Thursday, June 28, 2012

New Jewelry Designs - Part 2 Favorite Artists

DON'T FORGET WE WILL BE AT PRAIRIE LOFT IN HASTINGS FOR THE FLATWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL FRIDAY EVENING AND ALL DAY SATURDAY~ PLEASE STOP BY AND SWEAT WITH US IF YOU COME OUT TO THE FESTIVAL!  GONNA BE VERY HOT THIS WEEKEND!

Two of my very favorite bead artists and suppliers are Lisa Suver (FanceeThat)and Yvonne Irvin-Faus (MyElements).  Both are talented bead makers, jewelry designers, and suppliers on Etsy.  I "met" Lisa when I came across her design in Bead Star Magazine.  She had a gorgeous cha-cha charm bracelet published and I loved the design and the beads.  When I contacted her to tell her how much I loved the bracelet and "where could I get some of those beads?", I found that SHE also made the beads.  I have been hooked since and have several colors stashed in my bead horde.  Here are some recent designs I made with Lisa's beads.
 These are one of my favorite new designs.  The earrings have Lisa's beads with pale peach Swarovski crystal starfish dangles.  ABSOLUTELY one of my favorite colors and just love this pair of earrings.  If they don't sell soon, they will be mine!
 How fun are these beads?!!!  I love Lisa's beads, gorgeous colors, well made, and lightweight polymer.  They are perfect for all sorts of jewelry designs.
This bracelet actually combines things from both artists!  Lisa's beads and some of the retro/funky bits that Yvonne sells in her shop!  I could spend a LOT of money at her shop, and not only does she have retro finds and all sorts of fun do-dads that add whimsy to a design, she also makes "My Elements", handpainted plexiglass pieces that are also lightweight and GORGEOUS!
 These fun and festive earrings showcase both Yvonne's hand painted pieces and her spinning discs.
Aren't these fun?  They look like something from a very fun planet in outer space!
I came across Yvonne several years ago in Step by Step Beads magazine and have been a big fan since!  Sadly, Step by Step Bead magazine went away when the economy tanked and I still haven't recovered!  It was my VERY FAVORITE beading magazine, and there is still a lingering resentment (2 or 3 years later)
that I can no longer receive it!

Hope you have enjoyed this installment to the new designs.  I hope the next installment will be all of the new crystal creations I have added!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

This and That

I am sorry I haven't gotten the rest of the photos of our new jewelry posted.  I have NO idea where the days go!  The last post took about three hours to put together and I haven't had that much time strung together to put the next picture post in order!  So here are a few tidbits of info and news for you until that post gets finished.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!  To all the readers who stop by our little corner of the world to read the blog, THANK YOU!  We crossed the 50,000 views over the weekend and I am so humbled that you take time to stop by and read what I write.  Here's to 100,000!

I got time to sign up for the next round of the Bead Soup Blog Party.  Yes, I had to use my smartphone and do the sign up while I was at our Bassett Show, but I did get signed up!  My partner is Shirley Moore and our reveal date is the first round of three on July 28th.  I am starting to put Shirley's soup mix together which will include some of Chris's awesome beads.

Our next show is the Flatwater Music Festival this Friday and Saturday at Prairie Loft Center in Hastings.  Fabulous music, art, and food!  Of course the weather is not cooperating and looks to be about 100 degrees (fun to set up in that :0P).  Our weather turned HOT last week and has decided to stick around.

My fabulous lampworking husband, Chris, has several new pictures and glass reviews on the CiM (Creation is Messy) glass website, including his fun cowboy hats.  Cruise through the Palettes and scroll down the page for the pictures from the various artist glass testers.

Well, I am late for work at my full time job, so I better cut this off for now.  See you here again soon!


Sunday, June 17, 2012

New Beads and Jewelry-Part 1~Western Designs

We have been working very hard recently to prepare for the onslaught of summer shows.  We sell at the Highland Park Farmers Market every Saturday (schedule permitting) during the summer and early fall, along with other summer festivals and shows thrown in.  Keeping up, in short, is exhausting.  Exhaustion and deadlines can work against creativity, however, it can make you see the looming NEED for what you want to finish also.  I am a procrastinator and it has gotten worse over the past several years.  I find that knowing I have one day, one evening, or one hour left is very good for prodding me to finish what I need to do.

