Life in General

I have been so busy! I'm a full time student, taking my last quarter of classes before graduating in November with a bachelors in chemistry. I'm also working at Xerox on a research project, and I'm working for my research adviser at school, plus I'm running my Etsy shop and doing craft shows! I'm signed up to do craft shows for the next 4 weekends in a row. Crazy! I know :)

I just brought my plants inside the other day for fear that I would forget to bring them in before a frost. To my surprise, one of them was flowering! Any guesses as to what plant it is?



A bug was also the source of my amusement. He was just sitting on a stop sign post.


The Etsy Twitter Team will be having a homecoming event October 8-11. I'll be running a special deal so if you want in on the sweet sale, check out the BLOG.

Swarovski Crystal

Who doesn't love a healthy dose of Swarovski crystal?! Artbeads has tons of beautiful, sparkly beads and components to choose from. I got a whole bunch of different beads to give them a try. I really like the crystal rivolis because they have so much depth and dimension. The funky polygon shape in padparadscha is also really neat!



Here's what I've made with the Rivolis and a little bit of bead weaving with size 11 and size 15 seed beads:

I had a lot of fun incorporating Swarovski Crystal bicones into bead woven bracelets. The wavy lime bracelet is inspired from a bracelet in the most recent Bead and Button magazine, and has lime crystals in the center. The deep blue bracelet makes use of dark sapphire bicone crystals.



Check back here in a week or so and I'll show you what I've done with some more of the Swarovski Beads that I have, and to get some inspiration!

School Supplies

As mentioned in a previous blog post, I promised to use 10% of my sales during the Etsy Twitter Team back to school sale to purchase school supplies to donate. Although the sale is not yet over, I've purchased many of the supplies already. I followed a lot of the ads to make sure I could get the most supplies for the money. I purchased 2 backpacks, a scientific calculator, and bunches of protractors, rulers, pencils, pens, paper, folders, binders, highlighters, notebooks, and erasers. I also purchased a bunch of supplies for the artsy kids including crayons, colored pencils, markers, scissors, glue, and sharpies. I was rocking the free after rebate deals, the penny deals, the nickel deals, and the plain ol' freebie deals! I still have a little bit more that I have to purchase, but what I do have covers my entire dining room table!