What We Have Been Up To and What's Coming Up...

Our Schedule for the rest of the month:

Saturday, Sept. 13 Bead Extravaganza, Hastings, NE at Adams County Fairgrounds, 10-4

Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, September 19-21 Barn Festival, Hastings, NE
Saturday, September 20 Hillsboro Arts & Crafts Fair, Hillsboro, KS, 9-4

Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, September 26-28  Barn Festival, Hastings, NE
Saturday, September 27 Artwalk,  Aurora, NE  1-5

Yes, that is correct two weekends we are in 2 places at once!  Goodness!

Here are a few photos of what we have been up to!

Zulu Tassel Necklace, Chris designed a focal to match seed beads I purchased from The Jade Dog

Hidden Nest, focal, accent, and bird beads by Chris, plus Czech glass & Chinese crystal

Halloween dangle, Ghostly dangle & earrings, Autumn bird necklace (bird focal & accents by Shaterra Clay Studio, basketball earrings

Fairy Fancies, tiny accents created by Chris for fairy gardens and plants!

Rustic Autumn Bird, ceramic bird by MAKU Studios

ceramic earrings

Bermuda Pure Leaf necklace and earrings, Swarovski crystals & Czech glass flower cups

Leaf  Dragon, dragon by Chris, wire, crystals, Czech glass

Spiral Autumn, focal, and bird beads by Chris, Czech glass

Bemused & Bejeweled, sculptural pieces created by Chris & I stitched her tiny leather purse.

Soda Lime Times Tutorial

Chris wrote his first tutorial last month on making his dragon beads.  It was published in the new Soda Lime Times issue!

Mina was his photographer and received photo credit in the article too!  With the publication, Chris created some of his dragons for our Etsy shop! 

Mylanth the Dragon

Avrae of the Hills

Camroth the Dragon

Stop by the Etsy shop and visit these beauties and all the other goodies we have posted!

Chris's Newest Creations

How adorable is this?!  Chris recently decided to make a sculpture to enter in the Nebraska State Fair.  This is what he came up with!  The flowers and leaves are created on black steel wire and then annealed in the kiln.  The flower pot is also glass created on the end of a large hole mandrel so it has a bottom but is also open to be able to insert the flowers.  Once all of the components are created, Chris uses 2 part epoxy to set the flowers into place and to attach the aluminum disc to the bottom of the pot.  Chris also made the aluminum discs from recycled blanks and used a machine to add the engraved grooves to the disc.  So creative and cute!  We plan to make quite a few to have at Graham Gallery during the Holidays. 

Here are a couple others Chris made that are available for sale:

I love the free-form blue daisy and the stone-look flower pot.

This is probably my favorite flower!  The outside edge is a pretty, soft peach and the inside a darker coral.  The flower pot looks like a well weathered terracotta pot!

As for me, I have been beading, beading, beading to get ready for all of our shows next month.  Lots of new designs being churned out!
Earrings:

Left to right: free-form nugget turquoise with Vintaj brass leaves, abalone, and fire agate with carnelian dangles.

Bracelets:

 Lots of Czech glass, crystal, stone, Clay River focal (top), and FanceeThat focal (bottom).  This batch was focused in the antique brass color for the findings.  My favorites are the second from the top and the second from the bottom.  The matte finish on the agate on the bracelet near the bottom adds a wonderful texture to the piece and the leaf charm adds movement.  On the second from the top, I used pieces of chain as dangling charms to add movement to the piece.  It also has a small chicklet style bead from Clay River designs.

This group of bracelets focuses on antique copper.  There are lots of fun goodies in this batch, recycled glass ring from Trinket Foundry, natural stones, Czech glass, copper filigree butterfly, double hole drilled bone bead from Wild Things Beads, Clay River Designs, and chain.  Chris's favorite is the top one, and I also liked it.  My favorites are probably the bottom two, one of which sold last weekend. 

So that is a bit of an update on the jewelry and glass front!  Sorry for the long silence!  It may be a bit quiet here for a couple weeks while we prepare for the shows!

Bead Soup Ingredients Simmering

Wow, been a couple weeks since my last blog post!  Life is such a whirlwind for all of us, isn't it?  Our past two weeks have included parent-teacher conferences, working at several jobs, prom dress shopping, a blizzard that dumped a foot of snow on us (but that wasn't all bad, we got to be home snowed in a bit), making a tiny beaded couch for a juried art exhibit at Graham Gallery (which contains more than 1000 3mm Czech glass beads), submitting applications for new art shows, and most of all prepping for Marble Crazy at Moon Marble Company in Bonner Springs, KS this weekend.  It is our first show of the "season" (which runs from now until the early part of December...can we say exhausting?).  Chris has around 100 marbles made and I have been furiously putting lampwork designs together for the show.  We will leave Thursday and the show is Friday and Saturday.  Thursday night we will get to visit with my brother, Mark, who lives in Gardner, KS which is south of Bonner Springs.  I had a phone call a bit ago from him, and apparently during a bout of mental insanity, he was out sledding (which I am sure involved 4 wheelers) and hit a tree and now has a spiral break in his leg.  He will have surgery on it tomorrow morning.  Fun times ahead for him! 

