Snow + Rainbows

The other day, it took me about an hour to get home, when the commute is usually just 20 minutes. The culprit? A lovely burst of lake-effect snow that started an hour before rush hour. The news stations all went crazy delivering stories from the locals. Some said it was a complete white-out in places. See, it really wasn't that bad, but our several week streak of decent weather and highs almost reaching 50 had people thinking winter was over in the middle of January. Haha!

So, I bring you excellent cheerful-rainbow-y-goodness to bust those winter blues! Even if your winter low is 65, you can still enjoy these awesome Etsy finds!

Here's an awesome gadget cozy from The Rainbow Room. It's handmade using felt, and can be custom made to fit your device.


If you'd rather wear a rainbow, Clara has made these cute rainbow brooches with wool felt.


Here are some amazing handmade glass beads. The first is called "Fire Waves."


Michael makes these beads using a variety of Moretti/Effetre, Lauscha and Uroboros glass. Here's another titled "Rainbow Swirls."



There you go! Hopefully these will take your eyes away from the weather man (or not) who is telling me it will be 13 today. :)

Beadweaving Bliss

I've been on quite the beadweaving kick lately. Plus I've been having a bit of fun playing with new techniques. The first is an "orb" pendant I made using a method developed by Gill Slone (B&B). It is made with size 15s, size 11 delicas, and Swarovski crystal bicones.


I also tried to make a beaded ring. It's a little lumpy, and not so round (more triangular-square-ish) but it makes for a neat frame for crystal.


I'm still on a rivoli kick, so I had to make something a little more substantial than just a pendant. I made a whole necklace!

Finally, I decided to give the Cellini spiral a shot since I've been ogling over the technique for a while now. I combined it with some Swarovski crystal (of course!) and here's the result...

Valentine Beading Part 2

As promised, I'm back with some more Valentine's Day inspired jewelry designs!

I've always dreamed of making a lush bracelet full of beautiful cane glass beads. Those pink beads pictured yesterday were staring at me all night, so I put two and two together to make a dangle bracelet! I also made some pseudo matching earrings, although the style is a bit different. A little extra punch is offered by bright hot pink Czech fire polished glass beads.


To feed my bead weaving obsession, I spent several hours creating this next piece. I started by making six beadwoven tubes using pink luster delica beads and red thread. The beaded beads, heart chain (which makes a reappearance!), and Swarovski crystal bicones are all connected with sterling wire wrapping. Notice I've also put the heart toggle clasp in the font to show it off and create the look of a lariat. I might just have to make more of these...


Many thanks go to Artbeads! Right now, they're having a sale on Valentine's day items, so go on over and save 15%!

Interested in purchasing any of the items I've made for these Artbeads reviews? Hop on over to my Etsy shop and send me a conversation!

Please note that I have received the products free of charge from Artbeads.com and that I am honestly reviewing the products and have not been paid to do so.

Valentine Beading

This is the time of year that you can't go anywhere without seeing a heart or some form of romanticism. Find no exception here! Artbeads.com has provided me with some Valentine's day themed items to try out. I was a bit too excited to make jewelry, so I started to make some before realizing that I hadn't photographed the raw supplies. Whoops! I did get a shot of the gorgeous furnace glass beads though!

I'm still on a bit of an earring kick, so here's an array of v-day inspired designs. The top left pair features pretty antique copper heart beads and Swarovski crystal.

The top right pair has Swarovski crystal and the cutest sterling heart chain. I've also made little hearts with square sterling wire.

The bottom right makes use of the same heart chain as well as a dangling assortment of Swarovski crystal in shades of pink and rose. The awesome part of those is the faceted Swarovski heart at the bottom.

The bottom left pair uses the furnace glass beads featured above and Czech fire polished glass beads.

For those less "girlie," I made a more subtle design using black heart beads and twisted glass barrels. The earrings don't exactly match, but I'm not one for making things match perfectly because it's less interesting.

I also made a necklace! The composition of the large red heart bead is a mystery since I obtained it in a bead swap, but it's suited perfectly to this simple necklace. It also has a sterling key charm and more Swarovski crystal!

If you're interested to see what I've made with glass beads and sterling silver components from Artbeads, check out my previous post here. Check back tomorrow and I'll have more designs with the remaining Valentine's day beads.

Please note that I have received the products free of charge from Artbeads.com and that I am honestly reviewing the products and have not been paid to do so.

On the Inside

As usual, I took apart a bunch of things recently looking for circuit boards. It's amazing where you'll find them. Even the most unsuspecting devices have them. My most recent dissections were of an old-school monitor and a keyboard. They were destined for the e-dump so I figured I'd scavenge for supplies.

I wasn't too shocked by the keyboard since I'd already taken apart a calculator (see this post for a photo). Here's a neat shot of the caps lock, num lock, and scroll lock lights next to the plastic sheets that lie under the keys.


The monitor really looks like something out of a space movie. At least the board is huge!

Etsy Twitter Team Treasury

I've been lucky enought to have been featured in a beautiful blue themed treasury with other Etsy Twitter Team members. Give it some love :)

Beadweaving Machine

There's something about Swarovski crystal rivolis that I just can't resist. What started as an innocent project turned into an obsession. That's not the problem though - these projects require smaller sized seeds bead that I had to order. Now I have even more beads in my stash...

Oh well, I'm not exactly complaining. I just happened to look at how much I spent on supplies last year. Let's just say I could have purchased about 300 DVDs - you know, boyfriend monetary units! Kidding aside, I came across a blog earlier today (unfortunately I can't remember where it was...) where the author resolved to not purchase any new supplies for all of 2010, with the exception of necessities like replacing broken tools and things of that nature. The point was not only to clean out a messy space, but to face the challenge of creating new things with supplies on hand.

I don't want to make any crazy promises like that, but I'm already off to a good start! I'm hoping to cut down on spending by 40%. It's going to be really hard since I'm planning on buying a kiln and moving to a new place with my own studio, but at least I have a figure to shoot for!

What are your crafty goals for the year? I think it would be nice to take a chunk out of my bead stash that hasn't been touched in years :)

Here are some of those rivoli pendants I was talking about. They're all available in my Etsy shop.