Here, as I mentioned in the last post,  are some of the new designs we have been working on.
Designs by Chris Haussler
Howdy partner!  Wild West Penguins have been added to Chris's repertoire of penguin designs.  Too Funny!  His penguins always have such personality and character to them.  When we prepared for the Ranch Expo (which went VERY well, and we are signed up for next year), we wanted to make some western designs for the folks that live the cowboy way of life.
From upper left clockwise: Rose Gold Cross, Boho Peace, Red Creek Jasper w/feather, Silver & Crystal Cross.
I love to make earrings.  They are quick and the possibilities are endless.  These are a few of the thirty five pair I have made in the past couple weeks.  The rose gold and silver crosses I purchased on clearance at Jo-Ann's a few weeks ago and since I had no findings for rose gold, I was thankful all of those were also on clearance.  I used some rose gold balls as the accent beads and on the silver crosses, Swarovski 4mm bi-cones in blues.  The Boho Peace have a gorgeous peacock finish Czech glass oval bead with antique copper peace sign charms.  The feather earrings have red creek jasper ovals and antique copper Tierracast feather charms.  Red creek jasper is SO my favorite stone to work with.  The variations and matrixing in the stones make it look like each bead is something different!
This set I made using red creek jasper.  I don't normally make and sell "sets", and technically this also wasn't a set, though the gal that purchased it bought both pieces.  I usually design a piece and then move on, but once in awhile something made deserves a pair of earrings or a bracelet to go with the necklace design.  These pieces went together but were individual in the designs.  The earrings had dangles made on a ring from the same chain as the necklace and the dangles were red creek jasper, hematite, gunmetal Czech glass, and smoky quartz.  Then necklace is mostly red creek jasper in several shapes and sizes and seed beads with a bit of hematite, smoky quartz, and Czech glass added to the double strands.  I especially loved the focal which reminds me of an autumn shot of a Nebraska prairie.  The horizon line is visible with trees and sticks poking up through the native grasses tinted in autumn colors.  The wire wrapping was done with vintage bronze and it matched the large/small ring chain.

One last grouping of western designs to share.  I used a few pieces of Lipstick Ranch to create three rustic designs.  The two necklaces are both on leather cord from Julie's which she buys from Leather Cord, USA.  Very nice quality, terrific prices.  I used some raku nuggets on the peace sign necklace along with some large hole crystals, and Unicorne Beads teardrops.  This necklace sold to a lovely young gal.  She helps her mom with their doll clothes business, Giddy Up Girls and we traded the necklace for doll clothes for my niece.  I love trading art for art!  The earrings use smaller L.R. crosses with some turquoise and carnelian rondelles.  The flower power necklace has a large beaded bead (from Auntie's Beads) and miscellaneous other crystals in that gorgeous crimson color.  However, we discovered that this necklace is too short for the sliding knot design I used since it won't go over your head!  Duh, I didn't even try it out!  So I will be fixing that this week, and the necklace and cross earrings will be for sale at the High School Rodeo in Hastings, starting on Wednesday.  The final picture shows a cluster of the new cowboy hat pendant Chris made for the Expo show and those will also be for sale in Hastings.  Julie reserved a booth and we will have our jewelry and things there with other jewelry, quilting items, and Southwestern design gifts.  Stay tuned this week for more of our new jewelry designs!

Monday, June 11, 2012

New Show This Week

We will be in Bassett, Nebraska a couple days this week for the Sandhills Ranch Expo!  New show for us plus a tiny amount of vacation in that I have never been to that area before.  Working shows is one way to see the country!  See you next week with a BUNCH of new jewelry photos (took over 100 yesterday!).

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Art Bead Earring Swap


Welcome to the Art Bead Earring Swap!  I came across the swap on Facebook and it is hosted by Diana Ptaszynski of Suburban Girl Studio.


Our Task:
Create a pair of earrings that include at least one Art Bead in the design and we were to use sterling silver earwires (due to allergies) unless we cleared  it with our partners first.  We were assigned two partners and we had to create a pair of earrings for each partner and in return we would also receive two pair of earrings.


