Showing posts with label color. Show all posts

A Quick Catch-up for December 2015

I have absolutely no excuse. Let's say the chaos of the holidays has just gotten in the way. Let me quickly share some of the happenings around here in picture & caption form, then I'll be caught up and can get back to the business of blogging. Sound good? Let's go. . .

Fall finally came to the Gulf Coast, if only briefly.

Though we've discovered lots of stuff on the property, these kumquats were still a happy surprise.

For the first time in about ten years, we got a Christmas tree!

Both of the cats found that they liked the tree too. That was fortunate!

I traveled with my nieces to Auburn, AL for South's BEST regional robotics competition. And, their little Catholic school fared fairly well in the competition. YAY St. Vincent de Paul!

After I got back from Auburn, Pat had to head up to New York for work. He left me in charge of cleaning the pool each morning. As I went out there one of the mornings, I realized this guy was caught in the trap that had been left out for the armadillo that's been tearing up the yard. After some phone calls and texts to Pat and a couple of anxious hours, the little possum made his way out of the trap.

I've gotten very little creative work done lately except for a couple of art swaps and a few resin pendants. I was stricken by the colors on this piece of deli paper I was using as a palette.

Though this fall and winter have been way warmer than usual, we have had a few cooler days here and there. We were invited to a friends to enjoy a pot luck and bonfire. Fortunately, it was one of those rare cold evenings.

The nieces came over for a few days this week and we made some easy Christmas treats. They were so, so easy!

It's been rainy and overcast here for DAYS upon days. Taking a walk around the property, I discovered more varieties of mushrooms than I even knew existed. It was amazing.

There's been all that and more going on the past several weeks. I do apologize for my absence and hope to be getting back on the ball. The end of the year is near, and each new day is a new start.

I had a wonderful Christmas yesterday and am looking forward to second Christmas with my in-laws tomorrow. How have the holidays been treating you?

Focus on Life Week 31: Hues of Blue

Blue is my favorite color so when I received Sally's prompt for this week. I was excited. However, this week ended up all kinds of wonky for me and almost nothing got accomplished.

At long last this morning, I got on the challenge while making breakfast. My dishes are Fiestaware. . . all in shades of blue.

I love my Fiesta sets. They make me happy.

I took both those pictures on my phone and added to them with the A Beautiful Mess app (that I just downloaded this morning and needed to play with some).

While playing around in my phone I also discovered a photo collage saved on there that fit this prompt perfectly.

I think the above collage was created as part of another photo challenge last year when the prompt was something like "your favorite color".

To see more blue head over to Sally's blog, The Studio Sublime.

Pre-packing bead palettes for travel

I'm heading out of town for a couple of days and though I know I probably won't have time for it, I insist on taking craft supplies with me. I pondered for several days what kind of craft I'll be craving and after tossing out grand notions about kumihimo and embroidery, I realized that I just want to meditatively wire wrap some beads.

At first I simply packed several selections of wire, my pliers, and a single divided box of miscellaneous beads. However, I soon realized that the idea of even sorting though that single organizer felt cumbersome. While I still have that organizer packed (along with a few small seed bead containers), the notion of pre-packing some bead selections hit me. I liked it.

I hate pictures of beads in baggies too, but there was just no other way to get a picture of these. I apologize

I absolutely have not had time this week to be creative, though my body has been yearning for it. Yet, sorting through my beads and coming up with these color palettes healed that feeling some.

This picture is a little better, right?

Picking out the beads was almost meditative and slightly addictive. I know that these fourteen baggies of beads are way more than I need for a BUSY four day trip, but it makes me feel better to know I have options.

And I KNOW this one is better.

Oh, and I did add some waxed linen cord and buttons to my craft bag as well. . .you know, just for good measure.

What's your method for making sure you can get your craft/bead fix while away from home?

Focusing on Life Week 17: Color/Colour

Like I said yesterday, I've been trying to get back on track with some of my postings. It's Saturday and that means it's time for Focusing on Life. Sally gave us the prompt "Color/Colour". I won't say that this one was a challenge since I have a soft spot for color, and lots of it.

The first thing I thought of for this prompt was my embroidery floss organization. It HAS to be organized by color. The box below is just my traveling box as I have two more boxes with the bulk of my floss. Unfortunately, I haven't been using these boxes lately. Looking at this awesome spectrum though makes me want to pull out a needle and some fabric though.

I also organize my beads by color ass best as I can. Here's a box of seed beads that I keep around just for fun, though it hardly ever sees any real action.

I also snapped a shot of this great striped wrapping paper just before I wrapped up one of my nieces' birthday presents in it.

Yummy right?

