One completed, one begun

I finished this up yesterday.

Now I have to decide on a picture to submit it to the competition I designed it for.

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

Until recently I had never wanted to work with magnetic clasps, but the brass forms that I have put in some of these cuff bracelets are so expensive now that I'm looking for new ways to be able to still make the bracelets but cut the costs.


Soon as one beading project is finished, I start in on another.

Actually, I had started working on this a while back -- that is I had an idea to do with the three bottom stones (see they are already all bezeled with beads), but that idea didn't work out and I just set them aside for "later"

At the gem show last fall I picked up the larger stone at the top, but I just hadn't gotten back to this project.

And now the whole idea has been transformed and gone in an entirely different direction!

The 4 big stones are malachite/azurite. The 8 little stones are turquoise that has a lot of matrix. These are not stones I would ordinarily think about putting together, but I decided to just look at the color and ignore the labels, and it just works.

So today I will start building bezels around the 8 little pieces and the big one, then I can start working on the "joins" that will bring it all together --- the plan is for something that will include massive amounts of fringing as well --- I'm not sure I have enough beads on hand to even complete this, but I know how to get more if I need them.

After the great wool dying workshops of last weekend, I actually sat down and did some needle felting with all the wool I had dyed.

It's amazing just how purple these look --- perhaps the felting intensifies the color --- or the use of the complementary yellow

At any rate, these are ready to go on the birdhouse with the cardinal.

I'm going to do up a few beaded flowers too before I sit down with the Fabritac glue and fasten everything together.

This project has been a lot of fun. I'm thinking I need to wash some more of the wool so I can create some orange --- so I can do some nasturtiums to go with one of the other birdhouses -- maybe the one with the yellow bird.

We're having one of the Rocky Mountain area's famous "spring blizzards". The snow rolled in about noon yesterday accompanied with a lot of wind. At some points during the afternoon all you could see out the window was white. It was still snowing (really fine stuff) when I shoveled my way out almost to the street this morning to get the newspapers (actually I was surprised there even were newspapers to shovel out to!). It's heavy wet stuff, and had blown up and around until it was level with the door step in front --- but there's no snow on the back patio -- weird. Later this afternoon I'll be out trying to get the sidewalks and the driveway cleaned out.

Time to go get busy.