Wire Pumpkin Necklace

It took a couple tries to get to this point. You know, the point it looked like a pumpkin. For the first time, Google and Etsy failed me in an inspiration search. I knew what I wanted, and no one else is making them! Ah well, I can take the road less travelled sometimes I guess :)

Just my favorite copper wire, looped and bent and twirled into something from the u-pick farm. I kind of love it, even knowing that the first time Cocoa grabs it, it will look like a spider (and not the live kind.). Beauty is fleeting!

Co-op and our own school work is done for the day.  My house is tidied, so that when our (blessed) cleaning lady comes, she can actually see the counters and floors.  Most of them.  We had a huge purge in the spring to get rid of everything we didn't need, and I'm doing another (slower) one right now.  I think the kids should have just as many clothes and toys as I am willing to take care of.  Am I right?  They're still learning to do tasks on their own, and when we work together cleaning...well, I'm a lot more efficient.  I don't have to play Cinderella every time, like some girls I know.  They take turns being Cinderella (the one doing all the work) and the sisters (the one sitting on the couch and being bossy.) 

 In a little bit I'm headed up to my sister's house to pick up 22 pounds of fish I ordered from a dock sale. (We averaged about $2/lb for coho, crab cakes, and cooked mussels.  Not bad at all!)  After that, my husband's dad is in town, so if you need us, we'll be hanging out with Grandpa :)  

Candy Necklace (And contest results)

Doesn't this look like candy? Yum! It must be Halloween season.

I think I am on a stash-busting kick- I've marked down the prices on everything in my shop, and I'm working on new designs to move through my piles of beads! Beads like this are too pretty to be left in a box, yeah?

I made a necklace. You like? I like very much! I think I have just enough materials left to make another. Or I could make two bracelets, or some matching earrings?   I can't decide.  The big beads are glass, shot through with rods of colored glass.  The little green beads are stone.  The whole necklace is made up of 20 individually strung pieces of wire, linked together.  It's longer than I normally do necklaces, but for this kind of chunky weightiness, it works!

My little "Guess what Mimi is saying" contest is over...and no one won :(  Aw sad!  Even sadder, only two people had guesses!  But cheer up, I'll have more contests.  The next one is easier.  You don't have to be a sleepy mom, who has stewed in baby babble for 7 1/2 years.  (I swear, I used to have a REALLY high IQ.  Straight A's in high school, honors classes.  Started college when I was 16.  Now, I can't remember why I opened the fridge door.)  

Want this answer to what Mimi was saying?  OK, watch this.

"Mom, you've got to get a new friendship!  Because people are going to SPY in the 'quarium!"

(You should know, when I asked her to clarify, she held her hands up to her eyes in the most adorable "binoculars" you've ever seen.  Just to make sure I understood what she was saying.)  

Ready?  OK, what could I have at an aquarium that I'd need a new one?  My MEMBERSHIP.  I need a new membership to the aquarium.  Why?  What do memberships do?  They EXPIRE. 

See what she did there?  Because she didn't know either word, and just subbed in words...she....no?  Watch for the next contest!  

Filigree Flower Earrings

I have found a place I can work, while the kids are awake! My bed is so tall, and so wide. none of those short little arms and legs could ever reach me. Mwahaha.

Ahem.

I have some resin flowers and filigree settings left over from my recent bridal project. I can't decide if the dangles are too much or not. I showed them to my husband, his only response was a placating "They're very large, honey." But then... Sometimes you have to go big or go home!  The filigree portion is about an inch across, so these are about 2 inches long without taking into account the earrings.

I am going to make up a few more colors of these and put them in the shop- I'll let you know when. So much fun!

A Giveaway

Head over to Motherhood Reflections today, and you can enter to win a big prize bundle, including a dainty little nest necklace from my shop!  (This is the twin sister of the necklace I sent.)



In similar news, I put up a shop update over the weekend- I'm pretty excited about new color combos!