Any whoo, I am lucky enough to participate once again in the Bead Soup Blog Hop coming up at the end of March and into April.  I am partnered up with Tari Kahrs, her blog is Pearl and Pebble, and this is what we sent to her:

Chris made the gorgeous spring lampwork beads for her focals, and I put together the rest of the ingredients from my bead horde (yes it has been upgraded from a stash to a horde).  A cute porcelain owl, silver plate chain and flower toggle (my favorite style ever), Chinese and Swarovski crystals, fresh water and Swarovski pearls, Czech glass (beads, flowers, and leaves), a silver branch, plus a variety of other goodies.

This is what I received from Tari yesterday and I AM THRILLED!!!

Sari silk ribbon, a honey bee ceramic focal with matching spacers, lampwork irregular nuggets, ceramic rounds, bronze clay toggle, matte finish Czech glass beads, and gorgeous stamped tile beads.  I am a lucky beader!  Gotta love a bead swap partner who loves Art Beads!  Our reveal date is in the second round of the three reveals.  We are just two of the FIVE HUNDRED people signed up to participate!  I love the Bead Soup Blog Hop parties (invented and hosted by the fabulous Lori Anderson), they are a whole bunch of fun!  You meet other bloggers and beaders from all over the world and are often presented with beads you have never worked with before!  I can't wait to play with them!

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!

Voting Link for The Hole Bead Shoppe Is Now Active!

Kelli Burns and the Hole Bead Shoppe now have our photos on the blog for voting.  I would appreciate if you could stop by and vote.  You need to list my name, photo# or the name of the piece in a comment to place your vote.  The piece is called Garden of Skulls and it is photo #1.

Garden of Skulls by Stephanie Haussler

Thanks so much for your help!

You can now VOTE on our Day of the Dead Challenge by leaving a comment. The comment should be for your favorite piece/designer. Share this link with your FB friends, family, whomever. These votes will be used in conjunction with votes on Kelli Burns page, The Hole Bead Shop fan page.
Our offsite judges PalmtreeQueen Lampworks Glass Beads and Lauren Vasil will help the staff at The Hole Bead Shoppe select the other three prizes. Let the voting begin.
http://www.theholebeadshop.blogspot.com/

The Wait is Over! Here it is!

It began here, with a post from October 19th:
On the new front, I am one of ten participants taking part in The Hole Bead Shoppe's Day of the Dead Bead kit challenge.  Here is a picture of my kit supplies:

My kit fee was $50 and I got a $120+ value!  Crazy the amount of items that were in the kit, and WOW do I feel the pressure to create an over the top, fabulous piece!  The kit has a wide variety of Lucite flowers and leaves, Vintaj keys and blanks, fresh water pearls, Czech daggers and fire polish, Swarovski crystals, a variety of seed beads and Tila beads, gunmetal plate spacers, Tierracast beads and spacers, and a Palmtree Queen Day of the Dead lampwork focal.  Here is a picture of the skull beads the Hole Bead Shoppe added to our kits:

Mine is in the second row, second from the left!  They are AWESOME!


It continued in this update from October 25th:
Last week I told you about my newest Challenge project.  As I am sure you have noticed, posts have been a bit thin the past couple weeks.  All of my time is being spent at work at my two jobs or at work at my beading table.  To date I have worked about 13 hours on my project piece.  I have done a right angle weave using Tila beads, fringed with Lucite, pearls, crystal, and LOTS of seed beads, and now I am working a spiral herringbone tube that will at this point wrap around the fringe section.  Next (once the tube is done) I plan to finish the rope hanging the piece using some 8mm Chinese crystal rondelles accented with a netting stitch.  I am amazing myself!  I haven't seeded beaded this much all year, but it is looking amazing!  Stay tuned for further updates!

At this point I sounded very optimistic until... this post on Halloween.

Day of the Dead Bead Challenge update:
After adding an additional 6 hours of time to my project Monday and Tuesday evening last week, I had a thread break on the herringbone spiral I was stitching, and it ALL FELL APART!!  I must say, that put me off the project for a few days, and I believe I muttered a few "bad" words.  Consequently, on Friday night I spent time with those beads doing wire crochet instead.  I think I have that portion done now except for attaching it together.  Stay tuned!

