Awesome Giveaway!

Check out this amazing giveaway on Lori's blog!

You could win all this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or a bead soup mixed by her!

Make sure to go check out her blog to enter!!!

My TV Modeling Debut

Remember how last time I was talking about donating a necklace to my local PBS station's Art Auction? And how I was intending to bid on a particular piece of art? Well, the first weekend of the Auction just passed (the art I'm bidding on isn't up until this coming Sunday, same goes for the necklace I donated), and I volunteered as usual. For the first time, however, they needed me to model a piece of  jewelry (not mine!) for the camera. Here I am!

I didn't really make much this week -- I was too busy reworking my packaging. I had a stamp made with my name, etc., and made little business cards by stamping it onto colorful cardstock. Then, I got some fun patterned cardstock and redid all my earring cards. I stamped my stamp on the back and wrote the contents of each pair of earrings, and the price. They look way better than they did on my previous white cards with my old banner at the bottom. I couldn't think of much to do with my necklaces and bracelets, but I was pretty excited about the earrings. That's what tends to sell the most anyway. Here's a pic of some of them.

While I was at it, I decided to update my etsy shop! Finally! And while that was going on, someone decided to put this necklace:

in an Etsy Treasury! 

It's my first time, so I'm pretty excited about it!

Finally, there's this necklace I made yesterday. I wasn't sure how I felt about the Cloisonne fish, since he reminds me of old ladies in the 80s (he came from the big box o' stuff my friend gave me a few months ago), but I've grown fonder of him. Besides, the 80s are totally back, and there will always be fish people. Also, for those who've been paying attention, you might recognize the clasp on this necklace. I recently won it from a giveaway on Lori Anderson's blog :)

Thanks for coming by! And look for a giveaway soon...

Just in Time for the Hot Hot NOLA Spring Weather...

a nice Autumny owl necklace!

What can I say, I'm a few months behind/ahead of the times. Oh well - we all still like owls don't we? My friend Jessi made the owl pendant. I got it from her last time she was in town at Christmas. Now that she's back in town for the summer, it reminded me I really needed to do something with it. I'm glad I waited though, because most of the beads I used in this necklace were fairly recent acquisitions.

I have been too busy this weekend to accomplish much in terms of jewelry. Though I did meet up with someone who just had to have the bunny earrings from last week's post. Unusual to have a local customer I don't know, so it was nice to meet her. Then Saturday, I went to my hair salon to drop off a few new items and guess what! Someone bought the yellow necklace! I was so so very happy to hear that it'd sold. I knew it would find a home, but I didn't know it would go so quickly!

And I got a Very Exciting™ package in the mail this weekend as well. I was a lucky winner of one of the beautiful toggle clasps Lori Anderson recently gave away on her blog.

I can't wait to use it! But I will wait until the right design presents itself. I hate when I use something hastily just to use it instead of waiting 'til the perfect piece comes along.

Must Get Cracking!

I haven't been the queen of productivity this week, but I've gotten several small things accomplished. I went to my hair salon to pick up my sales, and because I hadn't done so in about 3 weeks, I had quite a bit! Because I'm paying my stylist in jewelry instead of commission, she said she wants something super fancy this time. She's requested a purple and gold necklace made from sari silk -- the details are up to me. Because she's wonderful and fabulous and oh so good to me, I want to make sure it's just perfect. Also, I promised it to her on my next hair appointment, which is a week from tomorrow. So I need to get cracking.

A fair amount of cracking happened last night in the form of Focal Creation. I can't decide if it's pretty or tacky as all get out. Do you do that to yourselves? I figured I'd suspend judgment until the rest of the necklace is made and I see it all together. I almost took a picture to post here, but I figured you all might need to see the finished product as well. So after that, I began piecing together the start of the necklace I'm making with this gorgeous creation from Julsbeads:

(Photo by Julsbeads)

That mostly involved picking numerous threads off of the cream colored piece of sari silk I'm using. Then I had to combine all the threads into little piles and tie them into knots, which I attached to jump rings. Unsure what to do with them, I stuffed them into the ends of my mannequin's stockings. They don't belong there, but they are within reach of my beading chair. I had to stop when I realized that my next step was hammering, and it was nearly midnight. Sadly, living in a condo does not lend itself to late-night hammering. I'm eager to return to both projects, but my stylist's comes first.

Today, I signed up for Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Blog Party! WOO WOO!!! I'm super duper excited about that. I spent a few minutes looking through my supplies this morning, trying to see what I might pick out for my care package, and my first thought about what to send turned into a sketch and plans for another necklace! I was so thrilled by the idea of it, I couldn't bear to part with it. I'm really looking forward to trying to figure that one out, but again, Jeanne's purple and gold and hopefully not tacky necklace. 

Hopefully I'll get a couple of things made this weekend so I can post some new pictures for you. Oh, and lastly - Jeanne said that if I can make enough jewelry, she has a friend with a boutique on Metairie Road (for those of you not from around here, that's a pretty posh shopping area) that she's certain will want to sell my jewelry. Hooray! So I really, really, seriously really need to get cracking. I just need to figure out a way to speed up the creative process...