BTW

A quick peek at a couple of the projects I've been working on today - I've been stirring my soup! The Bead Soup Blog Party is this Saturday, and although I've been planning my designs for the last three weeks or so I only started actually putting those plans into action today! I've come to realise that that is the way I work best. I used to beat myself up for leaving things to the last minute, but I've realised that by thinking about the possibilities for the designs, sketching out ideas and working out exactly how everything will be put together means that when I actually sit down and make it things (usually!) go fairly quickly!

Anyway, you're going to have to wait until Saturday to see the finished designs, but you can see that I've added even more colour to the mix!

Poppy Challenge Blog Hop

It's here! The date of the Poppy Challenge Blog Hop seemed ages away when I set it, but the last week has flown by! I planned out what I wanted to make early on, but I've come to realise that I'm the type of person who will plan and plan, sketch ideas out, work out how to do it in their heads and then, finally, make it just before the deadline. Which usually works out just fine as all that planning means that the making is usually quick, but with Jamie being ill I did start to worry that I was going to miss the deadline - which would have been embarrassing considering I set the challenge!

So, this is what I planned and planned and finally made on Sunday.....

The challenge was to make something lovely from two of my poppy headpins. I sent five pairs of headpins out to the people listed below, a mix of oxidised copper, oxidised silver and bright silver, and made a pair for me too. I had a pair of oxidised silver poppies, and I knew that I wanted to make a pendant rather than a pair of earrings. I twisted the stem of the poppies onto one of my large teardrops, making them sit slightly to one side. I liked that, but knew that I wanted a bit more movement and a little bit of colour so I used normal headpins to wind tiny faceted amethyst beads onto a smaller teardrop, and then used a jump ring to hang both teardrops together from a chain. It's got more of a romantic feel than most of the jewellery I've been making recently, but I really like it, and it's lovely and light to wear.

The other poppy challengers are

Marissa                Sea Flowers Studios

Molly Alexander               Beautifully Broken Me

Kristi      Curiosities by K

Fiona     TizDuster

Jennifer Cameron            Glass Addictions

I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone has made - please do go and look and join in the fun!

P.S. Thank you to those of you who left a comment/emailed/facebooked about Jamie - apart from being tireder than usual and not having his full appetite back he's back to his normal happy, smiling, crawling round the house at top speed self!

Cuddle time

Source: zazzle.ca via Joanne on Pinterest

No, not for you, sorry. It would be a bit difficult to give you a cuddle through the computer screen, but I expect you can find someone or something to cuddle at your end. It's my poor poorly Jamie who needs lots of extra cuddles at the moment. He's having a bad reaction to the MMR jab that he had last Tuesday, and although I know that the fever, loss of appetite etc that he's going through is nothing compared to actually having measles or mumps it's still horrible, especially as he doesn't understand what's going on. Yesterday seems to have been the worst day, his fever has just about gone now and he's a bit brighter than he was, but he's still not himself today. So, lots of extra cuddles with Mummy.

I'll leave you with thanks for comments on my last post - it's been really interesting to find out what people did before turning their hands to crafts, or how you juggle everything! And a quick reminder too - it's the Poppy Headpin Challenge blog hop tomorrow so come back then to see what everyone made!

Do you have another life?

Source: Uploaded by user via Joanne on Pinterest

I've got a couple of project and article deadlines for Beads and Beyond to meet this weekend, including the latest Spotlight review pages. My favourite part of Spotlight reviews is writing the blog reviews. There are just so many fantastic jewellery blogs out there, whether they're written by jewellery designers or lamp workers or people who make ceramic beads or about enamel or metal clay, and it's fantastic having an excuse to spend time reading them!

I've realised recently that quite a few of the people whose blogs I've written about were graphic designers in their previous life. Maybe it was their training and experience in graphic design helped them in their move towards crafts, or maybe it was their flair for crafts that gave them the skills they needed for graphic design.

