another giant leap

Remember seeing pictures of these here before?

This morning I have been working on putting together the package of forms and things to submit both of these to a competition

The competition is sponsored by one of the suppliers I use a lot. (As in most everything in the way of seed beads comes from them).

There are a couple of reasons that I decided to enter these.

One is because everything in the two of them except the big purple glass leaf came from this supplier. And because one of the things they want you to do is use their stuff, these definately qualified.

Two is that I have decided lately that the only way to get folks to know who I am and what I do is to get my stuff out there. If I should actually get either of these through the competition, they will appear in the catalog of the company which goes to a whole lot of folks all over the country. And in magazine ads in magazines such as Bead and Button and Art Jewelry and even the occasional quilting magazine! Now that's being seen!

Oh yeah, and first prize is $1000 in merchandise from the catalog --- we're talking major bead stash building here -- given that the average cost of a tube of beads that I use is around $2, that would be about 500 tubes of beads -- ok, this would be a BIG deal here.

The deadline for entering isn't until April 15, but I'm done with these two pieces now, so why not send them? If I come up with something else in the next month I can always send another envelope!

and speaking of coming up with something else, this is the new piece of jewelry that I worked on a bit yesterday.

The stone is something that I picked up at a gem show last year (or the year before). It has this sort of swirly "milky way" look to it (I'm talking galaxy here, not candy bar!).

I used some sort of red and brown beads (one of the colors is called "chocolate cherry", so maybe we are talking candy here!!) to build the bezel, it's been backed with leather and now I'm working on the fringe.

The plan for the "chain" is to use graduated right angle weave tubes right off the top corners.

This is another of those "I started this then set it aside to do something else and I really need to finish it" items from the box of such things that I "discovered" when I cleaned up the beads a couple of weeks ago. That box is slowly being emptied out and I actually finish things up --- oh yeah!

Meantime, while I have worked on other things, I have nothing else to show for it today -- perhaps tomorrow

movin' on