Procrastination

Since I haven't gotten much finished lately, I thought I would show you the projects I have in progress. I find starting projects very exciting, finishing them is another story all together! This is a fringed bracelet with blue crazy lace agates, tiny size 15 fringe, topped with tanzanite chips. Pretty, and almost finished. I really hate picking up size 15 seed beads from the carpet! I think the smaller the bead, the higher the chance that they will be spilled repeatedly!
This is going to be a necklace. The millifiori donut is one I recently got on sale from Auntie's beads. I love all the colors that are in the flowers. Friday night I was flipping through one of the beading magazines I get but rarely make anything out of, and I came across the instructions for beaded beads using size 11 seed beads and (I think) 4mm sized Czech glass fire polished beads. And the crazy thing was, I had beads the right size, the right color, and enough to make the beaded beads! Hard to believe that the fates came together that well for me. These beaded beads are so simple I made all of them in a couple hours on Friday night. I did the pendant bail last night using the same seed beads that were in the beaded beads, and a few others to pick up the colors of the beaded beads and the flowers in the donut bead. Now to decide what to string them with. Chain, ribbon, beading wire with seed beads, the options are pretty great!

Autumn Favorites

I just visited the "Witchy Chicks" blog and this moring's topic was autumn and your comfort zone. What makes you comfy, happy when blue, or just fun things that you do for yourself? Here are some of my favorite things:}
*Movies~love them or hate them, I will watch them. I am a popcorn addict, so I will go to almost any movie at the theater for some popcorn! Though we recently saw, "Disaster Movie" and that SO wasn't able to be fixed by the popcorn! I think it is running even with our other least favorite movie ever "The Spongebob Movie", which when considered against "Disaster Movie", actually is a bit better! My favorites~Anything with Colin Firth, Clive Owens, or Gerard Butler! Oh wait, that lists guys not movies! The movies would be: P.S. I Love You, Pride and Prejudice (BBC miniseries edition), Bridget Jones' Diary, While You Were Sleeping, and let's not forget the Lord of the Rings movies (Aragorn!), these and a super soft blankie to curl up with!
*TV~We don't watch a lot of "normal channel" tv, but we do try to watch House, M.D. on Tuesdays (love Hugh Laurie, he is so different in this show than what he has done on British tv), I also love Law & Order: SVU and Criminal Intent, but those I usually watch on reruns on USA network. Mina and I like to watch Monk and Psych on USA, too. I would really like to be watching, TruBlood based on the Southern Vampire books by Charlaine Harris, but we don't get HBO and I can't see subscribing to that for the one show.
*Food~Cheezits, Russ's IGA chocolate frosted donuts, popcorn, Dean's French onion dip w/Fritos Scoops. Good Grief, there's a healthy list of snacks! Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate! has to be added to the list! Current Chocolate favorite, M&M selections Mocha flavor!
*Hobbies~Beading (duh!), Reading paranormal romance, science fiction, mysteries, playing video and computer games. Silly but really fun!
*Season~Fall and Spring. The Spring is wonderful for the renewal of growth after the long winter and Fall is great after the hot Summer days, though there weren't that many this year, to have the cool mornings and evenings and warm days.
So what cheers you up when you're down? Provides you with pleasures that are sometimes slightly sinful? Just what secrets are you keeping?!

How do you recover from betrayal?

Recently I mentioned that Chris and I are not going to be involved with Girl Scouts. That is not entirely true. Chris has taken on the roll of co-leader for the Daisy troop and Mina is working with them also to get her community service hours for her silver award. I am taking as much of a break as I can get (people keep wanting me involved, whether I want to be or not). The betrayal comes in due the fact that a few, some, or most of the girls we have been leaders for over the last 5 years were not happy with me as their leader and had not been happy for a YEAR before anyone mentioned it to me. Though that seems a rather long time to wait to mention unhappiness to me, I am more of an unreasonable, unapproachable person than I was aware of. No one wanted to tell me, because they didn't think it would make any difference that things would still be my way. Obviously, or it seems so to me, that I can not change what I do not know about. I, contrary to popular opinion, CAN NOT read minds. My question is to you dear reader, how do you recover from such a betrayal, by people whom you thought of as friends when you were so obviously wrong? I am now questioning every thing I think, or do, wondering at my own judgement. I am forty years old, and I keep wondering "how can I still be so gullible as to be taken in by these people"? You want to believe that having lived in this world for 40 years that you know people pretty well, but I am proven wrong on this over and over. You can never know a person, that doesn't open up and be completely honest with you. Yesterday was the first meeting for the troop of girls that I had been leader of for 5 years, and the first that I have not gone to (I may have missed a couple others due to hospitalization or illness). I will say it was one of the worst days of my life. I struggle with depression, (which I take medication for and got to therapy for), and yesterday was tough. I have my husband and two of my gal friends worried about me. I must say I am very scared too. I have never felt so vulnerable or fragile. So if you have any sort of advice you want to share, please do. I can use all the help I can get at this point.

