Hello, Alice!

Spend just a couple of minutes in my Etsy shop, and it'll quickly become obvious to you that I LOVE Alice in Wonderland. Actually, I just love the Sir John Tenniel illustrations; and I have a great time thinking of ways to use them for cards and tags. My favorite of all the characters is the Mad Hatter. How could you not love a character who runs around in checked pants, a bowtie, and a top hat???

With all the different cards and tags I've made featuring the Alice illustrations - in their original black and white, in the original colors, and then my altered versions which have red highlights and pink highlights - I can't believe it didn't occur to me earlier to do a version in sepia! As soon as that thought flitted through my head, I edited a bunch of my favorites of the images to make them sepia toned; and I just finished making them into greeting cards, printed on some beautiful offwhite parchment.

I guess I was thinking about the Alice illustrations more than usual because I was working on this HUGE pile of Alice cards and envelopes for a custom order. These are on their way to the customer - I hope she loves them! It took me awhile to cut, fold, and glue all those envelopes (250 of them). And since I just kept seeing Alice and the words from Jabberwocky (which is what I printed onto the envelope), it's only natural that I'd be thinking of other Alice things to make.


Lest you think I've ONLY been working on Alice things, that's not the case at all. I'm still playing with my beads pretty much every day. I do almost all of my beadweaving at night while I'm watching TV (have I ever mentioned that I can rarely do just one thing at a time???).

One of my newest creations is this Oglala bracelet, called Cherry Lime Fizz. Doesn't it look fizzy to you? When I bought the beads that run down the center I had no idea what color I'd use with them. I first picked up a tube of red beads, but then I saw the tube of lime green ones lying there; and it just seemed like they wanted to be used for this.


Now that I know that Barbara (the customer who requested the freeform bracelet and Oglala necklace I wrote about in earlier posts) has received her package, I can show off the little pendant I made as a gift for her.

Obviously, this was made to be the perfect complement to the freeform bracelet.

I don't think I've ever done a freeform pendant before, but it was just as much fun as the bracelets are to do! In fact, it might have been a little MORE fun because it took less time.

I may just have to do more of these...

in my spare time.
Ha.

Etsy Treasuries are such a source of inspiration these days. I just keep seeing the greatest color combinations in them (and not necessarily even those that make it to the front page!) that I just have to go create something in those colors.

That's how my newest bracelet was born. I just posted a picture of the pink and green treasury created by bittercherryemporium, in which she featured my Celtic Knot button ring (scroll down and you can see the picture of it - it's easy to recognize). Well, a quick look at my bead stash proved that I had just the right colors to create this bracelet! I decided to create it in a mod looking checkerboard pattern, with the checks created in random widths. It looks like an optical illusion, doesn't it?

Lime Green and Lavendar Plaid. I love the way this bracelet turned out, although creating the plaid with no pre-planned pattern (that's pretty alliterative!) was a pain. hee hee. Several rows had to be removed and rewoven because I realized too late that I had forgotten to change a color.

I'm pretty happy with it. The colors are soooooooooo cool.

:-)