Anyway, that started me thinking .... assuming that you are making a business out of crafty life, no matter the size of business or the type or craft, what was your first career? Were you a graphic designer like Kerry Bogert, or were you in the military like Lori Anderson,  or were you like me, a teacher in your previous career? Do you still have a daytime job in addition to your craft business and if so how do you find time for them both? Does one career help another? Does the creative outlet of making jewellery or other crafts help you to cope with the stresses of your day job?

P.S. If you have a jewellery-related blog, especially one with great photos and maybe a tutorial or two and you fancy having a paragraph written about it in on Beads and Beyond's Spotlight pages, send me a quick email! I'm always on the look out for blogs to review, and I try to include as wide a range of jewellery types and styles and materials as possible.

Peacock Bracelet - ABS challenge

The inspiration for the Art Bead Scene blog challenge this month is a wonderfully painted manuscript page full of beautiful birds. The colours are so rich, despite the page being over 400 years old. At the centre of the page is a peacock, and as soon as I saw it I knew that I had the perfect bead! It's a bead by Mindy Macgregor (of course!), one of a set that I bought from her a few years ago and that had been sitting in a dish on my desk for ages waiting for the perfect project - and here it is!

The clasp is the silver feather clasp I made on Wednesday, and I've used dainty faceted amazonite, amethyst, Swarovski crystals and lovely soft purple lampwork spacer beads to pick out some of the colours in the bead and the peacock's tail. I did try some tiny faceted labradorite beads in place of the amethyst at first - it seemed appropriate considering the original name for labradorite was peacock stone - but they looked a bit washed out. The glossy purple brightens up the bracelet instead. Unusually for me, I've strung the beads in the bracelet rather than link them with wirework, and I've formed the beadalon into loops to stop the strands of beads from being too narrow. The clasp hooks onto one of two rings - I put two at the end of the bracelet so that the length can be adjusted if need be. The silver has been given an antiqued patina using liver of sulphur both to highlight the texture on the clasp and it seemed more appropriate considering the age of the manuscript.

I am so pleased with my feather clasps! I'm definitely going to be making more, but each one will be different as no two feathers are ever the same. In fact, the two I made on Wednesday still turned out differently despite being made from the same feather. I've added the copper feather clasp to my etsy shop if you fancy using it in your own bird inspired jewellery, and the peacock bracelet is on my website here.

BTW part 2

I've managed to get quite a bit done on my ever-growing to-do list today, and even more impressively this is (just in case you hadn't noticed) my second blog post of the day! I finally bought a new phone, an iPhone 4s, a couple of weeks ago to replace the iPhone 3G I'd had for over 3 years, and it's making blogging a bit easier and quicker. The 3G had done me well, but I'd dropped it in water when I was pregnant with Jamie well over a year ago and although T had got it working for me again it had never been the same again. Having a new phone makes me realise just how bad the old one had got, and I've had great fun downloading new (useful, of course) apps. So far I've got the blogger app which I'm obviously using for this, Facebook, etsy, and my favourites Instagram and color splash. Oh I've been having fun with those! With Picnik closing down in a few weeks it's good to find a few more easy to use photo editing sites and apps. I used color splash to edit the photo in this morning's post to just leave the colour in Michi's beautiful beads, and I've been taking a few photos of work in progress during the day

Anyway, I can't show you everything I made today as the designs I made with Michi's beads are obviously for the bead soup party, but you can have a peek these. First up is a pair of oak leaf earrings. Been meaning to make these for ages! And secondly there's two clasps textured by sending the metal through the rolling mill with a feather sandwiched between the two. The silver clasp is destined for a bracelet for this month's Art Bead Scene challenge. I'm teaching tomorrow but I've got the bracelet all laid out on my desk to put together while my student is sanding and polishing their work and won't really want me looking over their shoulder all the time.

BTW part 1

Sitting on my work desk this morning - hopefully it'll look very different in a couple of hours!