Not Gonna Throw in the Towel

Hiya everyone.  I am so happy; HAPPY I TELL YOU to be finally healthish.  I am 95% better than I was last week. Man O man!  I was having trouble thinking, talking (yes I even had issues with talking, hard to believe but true!) staying awake, and concentrating on ANYTHING!  But I am finally getting better.  I was so excited because the addition is also FINALLY FINALLY coming together.  This has been 2 years in the making!  We are 95% done.  We only have getting the AC/heat done.  If you could see me right now you would see me doing a happy dance all over the place.

Between sweeping, dusting, moving things, and painting I was able to do some beadwork first off is for Every Inchie Monday whose theme this week is Towel.  For this one I thought about those beautiful embroidered towels that people like to display in bathrooms never meaning to be used.  My Mom had some of those.  You can not imagine how hard it always was for me to not use them.  Lets just say that I NEVER did, ;) LOL Just don't tell her.  My inchie this week is a towel on a towel bar.

For this inchie I used 4 colors of delicas.  I do love the little heart on the towel.  I still say though if I saw this in your bathroom then I would still use it, BWAHHH!

Also this week I entered 3 pieces in a competition over at Sarcastic Beads and Yarn bead challenge.  The winner in this challenge will get a $250 package of beads!  OH MY GOSH!!!!  Second Runner up will get a $50 gift certificate as well.  I am hoping to make a few more pieces for this competition.  I urge you to check it out and enter.  It is a great competition, run by a great lady.  Check out my pieces.

The first 2 are a pattern called Double Tile Bangle by Chloe Menage .  For these 2 patterns I used 2 colors of CzechMates Quadratiles and 3 colors of CzechMates Tiles.  

This is the second pattern I worked on called Winter Flower Pendant by Nichole Starman.  It uses a whole bunch of different types of beads and like the title says it is a pendant that I turned into a bracelet.  The top picture is the bottom of the pattern showing off the beads that I inserted to hold he shape of the flower.  The bottom picture is what it looks like from the top. I alternated the "leaves" of the flowers for effect.  This pattern has 11/0's, 15/0's 3mm fire polish beads and 2 different colors of Chechmates triangles.  I then added the peachy 12mm beads inside of the flower for shape.  Then closed it with a magnetic clasp.

Also this week over at All About Beadweaving, a Facebook group, they have announced an Amulet bag challenge and I have many ideas running through my head at this moment.  I can not wait to get started on it.  But until then I will just have to keep working on the Sarcastic Beads challenge and just being happy that I am feeling better.  LOL

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to fly on over to check out EIM.  Also don't forget to check out the 2x2x2 bi-monthly challenge, it is so much fun and, like EIM it is a great way to stretch your creative muscle.

Also check out the Sarcastic Beads and Yarn Beads Challenge and All About Beadweaving for the amulet bag challenge.  Join in, I don't think you will be disappointed and who knows you might win!  (BTW, if you do win can I hit you up for some new beads?)

That is it for me this week, don't forget to follow the links to check out the other challenges and artwork that so many amazing artists are doing.  Have a blessed and creative week my friends, and go out and enjoy this leap year day!

Earth Leap

Hiya everyone, I hope this finds you well.  I am still struggling with being sick.  My son had pink eye and a chest cold and I of course got the chest cold, ( I was almost finished with my last chest cold when I got his).  We are both on meds but he is all better and I am still working on it!  ARG!

Enough of that!  This week over at Every Inchie Monday the theme is Earth.  At the time that I designed this I was making alot of Kawaii themed designs.  So that spilled over into my inchie design for this week.  I wonder if I could do an entire year of Kawaii themed inchies.  Well I just gotta tell myself "don't think about it"  or I will start all over.  LOL  OCD and all.

Anyways, here is my inchie, I really like her, she is cute. I used 4 colors of delicas and beaded her backwards, but I am really the only one who can tell that so it only bugs the crap outta me lol.  By that I mean the thread should be coming out of the left side of the inchie and it isn't so it is beaded backwards on the ribbon of inchies.

Also this week over at 2x2x2 the theme is Leap and I had to think really hard on what I wanted to do, everything I tried did not look good.  Then I remembered that I had been wanting to bead some of those beautiful tree frogs.  Why not have one leaping over another.  A true leap frog if you will.  This one was so much fun to make.  I used 8 colors of Delicas.  I really love the colors in it, what do you think?

Also, this last week a friend announced a competition on her blog and facebook page to celebrate her 10,000th viewer to her blog!!  Congrats for sure Becca!  I am going to work on projects for the competition and if you are interested join it the prizes are awesome. A $250 gift package from Potomac Bead Company and some extras added in from The Wild Bead & Boutique.  For 2nd place there is a $50 gift certificate from Bello Modo I can not wait to feel a bit beter before I can start on this one!

Also there is the Dry Gulch February challenge that has only 1 week left.  You could win a $50 or $25 gift card.  So I gotta get of my cold haze and work on this as well.

