Thanks to Carol Dean Sharpe of SandFibers for directing me to a place where I could purchase those hands used to pose jewelry! I was really tired of traipsing around in my yard trying to find photogenic plants and lawn furniture. Carol Dean's jewelry is always photographed beautifully, and it was so nice of her to tell me her source for the hands!

Just look how much nicer this Black and White bracelet looks when it's being modeled by this perfect little hand!

The Etsy BeadWeavers Street Team, at the suggestion of Dawn Chastain, decided to begin doing monthly themed challenges. I was tagged to choose the theme for this month (probably because I was babbling away with suggestions as to how to do the challenges), and I chose Hot August Nights with no thought whatsoever of what I'd create to meet the challenge. I wasn't even sure at the point I selected that theme that I'd be able to make anything!

I had a sudden inspiration, though, probably as a result of looking at all the scenery between Tennessee/North Carolina and Illinois as we headed home from our property hunt. I created this tall, skinny pendant to look like a little landscape -- complete with grasses at the bottom, a pinkish sky across the horizon, and a dark blue sky filled with stars and the moon at the top. I'm really happy with 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.

:-)

My newest bracelet is an explosion of shades of orange, yellow, and pink. I absolutely LOVE the way this turned out! It's freeform, which means I didn't really plan any of the splotches of color -- I just added them where they seemed right.

I'm gonna make another one of these! This one's on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=5533895

I've been beading again! It seems like forever since I've sat down with my massive stash of beads and created anything, but now that I've started again I'm having such a great time. I'm always drawn to seed beads, so the creations so far use hundreds (thousands?) of these tiny wonders. I love all the patterns that can be created by weaving them together.

Here are two of the most recent projects, a Raspberry Wave bracelet that uses some of the prettiest magenta/purple beads I've seen. I mixed those with some iridescent lined beads that have a really pale lavendar tint and put everything together in an abstract pattern.

The other project uses matte gold seed beads and shiny silver bugle beads for a really strange and interesting cuff. I even found some great buttons that perfectly matched the gold beads to use for closures.

Both are listed in my Etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=5527588
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=5533228