Things have been quiet in this space- I'm sorry about that.  My children have decided they don't need sleep, and my free time is very small right now- I spend more time feeding and rocking Cocoa than I do in my own bed, I think.  Once he falls asleep at night, I rush off to find my own bed.  I sincerely wish I had the ability to sleep while sitting up, or while touching somebody, but no: I can only sleep alone, in my bed.  Of course, Cocoa slept great last night, just got up two times (1:30 and 4:00.)  I put him back to bed at 4:00...and lay in bed till 5:00 when my husband's alarm went off...and lay in bed till 6:30 when Cocoa got up again....yawn.  I spent my dark morning hours holding Cocoa, and googling the effects of long-term sleep deprivation.  Did you know the last time I slept through the night was August?  And it happened, like, three times that month?  Those were nice nights.  (There might have been a night last month that we slept all through the night, but I can't remember- sometimes I wake up in the morning, and can't remember what I did all night.)

I have one more year until I can expect Cocoa to sleep through the night, consistently, if my girls are any indication.  So I'm not complaining, I know this story already.  I'm just really, really tired.

Nest Necklaces, Flying Away

A friend wrote to me last week- I'm getting rid of (never worn) shirts in your size.  Do you want them?  Hmm...yes!  (I hate to shop.  She loves to shop.  I think I should hire her!)  She sent me six gorgeous, floaty, arty, flimsy-fabric, beautiful shirts.  I would never think about buying stuff like that- I mean, come on.  I'm normally a jeans and rubber boots kind of girl on the weekend.  But they're so beautiful!  I sent her these two necklaces as a thank you- one for her, one for a friend.

I also slipped in a pair of these, she'd admired a pendant in this style earlier.



PS- I'm going to tell you more about this necklace on Monday!

Art Every Day Month, Day #9

Cocoa helped me make a new pendant- think I know just the person to send this to!



It's copper wire, like the others, but colored a bright gold.  The stone beads are a pale, translucent pink.  From the recommendation of my sister, I'm toying with a new way of finishing the nests- I attach a jump ring straight to the nest, without fooling around with a wrapped loop.  I think I like it!



This nest felt trickier than others I've been making- I couldn't find the way the wire wanted to be until about half way through.  It's always so nice when it just *clicks,* I need to remember to slow down and pay attention, instead of getting frustrated it won't do what *I* want it to do!



I'll be ordering more supplies soon, and I'm toying with the idea of getting a different kind of metal wire.  But honestly, I'm a little scared- I've never worked with anything but this gauge of copper wire!  The shininess of sterling silver wire is kind of alluring, but I LOVE the colors of the copper!

Making Me Hungry

Did you know that copper wire can take on the most fabulous colors?

Chocolate

Strawberry

I am completely in love with the new wire I picked up for my little nests...what do you think?  Do you have a favorite?  I'm toying with different sizes of nests, too- the chocolate nest has TWICE as much wire as the more petite strawberry nest.  I'm curious what it would look like with more, but working with that much wire might just make me crazy!  As it is, I kind of just blindly plunge into it and wait for it to become something.  I really, really love the process of making these- each one turns out so different.  Or maybe they just look different to me, seeing as they're my little babies :)

Look for these in the shop over the weekend!

Shop Update

We put a pretty little group of necklaces into the shop this week!  Boy was I glad to see some sunshine, so I could get some nice pictures.



I think this would make the sweetest gift for a bride just starting her own nest, don't you?



This was my first time using the red jade beads, I think I like it!



Three golden eggs.  I'm glad I tried mixing the gold and silver together- this goes with nearly every outfit!



I still love these howlite beads- they're dyed a beautiful turquoise color, with tan striations.  They remind me so much of little robins eggs.



Pink and green.  This is a repeat of the colors my sister chose for her necklace.  Her husband's family is from China, and tradition there is that a family with a boy and a girl is perfect and complete.  Like yin and yang, but they refer to them as the dragon and the phoenix.  She chose these to be her dragon and phoenix colors!  