New Items Part 4~And Now For Something Completely Different!

If you don't recognize the quote in the title, it comes from Monty Python sketches, which in equal measures can be completely ridiculous and hilarious! These are some beautiful beads Chris worked up for a special order, and I hope they are not quite what Michelle wants, because they are calling to me! She orded some beads in Crayon Colors. This is the first draft of what Chris came up with.
This is a Goddes bead necklace heading into Graham Gallery this weekend. They are fun, and slightly racy, but we sold the one at the Gallery so this one gets her shot next! Just a simple lovely green Goddess on a necklace of seed beads in lime and cobalt blue.

This bracelet is made with bright blue MOP rounds and highlights the lead crystal bicones I got at an antique store in Hastings. I believe the crystals are from an old chandelier. Your wrist doesn't get better sparkle than that!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my regular posts the past few days. While you were lollygagging in bed, I was up late slaving over a hot keyboard lining up several days posts, so I could keep you on your toes! I took a page from Carla's book and did several posts at once instead of bombarding you with a zillion pictures in one post!

New Items Part 3~Natural Stones and Our Beading Blitz

Chris and I occasionally sit down at our kitchen table and spread as many bead containers as we can fit on the table, and do a beading blitz. This particular one happened last week. We were selling our jewelry, beads, ceiling fan pulls, and suncatchers at the Country Crafts and Friends show near Giltner, NE. Some of the gals Chris works with were planning on heading out to see the show, and wanted turquoise in particular. So we whipped out the bead boxes, tools, and crimps and this is what we came up with. This first bracelet has accents of copper and lovely "beach glass" nuggets I got from Carla at beads and botanicals. I really love how the nuggets set up off your wrist and the light shines through them so your arm literally "glows". There are earrings that match it down the post a ways.
Another turquoise bracelet with copper, etched spacers made by Chris, various other stones that were attracted to each other.

This bracelet features matte finish carnelian triangles with foil lined lime green glass beads. I got this strand of bead (the triangles) at the Central Nebraska Bead Show in March, and I really love to just take them out of the box and finger their smooth texture. Is that too much information?!

Here are some fun and lovely earrings from our beading blitz.

This pair of earrings is made with copper links of chain and I wired the spacers Chris made to them for dangles. Gorgeous!

New Items Part 2~Autumn's in the Air!

Though this is technically not a strickly autumn piece, I really love it! I took Chris' tatterpiller beads and wire wrapped them into a charm style bracelet and then connected them to their very own garden of Lucite flowers with Swarovski crystal centers, and leaves to finish it off. I followed the appropriate code of ethics for tatterpillers, they are wired facing each other, instead of facing someone else's tatterpiller behind!
These GORGEOUS autumn focals were made by Chris and are for sale at beads and botanicals in Hastings.

This focal comes with matching spacers in autumnal (ooh big word, I must be getting tired!) colors. They are also for sale at beads and botanicals.

The groovy green leaves and spacers are at Carla's also.

New Items Part 1~Make Jewelry, Not War!

This is a gorgeous multi strand necklace that has a fun and funky acrylic flower as its focal. I really love the flower focal, and the vibrant red just begged to be put with the favorite colors of Nebraskans! Reminds me of the "Flower Power" type flowers from the 1960's and 70's. "Make Jewelry, Not War" should be the motto for this necklace!

These are more rings I worked up over Labor Day weekend. I love the yellow one with the tiny buttons and the lacy edge. I was going to use a Swarovski rivoli on the lavendar one, but couldn't find the right bead magazine that had the ring pattern in it! I only have a ton of bead magazines, but evidently not the one I needed at the time! If anyone knows which one I am talking about, please help! Those poor lonely rivolis are dying to have a ring of their own!

Here is another version of the "Make Jewelry, Not War" necklace. This time in purples, and lime green. Mina wore it to school today with her favorite Tinkerbell t-shirt, and said her teachers really liked it! What's not to love though!

Finally, for this part one post, a gorgeous bracelet of autumn colored spacers made by Chris and some were also etched for a great effect with the shiny spacers, and he put the bracelet together with copper spacers and a great hammered copper toggle.