My Designs:


Hummingbird Gardens were created for my partner Cheryl Brown (who is from Canada).  Chris made the lampwork focals and I added Czech glass flowers, large violet Swarovski rounds, fern green Swarovski dangles, and small Chinese crystals in mystic green.  The hummingbird charms are from Tierracast and are some of my favorites to design with.  I love violets and pansies and that is what these lovely earrings reminded me of.


For my partner Gail Barnett (who lives not too far away in Missouri), I created these earrings, Summer's Evening.
For Gail's earrings I used Art Beads from Heather Powers.  I really loved the lightning bug beads when I saw them a while back.  Living in Kansas and Nebraska, summer evenings are often filled with lightning bugs.  I caught them in the jars as a child, and watched Mina do it when she was little (though she still on occasion catches some).  Not until a visit from my older brother Robin, who lives in southern California, did I know that lightning bugs do not live west of the Rocky Mountains!  I wasn't sure if lightning bugs live in Canada either, so I sent these to Gail knowing she would know what they are!  The polymer round at the top is also from Heather Powers and the tiny jar charms at the bottom are also handmade by Heather.  I added some Swarovski 2xAB crystal bicones and a tiny gold bug to finish the design.  I cleared with Gail that gold plate earrings would work.

These are the earrings I received:
From Gail, I received these fun handmade ceramic earrings in my favorite bumblebee colors!  Not only did they make me happy for the bee collecting thing, but they also had a lovely tinkling chime to them!  I love jewelry that moves and makes noise!  Sadly, I put the earrings on as soon as I unwrapped them, and one "flew" out of my ear and shattered on the office floor!  I could have cried!  So I took a picture of the one I have left, and Gail kindly consented to make replacements for me.

I received these lovely boro disc earrings from Cheryl on Monday, and have worn them several days this week!  The colors really blend nicely with whatever I happen to be wearing and I love the texture on the sterling dangle wires.  Cheryl and I actually received our earrings on the same day so that was fun!  Never know how long mailing will take when it heads to another country.  Cheryl also sent me a "fun" extra bead, the black exploding bird from the Angry Birds game!  He is really cute and I haven't decided what to do with him yet.
From Cheryl's blog, I received the middle bird.





I had a wonderful time trading earrings with Gail and Cheryl and hope they did too!  Here is a list of the other participants, please hop over to their blogs to check out what they have designed!  Thanks to my partners and to Diana for hosting the Hop!

YOU ARE HERE!
Cheryl Brown    www.dragonflybeads.ca
OUR HOST!
Diana Ptaszynski     http://www.suburbangirlstudio.com
 Other Bloggers:
Patti Vanderbloemen        http://myaddictionshandcrafted.blogspot.com
Lesley Watt        http://www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.com
Jenny Davies Reazor      http://www.jdaviesreazor.com/blog
Melinda Orr      http://www.orrtec.blogspot.com
Cilla Watkins      http://www.tellyourgirlfriends.com
Sally Russick     http://www.thestudiosublime.com
Susan Kennedy       http://www.suebeads.blogspot.com

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Missing Week

Last week went by in such a blur, I am not even sure it happened!  Mina spent most of the week in Lincoln at Masonic Band Camp, and it was an amazing experience.  We went up Friday night to watch their concert at South Pointe Pavilion in Lincoln.  The concert was outside and it was a beautiful evening, and the band was absolutely the best I have ever heard.  On Saturday, the kids marched in the Shrine Parade and there were 285 of them!  They were a whole block long when marching and wow what a sound! 
Here is a picture I took with my phone camera of them coming down the street.  After the parade, they performed at a nursing home in that area and then it was time to head to Memorial Stadium for their pep band and half time performances.  They also did the National Anthem for the start of the Shrine Bowl. 
Flag unfurling and National Anthem (photos from the Shrine website)

South Pointe Pavilion performance (we are sitting under the blue tent), photo from Shrine website

Mina is somewhere near the tree on the left side of the photo, she plays trombone


Marching in the parade (photo from the Shrine website)

Half time show at Memorial Stadium (photo from the Shrine website)

The photos from the website are a bit small, but still give you the idea of what that number of kids looks like performing!

Stop back on Thursday for an Art Bead Earring Blog Hop!

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