Again with the three gold eggs.  These beads are big, and light- they're wooden, and painted.  (Update: This necklace is gone!)



I love the necklace chains- a shiny "ball chain."  I love the visual weight they have, and I love their sturdiness.  Wonder Boy likes to grab for my necklace, and I'm not really that worried about him breaking it!  If the necklace is made with stone beads, the whole thing is pretty indestructible.

I chose a 17" length for the chains- it's my absolute favorite chain length, and kind of hard to find.  It hits that sweet spot, where the pendant hits just below the collar bone.  It's such a flattering length.



(How do you like my shop assistant?)

Making, Making!

A got a surprise Etsy request the other day for a beaded badge lanyard- a big surprise, because I'm not sure if I even have anything stocked in the Etsy shop any more, it's been so long since I checked.....anyway, these things are a blast to make! They're really similar to the beaded eyeglass chains (as in, they're both seed beads on beading wire) but I finish the loop to make a necklace with a badge clip in the middle. It was fun to get out all my supplies and make something useful.

I felt so adult: I didn't even pout when I lost 10 inches of beading, scooting the wire over to a measuring stick to make sure I'd gotten 32 inches. I used up every single red seed bead I had in that mixture, I was not happy to lose them all over the floor! I love the sparkle and crazy randomness of seed bead mixtures.

This one, I made a while ago. I just LOVE the colors on this- sparkly aqua things make me happy!

Trying to buy some time with a grumpy toddler son, my sister let him wear Grandma's vintage necklace. The beads flew a LONG way when he yanked it off! I offered to re-string it, since it needed new seed beads anyway; does anyone else find that vintage beads lose their metallic coating? Half of the remaining beads were gold, the other half were coral colored. So, now it's re-strung on floss with pretty silver beads. This necklace probably doesn't look long, but it's FOUR FEET of beads! Way too much fun to wear vintage jewelry like this, it looks just like candy I think.

A little clip I made for my little sister- it's organza with burnt edges, sewn together with a turquoise bead (I think- I know it's stone!) The organza was trickier to burn than I thought....or, rather, it burnt very well and my large circles of organza quickly became teeny tiny circles of organza. If you hold the fabric at a slight upward angle when holding it to the candle flame, you'll get a better curl on the edge. Just something I figured out.

Team EtsyRain Challenge

Hey there, I'm back!  My mother-in-law always says that for a few years when the kids are young, mothers never get vacations, because it takes so much work to get OUT the door, STAY somewhere, and get BACK into life when you return.  Got that right!  The girls were champs on this trip, and we had a fabulous time with Wonder Daddy's family.  

Nana has three of these eyeglass-chains now, and she LOVES them.  In fact, she wore out all three sets in the past year, so I took my beading supplies down to perform corrective surgery.

While I had everything out, I created this piece for an EtsyRain team challenge.  The theme was "Seattle Summer."  Team EtsyRain is for etsy sellers in the Pacific Northwest (which is a rather loose term), but I thought this piece reflected everything I love about our summers: lots and rain, and beautiful vibrant colors in between.  OK, I don't  love the rain...but I do love how these beads sparkle!

What do you think?  If you were to make something to remind you of local summer, what would you make?

Shop Update: A Sale!

I'm running a sale in the Etsy Shop on beaded items- eyeglass necklaces and badge lanyards are marked down.

Spring is almost here, and I'm getting antsy. Time to clear out the old, and bring in the new!

From the Workshop

Since it seems to be a tradition for me to NOT take photos of all the Christmas gifts I make (umm...Aunt B? and the other Aunt B? And Aunt Lolo? Could you send photos? Thanks :) here are some photos of a bridal jewelry set I've been working on. I'm sending these to work with Wonder Daddy for the bride and groom-to-be to mull over and send back with suggestions. The bridal party girls will be wearing peridot green jewelry- gorgeous color for the crystals, but I'm just not set on the design yet.

And...if there's any wish for a tutorial, I'll see what I can do. Jewelry making is so much fun!