The Finish

It's finished. It's not perfect but it is truly good enough to send to Amy. I have made mental notes as I weaved and fringed along and know exactly what I would do differently next time and it's a good thing. My sister say's all their military friends in the UAE will want one. hmmmm
These colors are not at the top of my ordering list but maybe I better put them there :)

A Present for myself

I was so excited when my postman came today and there was this large envelope for me. I just knew it was this beautiful butterfly. I have been in love with DZFantasy's Etsy shop forever. She makes the most fascinating fairy's, mermaids, butterflies and necklaces. I have been trying to spare some money to buy myself a birthday present since 1 year ago January. Just could not pull it off last year but this year I made up my mind that I deserved it! Went to her shop intent on buying a fairy to decorate my room with but had to look through all her new listings and spotted this! I am doing a little redecorating soon and I just knew she would be perfect in a certain spot in my living room so this is what I gave myself for my birthday. I will go back for a fairy when I can, one step at a time, I very , very seldom buy myself something just because I want it. If I spend money on anything besides bills it is for supplies so I can keep working. If you haven't seen Donna's work before you really need to just take a visit to her shop.....
www.dzfantasy.etsy.com

Donna also has the best blog! It is alway's full of great colors, pictures of her new work and she features many, many wonderful shops not to mention is alway's having a great giveaway. If your not familiar with her blog check it out....
http://dzfantasy.blogspot.com

That's all I have , just needed to share my joy over this little gift!

One more step

I have been having a bit of a bad time so decided to do some more work on this bag. Sorry my picture came out lousy but as you can see the flap is done with the blue field flowing off one corner. I used larger gold beads to represent stars, Not all, some are off the edge of the flag that flowed off :) Now I have to pull out the graph paper. I think I know how I want my fringe to look so I need to graph it out with counts so it comes out right. So I will give it a shot and show you another picture in a few day's.

A new Challenge

A few nights ago I was showing off my new bag, Pink Ice, on facebook. (This bag sold that night!)

Any way my cousin Amy who I have blogged about doing her 2nd tour in Iraq has internet access and chimes in every once in a while. She told me I should do a bag in red, white, and blue in honor of all service people. Ohhhh boy! A challenge. I can not resist a challenge so here we go. I am flying by the seat of my pants and have no clue how I am going to do this. So we start at square one and learn as we go. I decided first, I did not want just straight stripes across a bag so I decided to alternate the red and white in a circular pattern to kind of represent the flow of a flag waving in the breeze. Here is what I have so far. I will update you as I go along. The next thought process will be how to incorporate the blue field when I get to the flap on the bag.....you will have to wait till I get that far for the next picture

Pink Ice

I've had this amulet bag sitting around half done for a while. I just did not like anything I had for my accent beads. So it has sat on my desk and sat and sat. I came up with an idea how to sell a long necklace with the ability to make it shorter. I made a tiny ring of beads with a clasp that fits right through the loops of the neckchain. Perfect! That elimates a job I find I often do. Some one loves the necklace but it is to long or to short. So by making the necklace longer and making the little loop it becomes adjustable so I am not tearing them apart to resize the neck. Yeah!
Any way back to the bag sitting on my desk. I decided a long time ago when I had a bit of money to spend on supplies I was going to try as often as possible to find people on Etsy. I found another sweet supply seller on the forums and when I sold the custom order for the lanyards I decided some of that money had to go to supplies. The heck with the light bill!
Any way, I put in a small order to this seller one of the items being clear quartz chips. I knew by the picture they were a bit larger than what I normally work with but when I received them I just thought wow! these are really big "chips". Then it came to me. The bright pink seedbeads in this bag was the problem that I was having matching an accent bead to the bag. Problem solved. These BIG quartz chips were perfect. Big , Bright and Bold! I am a happy camper.
So I have not yet figured out how to link to different Etsy shops here when I find something I like so all I can do is share the persons etsy address. Here it is, please check her out:)
www.beads4yourneeds.etsy.com

Thanks for being here!

Episodes

I don't have anything new to show you today. Haven't accomplished much at all over the last few day's because I am having one of my "episodes". Dealing with the aftermath of my illness my day's fall in 2 categories. I alway's live with a great deal of pain. Between the nerve damage in the back of head, my neck and into my shoulder blades and the constant aggravation of the tumor in my spine. Pain is a part of my day that will never go away. But!!!!!! At this point, I have learned alot of mind over matter techniques that help keep most of my day's where I am in control of the pain, it's there but I can do everything I want or have to do without it stopping me. It just kind of lurks in the background. Then just about the time where maybe I am getting a bit too confident because I have been doing well.......The 2nd category kicks up. The pain is in control. I have no will power to fight it, I accomplish just about nothing because I am just exhausted from dealing with the pain. These day's are my episode day's, usually they only last 2 or 3 day's and then I climb on top. The good news is that I go longer and longer between these episode's and I am very grateful for that. Sometimes I think they are happening when I have done a bit tooo much and telling me to slow down but that's not happening (big grin) stubborness is also a character trait.

So what I have done this week is first of all, I joined the Createability Team on Etsy , looking for something more to keep myself involved in the outside world. I think it may be fun. Now I am hoping to get back to some beadwork here.....soon as I have the energy to pick up this darn needle and thread it!
Hope your having a great day

It's finally Finished

I have finally finished this custom order and boy am I glad. You would never believe how hard it is to make 30 of the same item, the same size, basically the same style and pick a different color or bead type for each one.

This was truly a big learning experiance for me. I am glad that I did accept it, I am very glad it is finished and heading for the post office first thing tomorrow. Now cross your fingers she is happy with it. Yes I know you only see 28 here, I am giving her 2 as a thank you gift and don't want to spoil it ;)

So excited I had to share!

My Birthday was last Sunday but today my grandson gave me a gift. I am so excited. Saratoga Beads is the only independantly owned bead shop in my town. I want to go use this right now, sadly it is night time and they are closed but it won't take me long to get there and enjoy this gift. Just had to do a happy dance and share this with someone :)

Wednesday peek in

Just popped in to read up on the blogs I follow. One of my favorite pastimes and since I am here I decided to ramble a minute. I am now a bit older , on Sunday I turned 54. OMG! I am just this side of being a legal senior citizen! I posted this lip balm bag in my Etsy shop tonight. On my birthday I worked a double shift and really sent my kids plans into a tail spin. They tried to surprise me with a cake and were walking in the door as I was walking out to go do my 2nd shift. Oh well, that will teach them to surprise me, we had the cake Monday night.

I also wanted to give a very public than you to an Etsy supply seller. I have been working on this large custom order of beaded lanyards. I sent out the first bunch to my customer. She loved them but had to send them back to me because the magnetic clasps were not strong enough and this is an area that I have never worked in and did not know better. Any way she was really good about it and I went on a hunt for better clasps. I was flabbergasted at the prices I was finding and just didn't know what to do so I pleaded for help in the forums and someone gave me a list. I found one that I sent a convo too asking for guidance. She had just what I needed and convoed me back right away, went out of her way to do a reserved listing for exactly what I needed and the amount I needed. I bought the listing and had my magnetic clasps in 4 days so I could redo the lanyards. She really bent over backwards for me and I am very appreciative. So when your searching for supplies be sure to check out her shop to see if she has what you need:
mysuppliessource.etsy.com