In Our Yard

These are some pictures we took in front of our house. This busy spider, was the first of its kind we have seen. We have the usual black and yellowish garden spiders, but this one was different. Our intrepid young entomologist Mina. was right on top of it, keeps us up to date on what is in the yard.

This pretty pansy is a volunteer coming up from seed off the plants from last spring. Pansies are among my favorite flowers and this one is really pretty.

These are our "tie-dyed" morning glories. I think they are so pretty because each one is different even on the same plant. They take their time about blooming, but sure make up for it when they finally get to it!

New Blog Link

Yesterday, while surfing my favorite authors websites, I came across a blog I wanted to share. It is written by 9 paranormal romance authors, who take turns each day posting on the site, Witchy Chicks on blogger. I really love the Bewitching Mystery series by Madelyn Alt and the witch series by Annette Blair. I have not read the other gals' work yet, but I will soon be looking into them! Anyway, I posted the link with my other favorite sites, and even if you aren't into the paranormal, they have some great reads just about their daily lives and some really awesome pictures too.

A Mom's Prerogative...

Yesterday, my smart 6th grade daughter came breezing into the house after getting off the bus, and was very excited because she got a 100 on her science test and was the only one in her section of 6th grade to do so, and she made the Quiz Bowl team! Mina is the only girl on the team! Very exciting! I am so proud of her. She and Chris have such a great time (usually) studying for her science tests, it is fun to listen to. I am usually called in on the grammar and punctuation issues. I can't believe that we have our first semester parent/teacher conferences in two weeks from today! They said on the radio this morning that there are 8 weeks left until election day! That is November! Yeesh, I don't know where time goes, but it sure does fly!

Weekend News

Happy Tuesday morning! Weather report in Lawrence, beautiful! A lovely cool fall day with rain that makes me want to be at home tucked in a comfy spot beading or reading and watching a great movie on TV. Unfortunately, I am at work instead! Oh, well it pays for the books and the beads! We spent Saturday and part of Sunday with our friends from Peru State where we went to college. We lost one of our college friends last year in July to cancer, and since have decided to meet every year at least once on Labor Day weekend to catch up on our lives. Since our get together last year, our friend Schaun has divorced and met a really wonderful gal Michele and they live in Omaha, our friends Doug and Crystal (we meet at their place near Ashland) have bought a house in Gretna, and are expecting their 6th baby in November!, and we got to see Jim who didn't make it last year, but did make it this year with his son and daughter. We had a great time laughing about the silliness of things we did in college and Mina had a terrific time playing with Doug and Crystal's 5 kids, Michele's 2 kids, and Jim's 2 kids and she was the oldest of the bunch. Lots of kids, fun to her since she is an only child! We decided yesterday that we are quitting Girl Scouts, as there have been issues with me being the troop leader and that the girls are not happy with us as their leaders. I considered doing a different troop, but this has been pretty heart breaking and difficult, so Chris and I decided to not be involved. Mina will still be a GS as she really loves it. There are pluses to this situation, we cleaned out all of the paper that goes with being a leader and found our bedroom! Chris will have more time to take the glass blowing class through Hastings college that he wants to take to further his glass working abilities, and I will have more time for beading that doesn't involve staying up til all hours of the morning! We may in days to come find our kitchen, living room, and Mina's room! We also want to unclutter the north end of our front porch so that it can be made into a studio workspace for me. Then we won't have beads from one end of the house to the other! Have a great week! Chris is making glass leaves for fall and you will soon see pics of them here!

Baubles, Baubles...

Here they are as promised. New pictures of new jewelry for our show at Giltner, NE. The craft show starts Thursday, September 4 and runs through Sunday, September 7 and then again on Thursday, September 11 through Sunday, September 14. This charm bracelet uses the beautiful Lucite beads purchased from The Hole Bead Shoppe in Oklahoma. I really love the Lucite, it is almost like making jewelry from the garden! The folks at the shop are very fun, and helpful~check out their new items if you haven't!
This is a fun Halloween charm bracelet which I made from charms purchased after Halloween last year. I added fun seed bead charms in Halloween-ish colors and this is the result! It is one I hope doesn't sell, but that rarely works out for my jewelry box!

This lovely piece is made with rondelle slices of various stones, spaced with silver seed beads, and complimented with dangles of the same and stone hearts that were purchased while we were in Columbia, MO.

