Yippee, I won

Well I'm a bit excited, well a lot excited really. I was the winner of Erin's challenge with my button bracelet. Can you believe it? How fantastic is that.

I probably won't be posting for the next week or two so this is a short post to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and a safer and prosperous New Year. I wonder what 2010 will bring?

Fruity Fruition

Remember this? It wasn't anything like the idea I had in my head because I didn't have the right shape and colour or beads.Well here is what I had in mind. In October I joined the Beadin Path monthly bead club and these gorgeous cranberry and copper coloured freshwater pearls arrived in the mail (now that's serendipity) so I set about bringing my idea to fruition.
Beadalon rubber tubing, wire wrapped the cranberry and copper coloured pearls in between pale apple green pearl cubes.
Added a magnetic clasp, wore it yesterday and received lots of lovely compliments from various strangers and was even invited to leave some of my pieces in my local newsagent on consignment. The newsagents not exactly a high end boutique, but a girl's gotta start somewhere.
And to all those kind people who enquired and sent good wishes to my mum, I'm happy to report that she's a lot better and slowly on the mend.

Cheats Wire Work

I was going through all my old scrapbooking stuff the other day and came across these and thought to myself............what if I do this.....
.....then squash one of these inside it......
......then shove one of these through the middle......
.....wire wrap (but then get discouraged 'cos the wrap's a bit of a dogs breakfast)......
......but continue on anyway and add a dangley charm......
....and maybe there's a possibility that it might work. What do you think? Someone may have already worked this out and their photos are almost certainly a lot clearer than mine, but you get the general idea I hope.
Onto other matters of importance. Over at Erin's blog she is having a challenge, actually this is the third I think in a series of them (I missed the first two) and she's very persuasive and talked me into adding my humble pieces of jewelry to it. There's prizes to be won and some fantastic pieces to drool over from the other participants. The title for this particular challenge is Grandma's sewing box. So pop on over and have a look.....go on.....crikey, what are you waiting for.

The Long and Short of it.

I've photographed these earrings about 10 times trying to get the colour right. Not much luck. So you'll have to use your imagination.Silver background wallpaper with fine almost bronze coloured stripes and what looks like Asian writing. Grungeboard discs in small, medium and large. Glued the WP to both sides of the GB discs and then set eyelets in them. Connected them together with black square jump rings that I made myself.
The dangle on the bottom is a black faceted disco ball that I had no intentions of adding. Last night in bed while I was working out the design in my head I told myself to remember not to punch two holes in that largest disc. What was the very first thing I did after all the glue had dried? You guessed it, I punched two holes.
These earrings are long, very long but according to my daughter they're just right. I might try and talk her into modeling them for me so I can take another 10 photos.

Busy

Been very busy this week. Worked every day except Tuesday and my mum was in hospital from last Sunday until yesterday. With the hospital a 40 minute drive each way, there wasn't much time left for playing. I was pretty tired each night I have to say and each evening I was nodding off in front of the TV by about 8.30 pm.
I'm happy to report that my mum is much better although not nearly 100% improved. but with her age comes all sorts of health related problems and healing takes so much longer.
So below is just a mish mash of different black and silver beads just randomly threaded onto beading wire with a toggle clasp. Quite long, but it drapes nicely.
I bought some Beadalon rubber tubing the other day with a design in mind. Lordy..... this is not the design I pictured at all. That design just isn't coming to fruition until I find the right coloured and shaped beads that are in my head. Perhaps they don't exist at all. So I twisted wire on my Artistic Wire worker and threaded it onto the tubing (with a great deal of difficulty I might add) and added some orange glass beads and made a pair of earrings to match.
More rubber tubing that I cut into sections a little under 2cm long, then threaded beading wire through the tubing along with silver beads and added some small beads that I uh....ummm wire wrapped (it's getting worse instead of better).
Both of the tubing necklaces had to be threaded onto beading wire because I forgot to buy the ends for them so I needed to be able to add some sort of closure clasp to them. The orange one has a magnetic clasp and the other has a toggle clasp.
I think I'll go and glue wallpaper now.

I Wire Wrapped (well I tried)

Practice makes perfect they say and I need a lot more with my wire wrapping skills, but I'm slowly getting there. There's quite a few different ways of doing it judging by all the tutorials on the web and I guess it's just a matter of finding what works for me. But I won't give up because I'm determined to master it. So I wire wrapped all of the beads on this necklace, pearls, crystals and some little beads from Bali. The filigree components were gold so I painted them with black alcohol ink.More wire wrapping. The focal is something I picked up at the op shop. Not quite sure what it was supposed to be, maybe a belt buckle. I added some chain and very small cubed turquoise beads and a little silver charm to the 'buckle' as it's very light weight and needed a bit heft added to it. Don't know if I like the two large caramel coloured beads or not. What do you think?
This is made with all re-purposed beads from various pieces of jewelery from various op shops, well all except the bead cap.
Mainly new beads with some odd re-purposed ones and one of my new magnetic clasps in black.
Very hot here today and had a lazy day in the aircon. Even managed a short nanna nap on the lounge, something I don't usually do. I find it very hard to sleep during the day and now I'll pay for it, I'll be up all hours of the night, darn it!

