you can use coupon code "BLOGDEC15" to have 15% taken off your total at checkout until the end of the month. Use the code as many times as you like! Store link is at the bottom of this entry if you need it.

Advice is welcome.

Now the new pieces!

All together now: Oooooh!

I'm super proud of this one. It took me ages to get all the links uniform in loop size, but it was great practice for me. I think it looks a lot more grown up. The downside is that it's kind of busy (I think) and I don't really like pieces that aren't outrageously simple, but I think it's still pretty to look at.

Snowman!

I was just kind of experimenting with shapes here, and I hit on something that I liked enough to try to sell. :) I think the way the beads sparkle just kind of makes it.

 Jingle bells, jingle bells~

This bell makes the cutest little sound. :3 I love it, and the crystal, and the lights of the tree behind my wife, who is modeling for me.

Look, it comes in green too!

I kind of like the green better, not just because I like it more than red, but for the differences between the shades of green of the flower and the crystal.

  What a shine!

This necklace is all pearl, all the time, except for that super-cute gift pendant. That's pewter with antiquated gold plating. This necklace was also an excuse to practice with simple loops.

  Ice cream, anyone?

Its name is "Neapolitan" because that's what it makes me think of. Sweet strawberry, golden vanilla, and sexy, sexy chocolate are represented by the colors of the pearls. I think I'm getting kind of hungry just looking at it. The toggle clasp is  an odd to "twist" flavored ice cream.

I'm nuts for this set.

Speaking of pearls, let's have a look at my favorite creation! I call it "Lady Like" because 1. it's lady-like and 2. I'm a lady, and I like it. It's so soft and feminine without being annoyingly girly and overly pink and frilly. It's simple, but it keeps your eyes busy, plus I've never seen another set of earrings like those. The clasp, for me, is what makes it. It's nice without it, sure, but I think it wouldn't look quite so awesome without it.

  So green~!

Glass butterflies and light blue cats eye go really well together. For me, the best thing is that you can wear it year-round and it won't look out of place. It's light enough for winter, green enough for Yule or Christmas, perfect for spring and summer, and works well with the traditional autumn color palate. Awesome!

You feel happy looking at this, don't you?

I don't think I've ever had a bracelet that made me happier to look at than this one. It's just glass hearts and dark blue cats eye beads, but the contrast and colors are so cheerful that I can't help but feel happy when I look at this. :-)

That's all for today. I injured my back rather badly at Kohl's last week, so I've been working hard on jewelry at home instead. 

Don't forget to to check out the shop! You can use coupon code "BLOGDEC15" to have 15% taken off your total at checkout until the end of the month. Use the code as many times as you like!

Product Review time!

Well, I've been trying to find a chance to get this up for about a month now, but when school wasn't getting in the way, Thanksgiving was. Excuses, excuses! Yeah, I know!

I haven't been able to fully finish playing around with all the beads - partly because the two separate projects I had planned didn't work and I ended up combining them. Let's start with what I didn't use, shall we? I'm a big, BIG fan of Artbeads' glass bead collection, especially their Swarovski crystals. So when I tried the 6mm jet bicones, I knew I was going to get nothing less than the best. I was right, of course, but it's hard to find a lot that I have that these go with. :/ I'm planning on putting them into a future steampunk project, since they ended up not working this time. Ah well. It happens!

The other beads I tried and didn't use were both pressed Czech glass coins. The green tiger's eye beads are great to look at, but I'm not liking the shape too much. I think 12mm was a bit big for me. I also got them in jet/red stripes. I think these aren't quite as pretty as the green, but that's just a color preference issue. Maybe I'll use them for a holiday bracelet.

Now for the finished project! At first I was going to make two different necklaces. Both would have a pendant as the focus. The first necklace would be gunmetal and silver and have a handmade drawing as a pendant with crystals dangling from it. The other would have a leaf-shaped pendant and the coin-shaped beads.

Well, that didn't work at all. Here's what I came up with after a long, long time:

All together now: Oooooooh!

I combined the two pendants. One is a frame, the other is a leaf that I absolutely fell head over heals in love with. I'm very proud of the frame pendant. I did all the designing and coloring myself, and I went through about 7 designs before I found one I liked. I'm not much of an artist either, so this is a huge accomplishment for me. To put the picture onto the frame, I used a tiiiiny bit of glue, and then Glossy Accents to embellish it. It protects the picture really well, and it was easy to put on. However, I think I'm a little bit fail because it's a tad uneven in places, so I need to go back and fix that.

Some of the other bits of art I almost went with.

Twisting chain together to create color and accent worked really well for me at Matsuri Con with my key necklaces, so I thought I'd try it again here. I like it, and think it works well. :) The base metal chain is super sturdy, and it doesn't bother my neck at all.

As an aside, I think this blog is going to become a bit more active. I'm trying to decide what kind of content to add. We'll see. :)  

(Let's go ahead and put the legal stuff here, shall we? I am not being paid by Artbeads.com for my opinion on their items. I have received the above pictured items free of charge and am reviewing them honestly. Anything else in these photos was bought and paid for by me from other locations.)

Product Review, part two

It's been a while since part one, but I've been pretty busy with school and work. Finding time to take photos has been difficult. There are still a couple items I have not been able to use yet. I'm not sure why, but ideas for them aren't coming and when they do, they don't work out. I need find ideas for these sterling silver beads. The ones in particular that I'm having trouble with are these sterling silver square twist tube beads. With the glass beads, I am having trouble with the 5000 6mm faceted rounds in peridot and indicolite. I'm trying to work these in somewhere, but right now they just aren't working for me like I thought they would.

From what I have tried, I can tell you that these beads are beautiful and they seem pretty durable (I drop stuff on a regular basis, and they've held up fine). I think if I had them in larger quantities I would have an easier time using them.

I did manage to get through everything else, and I have a few new pieces to introduce.



This is a beautiful necklace made from more of the glass cube beads. I really love the way the montana blue and the amethyst look together! The gold does a great job of tying all the colors together, and the faceted focal beads were well worth the money I spent on them. I wish I had a fancier clasp for it, but I'm completely out of gold clasps, so I had to make do with a spring clasp and jump ring. I almost prefer them though; spring clasps just seem to stay in place better than toggle clasps.

Having a chance to practice with simple loops is nice. Once I have this mastered, I can move on to more complex techniques. I feel like I'm getting pretty good at it, but only if the eye pins are thick enough. If I'm using anything smaller than a 20 gauge I feel like the pins are brittle and break or slip out of my pliers too often.

Let's move on.

I like making gay pride jewelry and once I find a group I'd like to donate to, I'll be giving a portion of my profits from those jewelry sales to help them out. Here are the two new designs. They're very simple and they catch the eye very well. I made them using crystal glass cube beads and jet glass cube beads. I really like the way they came out. I think that the cubes do a great job of highlighting the color of the seed beads.





Legal stuff: I am not being paid by Artbeads.com for my opinion on their items. I have received these items (GC-CRYS5, GC-JET5, GC-LTAMY5, GC-MON5, 5000-PER6, 5000-IND6, SS-LX72) free of charge and am reviewing them honestly. Anything else in the photo from Artbeads was bought and paid for by me months ago.

You may find all these pieces and more photos at my Etsy shop.