What’s Up Wednesday!

Belle Armoire Jewelry is published by Stampington as a quarterly magazine. The deadline for submissions for the next issue is April 15, 2008. From the website: If you’d like to share your inspiration and detailed how-to instruction for creating beautiful jewelry with readers, we want to hear from you. Belle Armoire Jewelry covers a broad range of mediums, from art clay to polymer clay to found object to fiber to wire to beads and much, much more. Whether you are a creator of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches, pendants, rings or other jewelry, we welcome you to …read more

What’s Up Wednesday!
It’s not that easy to do ugly. I mean to do really gut-twisting ugly.
It’s easy to make a necklace that isn’t that great, but how about to make one that breaks all the rules of good design and leaves your viewer feeling squeamish? I can’t show you a picture of my entry from last year here, because I used plastic vomit as the base. If you’d like to see it, it’s on their website as a semi-finalist from 2007. It’s called “Queasy”, and you’ll have to scroll down just a bit. You’ve been warned!
The Land …read more

My turn to host, and we have all been busy coming up with projects and posts that are worthy of Springtime! Our theme? May flowers, of course!

Tammy from Jewelry and Beading was recently inspired by watching a butterfly flit from one flower to another. The result? Flying Butterfly & Flower Earrings.

Noreen over at HankeringForYarn has been designing all kinds of wonderful flowers: Everything from spoolknitters to butterfly bags are in bloom on her blog. Lots of flowery designs to inspire thoughts of springtime!

When Mary Emma sees quilts with floral designs at Quilting & Patchwork, especially Grandmother’s Flower Garden, she’s reminded …read more

Technique Tuesday returns! 
I just posted a tutorial on making a mixed media necklace from antique piano ivories on my Jewelry Blog.

You can also see my full list of handmade beaded jewelry tutorials on this blog.

My favorite piece came home yesterday after some long months in California. Oh, how I missed it while it was gone!
It got me to thinking that I should share a post with you from another blog of mine where I have all my jewelry tutorials listed.

Calypso

Oh how I need a name for this piece! It started with a hammered silver armature and peyote stitching in seed beads. I fell in love with my friend Amy’s beautiful polyclay medallions and decided to use one as a centerpiece for the centerpiece. The necklace strap has a toggle closure so that it can be worn separately as well.
I feel that the name should somehow reflect the beauty of the floral medallion, but…
I STINK AT THINKING UP NAMES!! (a little help, please?)

Nameless purple floral medallion on handmade beaded necklace

I wrote last month about my jewelry being accepted into a nearby city show. Well, the opening’s tonight!
I’ve got to go decide what to wear…

These are the pieces that will be in the show. I think I’ll wear anything but brown or black, so that I can wear something featuring a different color!

I finished this piece on Make Art Monday, but I didn’t have time to get the photo cleaned up and posted until now 

I received the 2nd place prize in the bracelets category!!! Yay!!

Now I have to send it to them to be photographed for their catalog or advertisements. I’m so excited to see what they will do with it…many of their ads are extremely well styled.

I received notification yesterday that the pieces that I entered into a juried show in a nearby city have been accepted. Yay! You can read more about it here.