Here we go!

Next up... A shibori collar with a dichroic glass cab from FrogHollow glass on etsy. 

New for 2016

Sometimes I buy a focal and hold on to it for a long time waiting for inspiration or for the right complements to bring it to life. I recently bought a scrap bag of ribbon and inside was this beautiful teal and purple piece. I was sorting through my stash one afternoon over vacation last week when cabochon and ribbon met. I knew right away that it was meant to be. I realize that sounds super cheesy and lame, but I do believe in its truth. Sometimes this art thing is about collecting the pieces and realizing what's in front of you so they can all come together as they were meant to be. 

The ribbon is from ShiboriGirl and the cab is from FrogHollowGlass, both on Etsy. :) 

Favorites of 2015

 I make a lot of things and tend to fall in love with everything that I make by the time it's done. Here are a few of my favorite things that I made in 2015. My goal last year was to work on my shibori embroidery technique with an ultimate goal of someday being a juried artist. I never had enough stuff at once to photograph and send out and one of the places I was thinking of takes a 40% commission to have your stuff in their shop. I think that's kind of ridiculous, so now I'm at a standstill as I'm not terribly brave and don't have the guts to actually send my work out. Anyway, I did have the opportunity to do a reader's challenge for Beadwork magazine which is the neck piece below with the watch face on it. Stay tuned for what I'm working on now. It should be done in a few days. Happy new year!! 

Swap 'n' Hop reveal! Whoot!

So this time, I have to admit, I was a huge procrastinator on creating my swap piece. The other two times I have done bead swaps, I have taken my time, worked and reworked. This time I had the month of May in my head. Back in March, May seemed so far away! Then all of a sudden, I realized that it was almost May and that swap reveals were on May 2nd, only two days into May! Yikes! Luckily, since I'm a teacher, we had April break this past week and I spent much of my vacation time working on what turned into a beast of a project. I went large, folks.
My partner is Rebecca, who lives in Florida. You can find her blog here. In the post directly below this one you can see what she sent me and what I sent her. 
I ended up using the cabochon that my partner, Rebecca, made for me, the seed beads, and the big teardrop shaped beads. I ended up not using the owl clasp she sent because in the end, the color didn't go with the rest of the piece. I'll use it on some other project. Other than buying more of the same color seed beads she sent me, I used materials that I already had. This is big for me, because I love buying only to find out that I already had stuff I could have used. Anyway, without further ado, here is my creation! It doesn't have a name, but I plan to put it up for sale in my Etsy shop here sometime later this weekend! Enjoy the rest of your hop! You can find a master list of links to all of the other participating blogs here.

Bead swap package

I received my package from my swap n hop partner Rebecca the other day. It is so exciting to get a mystery package in the mail. The first thing that I found inside was that our packing styles and note styles are identical. It was eerie how similarly we packaged up what we sent. Even the format of our notes was the same. This was completely random. Great minds think alike I guess!

Anyway, Rebecca sent me a cool owl cabochon that she made and a neat array of beads to go with it. The clasp she sent is also an owl. My husband likes birds, so that was neat. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but that's half the fun! 

The other picture shows what I sent her. I send along a nice piece of Shibori ribbon, an enameled clasp, two lamp work disks and lots of fire polished beads and seed beads. I always know when my "soup" is ready to send because I start to get insanely jealous of my partner and want to keep it for myself. I know then that it is time to send it off before I reason myself into making a new soup. Come back in May for the big reveal and see what Rebecca and I made with our stashes!

Swap 'n' hop partner

 So, my bead partner for the Bead Peeps Swap 'n' hop is Floridian Rebecca White. You can find her blog here. Of course, I'm envious of the warmer weather she has down in Florida, since in the Northeast we have been getting hammered with snow so far this month. I really looking forward to sending her some things that I think may stretch her imagination a little and give her the chance to work with something new. Here is an example of her work from her blog.

Finished!

I finished the collar I've been working on, and with all of the snow days we have been having, I put a few things in my etsy shop.