So that's my contribution for this week's photo challenge. I can't wait to see how/where everyone else found their color! Hop over to Sally's blog, The Studio Sublime to check out the other contributors.

And, don't forget. . .today's the 3rd Reveal for the Bead Soup Blog Party!!

Finally Friday and Some Links

I awoke this morning with a rather bland outlook on the day. It's supposed to rain for the next week and the sun is being rather modest as it hides behind the clouds. Lack of sunshine always puts me in a subdued mood. Nevertheless, I pushed forward with my morning. Not long after logging into the computer did I remember that Shannon at For My Sweet Daughter had offered up a beautiful palette for Finally Friday. Her palettes come from Design Seeds and are full of all kinds of eye-opening and kick-you-in-the-pants inspiration.

Just take a look at this week's palette!

It's called Beaded Brights and can be found at Design Seeds.

Sure enough, one look at this palette and I was waking up to these brights. The hardest part for me was that pinky, peachy, coraly color below the blue. I had NO beads in that shade. I did find some buttons that came close though.

This was the closest I could get to the colors in the palette.

As I looked at my collection of beads and buttons in the above teacup, they seemed so very sweet, not to mention how tiny the beads were. So I knew I wanted to make just a sweet little bracelet.

I used gold-tone wire to give it that classic look.

Shannon's palette prompt was a great motivator for me this morning. Thank you Shannon!!

While I'm here, I finally decided on a name for my Link dump posts. Introducing. . . .

Yup! Link-a-palooza.

I'm still working on my goal to get in a publication and found that I saved a bunch of helpful links on the subject.

Lorelei offered up a few tips as well as links to popular beading magazines' submission guidelines.
Heather at Humblebeads wrote a similar blog post with tips and links. She also has a link to Lorelei's post and one from the illustrious Lori Anderson of Pretty Things.
Lastly, Cyndi at Beading Arts offered up her own (longer) list of links to magazine submission guidelines.

Now I just need to eke out some time to click through all those helpful links!

Since those links are all business and no fun, let me add a tutorial to this list.

Malin at Beading by Malin de Koning posted a great tutorial on how to make a paper box. I've made similar ones but they're always been too tall and not wide enough. This short, wide one is perfect. Thanks Malin!!

Lastly, here's a new and a sale item in the shop.

Blue Penny Bracelet

Garden Enchantment Necklace - SALE

So that's all the news for this Friday. Now I'm off to see what other trouble I can get myself into! What are your plans for the weekend?

One Crayon Color Hop - Blue

About a month ago Sally at The Studio Sublime suggested another cool blog hop challenge, a monochromatic one. Participants just had to choose a single color from an eight-count box of crayons; red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, black, or brown. She decided to call it the One Crayon Color Challenge. Our task was to use the single color we had chosen and make a monochromatic design with it.

I chose blue.

This was my first piece and my first idea

I found that it was hard to be PURELY monochromatic because metals don't just come in blue.


I did my best to alter this Vintaj arte metal piece with blue alcohol inks

I was inspired by these earrings I saw on the Vintaj Pintrest board.

And the Sari silks I had just gotten in the mail helped fuel my idea as well!

I knew I couldn't stop with just one necklace on this challenge. After all, blue IS my absolute favoritest color! I decided to try working with some blue beading wire to try to make sure I stayed within the the monochromatic rules of the challenge. In my sketchbook, I had just the idea. However, the beading wire was much harder to manipulate that I had expected. I ended up with this necklace.

It's pretty, but just not what I had envisioned.

From there, I attempted ANOTHER idea from my sketchbook that specifically called for blue beads.

These turned out better than I had dreamed. . .and the idea was actually one I had dreamed.

Finally, I was absolutely, undeniably inspired by the Wrapped, Stacked, and Layered Challenge as hosted by Tracy Statler of Make Bracelets. Each and every blog I visited (and I visited them ALL) in that hop held so much inspiration that I knew I had to make a stack of my own!

My bracelet stack!

I want to break down this stack for you if you can spare just another minute or so.

These bracelets made up most of the bulk of the stack. They were made according to the instruction from Fanciful Devices' Tribal Gypsy Bangle Stack tutorial that I bought as soon as she offered it. You should check it out! She's got her shop on vacation mode right now but definitely check back later to get it from her.

This is a simple memory wire bracelet of seed beads and a basic friendship bracelet I tied.

Here's a new design from me that I am in love with and plan on making tons more!

This is another original design from me. I've been tweaking this design for a few months and just love it.


Lastly, I used a bangle blank from Hobby Lobby and fun beads from Michael's to make this bangle	.

So, those are my contributions to BLUE. I can't wait to get hopping and see how everyone else conquered the challenge of working with only one color. . .and especially with some of those harder colors as well. Here's the list of participants!