Magnetic Serendipity

Of late I've been having trouble with closures on bracelets. I don't know, maybe I have weird wrists or something because I can't seem to get the different methods to work for me.
Parrot or Lobster clasps like the one below are very problematic for me. I either need to grow an extra arm or have double jointed thumbs, neither of which are likely to happen, so I always have to get someone to do it up for me.
Toggle clasps pose another set of problems. I like to wear bracelets fairly snug on my wrist and usually they seem to be a bit tight for the toggle and clasp to work how they are supposed to.
So I decided to try magnetic clasps and I think I'm on to a winner.
A couple of nights ago I "whipped" up this bracelet without giving the design too much thought and just grabbed beads, strung them together quickly because I was impatient to see if the new clasp would be ok. The next morning I was looking at it and...... Holy Mother of Elvis would you look at that....the magnetic clasp and the silver bead have an almost identical flower pattern on them, spooky ha? Now that's what I call a serendipitous (is that even word? must be because spell check hasn't underlined it in red) happening. I know, small things amuse small minds, but I sure get a buzz out of things just coming together like that.
Two necklaces I made over the weekend. New chain with re-purposed beads and charms. The big heart was once part of an earring from the 70's I'm guessing.
Butterfly, round Bali beads, turquoise beads and chain are new and the three amber glass beads top left are re-purposed from another 70's type necklace.
They're both on fairly long chains because that seems to be how the young'uns like to wear them and they are both for my angel baby who turns 26 today.
So I'm off to ice her gluten free chocolate birthday cake that rose about half a centre metre and looks like a big flat chocolate pancake. Oh dear! I'm afraid my creativity didn't overflow into my cooking skills at all. And if your worried she might see her presents before she's supposed too, don't be, she never reads my blog.

Possessed

I was like a mad woman possessed over the weekend. Here's a sample of some of the pieces I made and there's more to come over the next few days.
Sort of grungy with a bit of sparkle.
Look, no green.
This makes me think of caterpillars.
My new lucite black vintage roses that I'm in love with........

.......added to the resin beads I bought last week.

Soft blues, greys and creams.

and a blurry photo.

I Bought Beautiful Beads

When I was at the craft show on Saturday, Wendy from Galaxy beads had a stall set up there. She's such an enabler.....she'd been on a buying trip to Bali and showed me these gorgeous shiny, sparkly acrylic beads. The necklace she had made using some of these beads was divine so I put my order in for some and went and picked them up this morning. Of course the photos never show certain beads to their full gloriousness and these are no exception. Trust me, if you saw them in real life you'd commit a crime to have them in your possession.They look almost like scrunched up aluminium foil set in resin. All you resin renegades out there, maybe this is something for you to try if you haven't already. Actually resin is my next 'thing' I want to try after I try metal work and before I try enameling and several other techniques that have piqued my interest. Not enough hours in the day and dollars in the bank.

These round ones are my favourites.
But I love them all.
Now this is the necklace that got deleted from my last post about my 'antique' finds from Saturday. Very retro and I'm a bit loathe to pull it apart......we'll see.
No cooking tonight, yay. Off to MIL's for authentic Italian food. Eat your hearts out!

It Was a Good Day

Yesterday was a good day! Joanie and I had a four hour unpack south of the river. It's a bit of drive and sometimes we wonder if it's worth it just for those 4 hours. But when we got there the clients had unpacked most of the cartons themselves so there was very little for us to do. So that was the start of my good day.

The next part of our day was spent at the Craft, Antiques and Collectibles Fair at the Claremont Showgrounds.....well it was on our way home.....kinda, sorta, with only a slight detour. We always split up when we get there because we have slightly different interests. Joanie is a quilter and loves all the sewing stuff and I love cruising the bead and jewerly stalls. Then we meet up again, show each other what we bought and then set off again in case we missed something.

Joanie wanted to attend a workshop on re-purposing clothes, so while she was there I wandered up to the antique and collectibles section. I don't usually look there because just the word antiques implies lots of money as far as I'm concerned, but I had time to kill so off I went. Big mistake! Well not really because what I bought was pretty good value, but it just meant I spent money I'm supposed to be saving for our holiday, but what's a girl to do.

Fell in love with this as soon as I saw it. Black matt rose with lime green tiny chrystals embedded into the rose. Very kitschy and only $2.00!
Some art deco black onyx and marquisette earrings. A steal at $5.00.
This one full of beads and metal bits and bobs that I'll cut up and re-use.
More stuff to pull apart. The one on the left is actually a metallic sage green with clear chrystals and the other just more black beads to re-use. You can never have enough black beads in all shapes and sizes.
Now this one I drooled over. They look like birds eggs. White glass beads with black speckles. When I was drooling over it last night I noticed that the black speckles are very easily scratched off, so I'm wandering if I could spray them with some sort of acrylic varnish stuff. Any ideas people? Dawn if you're reading this I'm counting on you for a solution.
Why does blogger delete things for no reason. I had two more photos here and they've just disappeared and they were my favourite finds, maybe I'll save them for tomorrow. That'll mean you'll just have to come back and have a look see.

I'm Keeping It

Just a few pieces I've been working on the last few days. Grungeboard and wallpaper necklace. The focal is just GB that I painted black, embossed with the cuttlebug and then smudged silver rub n buff and attached to a black chain.I really like this one and think I'll keep it.
A close up of the texture.
Three bracelets I made with beads and threading elastic all in shades of black, grey and silver.


I' d actually tried to make a three strand bracelet. What a disaster! So it was pulled apart and made into these. Ya win some and ya lose some.