So there is alot going on in this blog this week, but if you want to have some fun and maybe win some cool prizes, join along in Beccas Challenge or Dry Gulch Challenge or both!  Also don't forget the sheer fun and enjoyment of doing inchies and twinchies.  Once you start they are so much fun and kinda addictive lol.  I would love it if you joined in and checked any of these out.

Thanks for stopping by and leaving me a quick little comment I love them so much.  Take care and have a blessed and creative week everyone.

Raise A Glass

Happy Valentines day everyone, I hope that you all got tons of hearts, flowers and candy!  For me, I got to finish a beadwork project so that was my gift to myself.  That and a piece of cake, and a brownie, lol.

Well this week over at EIM the theme is Beer.  Well I am not a drinker but I think I did a good job of showing it off.

This inchie has 4 colors of Delicas.  I thought that a frosty mug of beer was up for Valentines day, dontcha think so?

If you are interested in joining in on the inchie fun then fly on over to EIM and check it out.  It is a great way to stretch your creativity. Also don't forget to fly on over to 2x2x2 and check out the bi-monthly challenges as well.

Sweaters, Slippers and Amulet Bags Oh My!!!

Hiya everyone and thanks for stopping by this week.  I have a few things to show off.  First off, over at Every Inchie Monday the theme was Slipper.  I thought I was being sneaky by making bunny slippers, but it seems that many of us were just that kinda sneaky this week!

 

With this pattern I used 4 colors of Delicas.  I am not 100% happy with this one, if you look at the top of the pattern between the ears there is a wonky bead.  No matter how hard I tried the bead would not obey me and lay like I wanted it to.  Drives my OCD bonkers I tell ya!

Also this week over at 2x2x2 the theme is Sweater.  Normally when a years list is posted I start designing my patterns; mostly because it takes some time to get the beads together and if I don't have what I need then I have to order them.  So I wracked my brain about what to design for sweater I finally decided on the red letter man sweater from Grease.  Which I thought was pretty funny since last week was the live debut of Grease.  So check this out, my sweater, my first and only letter man sweater.

Lastly, I want to show a challenge piece that I did for the the Amulet bag competition over at Beadwork Mentoring, a Facebook beading group.  There was 7 entries and I was named as Honorable Mention!  I was really excited about this challenge.  Check out my Amulet bag that I titled "You Gatsby Kidding Me!"

This is the front of the bag and it has a Flapper on it in front of a teal and gold wall.  She has a long pearl necklace on.  I used 10 colors of Delicas. The necklace is also made of pearl beads, teal metal filigree disk beads, Gold, brown and white fire polish beads, white jade rondelles, and teal alabaster rectangles.  The fringe is made of gunmetal bugle beads, 11/0 bronze seed beads, green and gold bicones and I used a metalic mix of dragon scale beads.

Here is the backside of the bag.  With this side I used 2 colors of Delicas and made the deign in the style of a gold filigree elevator gate from the 1920's.  I also connected both sides by the bronze 11/0 seed beads.

Hope you like this bag as much as I do.  I have had this pattern for some time and was so excited that when given the chance to make it; I jumped at it.

Hey, if you think that my inchies and twinchies look like fun then by all means fly on over to the Inchie and Twinchie pages and join in the fun.  Trust me, you wont be sorry that you did!

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog.  I love reading your comments and hope that you have a blessed and creative week.

Bulldoze Thru the Weekend.

Hiya everyone, I hope that you are all having the great non-winter weather like we are.  It was about 65 this weekend and it was awesome!  I spent time on Saturday doing beadwork and listening to podcasts and chillin out with the kids.

One of our cats also wanted my attention, ALL DAY!  What is up with that.  She just wanted me to hold her for 10 seconds then she jumped down.  Then a few minutes later she wanted me to hold her again, for 10 seconds! Yea she whined all day cuz I wouldn't keep holding her.  Well I hope that you are enjoying your weekend, good weather or not and whiny cat or not!

This week over at Every Inchie Monday the theme is Bulldozer and this was one i struggled with.  I tried a few different designs and none of them worked out the way I wanted.  But then I decided on a design that I like.  Hope you like it.  I used 2 colors of Delicas, this week was a simple design.

This week I decided to make a new necklace.  I used a lot of components in it.  I used a poly clay heart that I sadly can not remember where I got it from.  I also used some poly clay beads that were layered and then shaved to show the inside colors.  I used 4mm and 6mm green rounds.  There is also 2 sizes of spacer beads, a big ceramic focal bead and some pink Swarovski helix beads.

That is all for me this week.  I have a few things in the works that I worked on this weekend and will hopefully work on this week.  I will let you know soon about it.  Until then, don't forget to fly on over to EIM and check out the rest of the awesome art and think about joining in the fun, it is great to have a small bit of creative outlet and at the end of the year you have one big collage to show off all your creative en devours. Until next time, have a blessed and creative week my friends and thanks again for those who leave a comment, I appreciate it so much.