My sister approached me last weekend and asked me to make a necklace for a friend of hers. The only requirement was that it had to have some of my ceramic beads. Other than that I had total freedom. Here’s what I made:
When I was waking up Monday morning and was in that place between sleep and awake, I suddenly knew what I was going to make. I was chomping at the bit to get to the office and get working on it. This piece came together fairly quickly.
Have you ever had a flash of inspiration like that?
My son went to bed early last night with a nasty cold, so I had a little extra time in the evening to work towards my goal of stocking the flower shop with new jewelry. I turned on Netflix streaming and watched episode after episode of “My Name is Earl.” That show totally cracks me up. Anyway, this is what was made. The necklace isn’t completed b/c I need to make some sort of clasp. I was going to just use a lobster claw, but do you think I can find my brass ones? I was too lazy at the time to get up and get more ear wires, so I’ll have to add those today (and make some copper ones, since apparently I don’t have any). There’s an assortment of wood, lucite, glass, and metal beads in there. I was working at the coffee table, which isn’t ideal since I have beads all over the place.
I’m off to go tend to the boy. He’s in a good mood, considering he’s so sick. Can’t seem to take any cold meds–even the children’s formulas, which are supposed to be safe, make him wired. We’re sticking to the humidifier, lots of liquids, and maybe a few Tylenol thrown into the mix.
I spent the past couple of days getting glazed pieces ready for the kiln. I had a few custom orders that needed to be filled. Those thread dividers I found in the office attic are working great:
The slot on the far right is filled with stoneware, so there will be some different offerings in the Etsy shop next week (hoping to fire those on Monday).If I had my act together I could have put all the beads on my firing wires and had them ready to go in the kiln today. As it is, the kiln is cooling down now.
I received some new chain from Rings & Things the other day. I made a couple of necklaces for Flowers on the Falls:
For those of you who are interested, that background is actually a file folder. Although the color is attractive, it makes it difficult to get a correct color rendition when I’m taking photographs, which is why I try to stick to a neutral background.
The boy is sick. It will probably be a long weekend, judging by how sick my father was with it over the past week. I don’t know if I’ll be able to play in the clay at all this weekend, but I want to get more jewelry to stock at the flower shop. That’s the goal, anyway.
Now that the kiln is off, I need to go pick Isaac up at my mother’s. Till we meet again 
Now that we’ve had the birthday party, it’s safe for me to show the necklace I created for my sister. If you know her at all, then you could guess that I made this for her, since booger green is her “signature color.” I used 80 zillion seed beads (I believe they are 11^, but they could be smaller), 6^ seeds,cultured pearls, lemon jasper rondelles (I LOVE these!), an assortment of glass beads, and sterling silver components. The pendant was created from a button from my grandmother’s buttons stash: chosen because they were particularly close.
My swap beads are gone, as is my Bead Soup mix. Tomorrow I’ll be listing some hearts on Etsy, along with some spacer beads that came out of the kiln today. I used a new glaze on them and now I think I have a new favorite! They’re delish!
I had planned on glazing tonight but I’m afraid that I have a migraine on the way–my little internal barometer started warning me of a storm earlier today, but now I’m teetering at the brink….
On Monday I had to take my husband to the chiropractor for an adjustment; you can only watch a 44 year old man walking around like an 80 year old for so long. While he was at his appointment, I headed down the road to Goodwill to see what I was missing.
Well, apparently they had received a donation from a large store (I’m thinking Target, maybe..) of necklaces. I picked up 4 double-stranded seed beed necklaces in various metallic colors, and then I found these:
I’ve been wanting to add to my wooden bead stash, as I think they make a lovely accent to ceramic beads. I got some mahogany, walnut, black, and natural stained beads, along with a strand that has no finish at all (which means custom colors). Different shapes and sizes, too.
Lets just say I got a LOT of beads to add to the stash for very little money.
What a surprise when I woke up yesterday morning to a convo that another one of my pendants was featured in a treasury (http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=61830). And then this afternoon I opened up Google Reader to the Handmade Business blog (http://handmade-business-blogspot.com) and found one of my pictures of my work table looking back at me. I also found the jackpot lot of ceramic molds that I’ve been looking for–ginger jars, cookie jars, vases, bowls, etc. I’ve had to wade my way through a lot of figurine molds that I’ll never use (you know, like smurfs and ET and whatnot–but I had to take the lot of molds), and now have them set out, ready to use. Now if the sun would come back out I could take photos and do some pouring!
Thank you, inmyheadstudios, for including me in this lovely treasury. And don’t forget to check out the article on this week’s shop of the week, A Cagey Bee.
Here are a few picks from the Etsy Twitter Team for this week. And don’t forget to check out the write-up for this week’s featured shop, tamdoll, on the etsytwitter blog.
tamdoll
curiousmess
bluecole
FirebirdHouse
A few items from the Maine Team:
Cupcake Girl by indigotwin
Nubian Goat by JLRPhotography
ACEO Sunflower by OneKeeneKat
Enjoy!
One of my new rings made the Etsy Twitter Team Treasury “Hot Pink”. Thanks Mandizzle!
Update: since I’m having issues with WordPress, here are the links to the treasury ( http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=55322 ) and to Mandizzle’s shop ( http://Mandizzle.etsy.com )
