Month: March 2009

Customer Beads

I had a customer who placed an order, but wanted some of my beads in a bigger, focal size. These beads are all about 24mm and look really good, BIG! It’s a little bit hard to tell just what size they are from the photo, but the dime should give you an idea. I thought I’d post a picture of them, so you can see that I am always flexible when it comes to my beads! If you want them bigger, I’ll try that! If you want them on a different mandrel size, just ask! If you want something similar but in different colors, I’m always up for experimenting! In fact, I enjoy it!

I’ll have some more beaded beads in my store later, and another Vetrofond ODD set in orange!

Beaded Bead

Here’s my first beaded bead, done in lots and lots of size 11 japanese seed beads in a really pretty muted AB blue. It was made on a 10mm wood bead, that I bought in Hilton Head, and the finished size is 14mm. It’s for sale in my etsy store – it was hard to determine a price for this baby, since it takes some time and eye strain to make. Hope you like it!

Another Purchase!

Here’s another purchase I made while on vacation! Beth Hemmila, from HINT, on etsy, makes the most beautiful charms. I have been eyeing them for a while, and finally decided to buy one! This one is called happiness. I just love it!

Later, I should have my first beaded bead that’s good enough for sale in my etsy store! It’s a really pretty blue one – when it’s ready, I’ll let you know!

Another Purchase


Here are two other items I purchased while I was on vacation! Lynn Davis, of Expedition D on etsy, makes these wonderful polymer clay creations! I have collected many of them. I love the hearts – I make earrings out of them, which is of course the obvious thing to do! But I do have a charm bracelet for sale in my BellaHannahJane etsy store that makes use of a heart as a charm. Very pretty! I also love the Prairie Leaf Oval that I just bought – love love love it! It’s textured and lovely and earthy. I can’t wait to make myself a necklace with it, with some of my own lampwork beads, of course!

Home Again…

We made it home! The drive wasn’t so bad, except I ended up with a miserable cold (thanks engineer) and the engineer had a roadside stop because he didn’t feel well – I will spare you the details! I didn’t sleep all night, so I’m not making beads today. Too dangerous to put your hands in a flame and a kiln when you can’t even see straight.

As you know, I bought some great beads in Hilton Head and Savannah while I was on my spring break! I did some etsy shopping while I was away, too. I will just show a couple of things each day, since I can’t figure out how to do the darn corel draw mosaic thing.


The first things I will show you are some polymer clay pendants from Sharon of LiveWireJewelry. She’s located in PA, too, and just recently opened up her etsy store. I have been following her and she has been following me in blogland, and we each purchased from each other – which is really cool! I really like the pendants – I can see my earth-toned lampwork beads with the Red Tibet one. I also know what I want to do with the Tree pendant, of course including my own lampwork beads as well! Sharon also makes jewelry – you should check out her shop!


I also bought a really great set of porcelain buttons from LeeAnn at Summers Studio. She makes beautiful things, but I did have my eye on these buttons for a while, so finally decided to buy them! I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. I still don’t knit (even though I wish I could stand it – it kind of drives me nuts!) so they won’t be gracing any handmade sweaters. I do like the big one for a focal piece on a necklace, with my lampwork beads. That’s probably what will happen to it. The others will tell me what they want to do when they are ready!

New Beads, Savannah Bridge, Palmetto Dunes Lighthouse

We did go to Savannah today, and I went to a bead store called Beadstro. The beads above are what I picked up! Some dyed coral, 2 strands of czech glass, a strand of blue faceted chalcedony, a strand of faceted jasper, a strand of really cool turquoise beads and two agaty focal beads. I had fun! The photo isn’t that great because it’s so cloudy here today, I really couldn’t do the beads justice, again. I think if you click on the picture, you can see it larger and maybe see how great the beads really are!
The bridge photo is the one that goes into Savannah from South Carolina – it’s pretty cool. It’s a very large suspension bridge. You can see the day was very cloudy, as everything pretty much looks the same color!
The lighthouse is the one in Palmetto Dunes, where we live when we are here. It’s not a useful lighthouse right now, I’ll have to look up the history to see if it ever was used. The engineer, the boy and I took a bike ride to it this morning, before we left to go to Savannah.
All in all it was a good trip; I think I read about 7 books. Got to visit two bead stores, made my first beaded bead and generally was forced to relax. We are leaving tomorrow for the 12 hour drive home, so no post for tomorrow. See you again sometime on Saturday!

My First Beaded Bead

I mentioned that I wanted to go to the LBS to get some supplies to make some beaded beads – the kids were being too lazy for me to deal with! I did finally get there this morning and made my first beaded bead this afternoon. Here’s how it turned out. NOT perfect, but not too bad, either. There are some places where I have too many beads. I do know that I will write down the number of beads in a row, for the next one, based on this one, to see if that helps. I did learn a few other things as well.

(1) You really need to have all your supplies laid out in an orderly fashion before you start on this project! Just a really good idea for about anything in life, I’d imagine, but especially when removing little bitty seed beads from the thread – they tend to go all over the place if you don’t manage them ahead of time!

(2) Don’t do bead weaving while you are making dinner, paying attention to three kids (clearly being outnumbered 3 to 1) AND trying to watch the news that you haven’t seen for a week. Oh, and having that much needed glass of wine. Strike that – have the wine, don’t do anything else!

(3) While you can leave a cross-stitch project and come back to it with no problem (I know this because cross-stitch is an art with which I have a lot of experience), you just can’t leave this project to go flip the burgers or settle a dispute!

(4) You CAN improvise. I used size 11 seed beads and it looks fine – it might look more polished with size 15’s, and I’ll find that out when I get home to my order of size 15 beads that I can’t wait to get, but 11’s look ok!

Finally, thanks again to Cristi from 2ifbysea for sending me the pattern I used!

BTW, the engineer gets back tonight!!!!

YAY!

YAY! I finally went down to the LBS here in Hilton Head today! It’s called High Tide Beads. They have lots and lots of gemstones and findings and loose beads, etc. I bought the gorgeous turquoise beads up top – it’s cloudy here today so I couldn’t take a picture that does the beads justice. Believe me, they are gorgeous turquoise – there are 38 10mm teardrop shaped beads. The first thing I am making with them when I get home is some earrings! The wood beads are robles wood and there’s 37 10mm beads on this strand. The bottom picture is of the supplies I wanted so I can try my hand at making a beaded bead. My friend Cristi at 2ifbysea send me some directions that she uses. The only problem was they didn’t have the size 15 seed beads so I bought 11. I hope it’s not too big. Oh well, at least I’m going to try! My wonderful son went to the bead store with me, so I bought him a little pirate bead. I’ll put it on a cellphone strap for him, or something like that. Girls just got up (12 noon) so maybe we’ll go for a walk down to the Crowne Plaza gift shop that’s just down the beach from us. Have a good day!

Another Book

I bought another book when I was at the bookstore – The Art of Polymer Clay Creative Surface Effects, by Donna Kato. I mostly bought it because there are a lot of pretty pictures in it! But I have to admit that I would really like to learn how to make polymer clay beads. There are so many pretty ones out there that it really intrigues me. In particular, I like the chapters on transferring images onto clay. I love all the asian influences in her work that appears in this book. The book was $19.95 at the bookstore – I’m sure you could get it for less on Amazon. But I needed something creative to look at, so I parted with the money (remember, I’m Scottish!).

Tomorrow we may go to Savannah, or we may stay here and see what time the girls get up – yesterday it was 1pm.