This was the sneak peak I gave you at Thanksgiving:
Now I promised you all a sneak peak, and here it comes.  In a couple weeks, my Day of the Dead Challenge project is due for submission to The Hole Bead Shop for judging.  I finished it at the end of last week, so that I could get it to a professional photographer to do it justice in a single photo.  Amy Sandeen helped us out and did a terrific job.  I would love to show you how great the photos are, but that would give away the design before it is time!  So here is a morsel to tide you over!

And now without further adieu...My piece for The Hole Bead Shoppe Day of the Dead Challenge Kit:

 I am so pleased with the end result!  

• Lampwork focal by Palm Tree Queen,
• Loads of Lucite flowers and leaves 
• Crystals (Swarovski & Chinese)
• Seed Beads (size 11, 15, and Tilas)
• Tierracast charms and pendants from the Viva Mexicana! line
• pewter and sterling spacer beads
• Czech glass dagger beads and Fire Polish beads
• sterling silver skull toggle
• my beading wire, crimps, crimp covers, and Parawire for the stringing, wire crochet, and wire wrapping.
• 20 to 25+ hours (I honestly lost track) of my hard work and a few bad words (the herringbone incident)  

So now what?  Let the judging begin!  I am going to ask you to stop over on Facebook and vote (for me PLEASE) as there is an additional prize to be awarded for the vote of the public.  I will get that link posted here shortly!  


Thank you for following my journey through the largest design I have ever undertaken!  Thanks especially to Kelli, Michael, and Tarlee at The Hole Bead Shoppe for coming up with this wonderful challenge and to Debi Cogwell for the beautiful and fun focal bead to design with!

Here There Be Dragons....

Earlier this week, I mentioned that Chris had made dragons and here they are!  Aren't they cool?!  We had a special order for one, and this is what became a new line!  My favorite is the yellow and orange.  I need to name them, but that hasn't happened yet.  This is the "premier" of them and we have already sold two!  They will be with us at the Lincoln Bead Show if you would like to see them in person!  Chris made more last night, but those haven't had their pictures taken yet.  Like the collage?  I am playing around with Picnik for editing our photos.  Not sure I like it, seems to bog our computer down and I haven't learned my way around things yet.  I am trying the "premium" feature for a month and we'll see if it is worth continuing.  I like how the collage turned out though!

Kudos for Chris

Yesterday Chris received word that his beads would be featured on the CIM (Creation Is Messy) glass website!  Here are the beads he submitted:

Zombie Guy made using Dirty Martini glass

Monster Fingers using Elphaba Glass

Trition's Treasure Beads using Fremen glass

 

Autumn Beaky Bird using Canyon de Chelly glass

Congrats to my very talented husband!  Don't forget we will be in Exeter tomorrow (Saturday, Oct 1) at the Holiday Avenue Showcase from 10am-2pm and in Hastings at the Harvest Celebration at Prairie Loft on Sunday, October 2 from 1-6pm!  Hope you can stop by!  Happy Weekend!

Gone Batty and Hanging with the Zombies

I mentioned the other day that Chris has a new design "Batty Bats" and he also made a Zombie guy (which strangely looks like one of Mina's teachers!)

Zombie Guy:

Batty Bats

We would love to hear what you think of the new designs!  The batty necklaces are fun, the bats hang from mono-filament line so the line disappears against your skin and makes them look like they are flying!  Chris designed both the bats and the necklaces and put them together while I was working on other things.

Monster and Lady Fingers on Etsy!

We relisted our Monster Fingers:

Monster Finger

our Lady Fingers:

Lady Finger

And Chris's OH so cute Turkey beads:

Cute Turkey Beads Pendant size or Earring Size

Stop over and check them out!  We will be at the Highland Park Farmers Market Tomorrow, you can see them in person if you prefer!

Pictures from Cottonwood Festival

 We had a wonderfully successful show at the Cottonwood Festival last weekend!  Thanks to all who came out looking for us and stopped by to chat or shop!  Met some new people and Mina got to hang out with her best friend, Lexi.  Chris's Dad Keith spent some time with us on Saturday and we all got our summer "tattoos", henna from The Garden of Ink, owned by Megan Stoner.  She does a terrific job and it is fun to get them in the summer when shorts and capris show off your bare legs. 
Here are some photos from the show.

Chris and his Dad

Mina's henna tattoo

Chris's henna tattoo

Chris and Mina sharing the torching demos

Chris helping Mina shape a marble

Chris's bead table

Mina and Lexi, after visiting the face painting booth, the gal did an awesome job!

My jewelry

 For some reason, my tattoo was deleted from the camera and I will have Chris re-shoot it tonight.
I spent 12 hours making jewelry on Thursday.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!
So those pictures will be coming tomorrow, I hope. Made some very pretty pieces, though not one of them sold at the show!  Just never can guess what people will want!