This very feminine bracelet uses lovely rose beads from beads and botanicals along with Swarovski crystals, filigreed silver rounds, and a gorgeous lead free pewter heart toggle.

This trio of "hags" were made by my talented husband. They are strung on waxed cotton cording and complimented with spacers done to match them. Very festive and fun!

These are not your average mummy! Chris did his bead making magic to create special glass canes to give these lucky guys "aged" bandages, and they are SOOO cool!

These are our version of "Frankenstein's Monster" (does that make Haussler's Monster?). Frankie is also strung on cotton cording with matching spacers. The one on the left got a bit burned in the flames from his burning windmill, giving him a superb smudgy monster look!

These are earrings made with some new style beads Chris has been playing with. They are made with a masher/shaper thing and then decorated with dots. I strung them with Swarovski crystal AB pendant style on the bottom and white alabaster on the top.

This is Chris's field of ponies! Ready to go home with any horse lover!

This adorable moo moo is a ceiling fan pull. She has a chicken and pig to keep her company until they are purchased for their new homes!

These roses are also ceiling fan pulls. Chris's brother Todd asked Chris to make some for their newly updated bedroom, and he made these to be sold with the farm animal pulls.

More Halloween! We do love Halloween at our house. It is quite a fright here on a daily basis! This cute necklace has ghosties a plenty made of course by Chris, and he also strung the necklace. What a talented guy!

These ghostie earrings are ready to swing onto your ears! I made them in a trapeze style with a wire wrap and seed beads to compliment them in Halloween colors!

I made a bunch of sun catchers for the show using various glass beads, and a beautiful Swarovski prism at the end of each one. This one is my favorite as the prism is huge and has a unique shape to it.

This three piece set is made with crazy lace agate, river stone, Bali silver, various colors of Swarovski crystals. It is so lovely, and the neutrals will go with so many outfits! What are the odds of this one coming to visit my jewelry box?!

This quartet of rings were hand stitched by me using seed beads, tiny Lucite flowers (again from The Hole Bead Shoppe!), and Swarovski flat back sew on stones/flowers. I am so addicted to making these! The variations are endless as are the types of stitches and sizes of seed beads that can be used to make them!

This fun bracelet was also made by Chris. He made the lampwork and then strung the bracelet using his beads with faceted black onyx and white stone, and rectangles of blue goldstone.

Beading Blitz

I spent yesterday afternoon (after a luxurious nap) beading my fingers off! I made a bunch of sun catchers for the craft show at Giltner (which starts the first Friday of September), finished up a bracelet Chris had put together with his beads, prepped some Lucite leaves for a charm bracelet, and made a really pretty seed bead ring using a custom Kool-aid Mango Mania mix that Carla at beads and botanicals put together for the Hastings Kool-aid Days celebration. It is a mix of orange, peach, and cream and then I embellished the ring with 3 tiny Lucite flowers across it's top. I really love making the rings. Carla taught me the ladder stitch style and I have since come to love all the combinations, stitch variations, and embellishments that can be added. They are quick to make and a great seller too. The sun catchers are made with a Swarovski prism at the end and the sections of glass colored beads along the cording to add to the beauty of it. Chris has been joyfully appreciating his new kiln and making all types of new things! Yesterday he made his first marbles! He is also working on some new fall leaves to take into beads and botanicals. Hope to get you some new pictures, as we need to work on the pricing/packaging/photographing of our items for the show and get them boxed up and ready to go.

It's Official~Summer's Over...

Mina went to sixth grade this morning. She has been in school for about one-half hour now. They are starting at 9:30 all this week to accomodate sports practice. She wasn't quite ready to go back to school this year, and honestly we weren't ready to send her either. The summer just went by so fast, most of it is a blur! We have also almost come to the end of the month of August too! Chris and I are getting things put together to take to the craft show in Giltner the first two weekends of September. I go and drop stuff off next week for that, and then we start with getting things ready for Christmas shows. We are having fun making Halloween beads currently. Chris is working on ghosties and bats that seem to come from the doofus end of the gene pool, but those are too funny. I will get some pictures up of the bats and ghosts and he will also be trying his hand at jack-o-lanterns, witches, Frankenstein, and maybe Dracula. With the fang issue on the bats, Dracula could turn out pretty hilarious too! We spent yesterday afternoon with friends at the water park (I kept a lounge chair company as to not hurt myself again!) and then went for a quick tour at the park next to the water park since the kids weren't ready to go home, and we weren't ready to stop visiting with our friends. What a great blessing friends are. They make you smile, laugh, and just feel good. Have you hugged your friends today?