I'm having a sale!

Wow, it feels like I've barely been home at all this week! So to make up for the lack of new jewelry listings, and to celebrate the three day weekend, I'm having a sale! Use coupon code DISCOUNTME to get 20% off your entire purchase at Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs. The beautiful beaded anklet shown above is just one of the over 90 items currently in stock right now!

I hope everyone has a fun weekend, whatever they do. I'm looking forward to being home, as my next three weekends in a row will be spent up in Phoenix for dance events!

Treasuries on Tuesday!

I saw some pretty blue items and decided to do an all-blue FAETeam treasury. Enjoy!

Also, Andrea of Beadmask included one of my necklaces in her treasury Strange Birds which has some really, really awesome items in it!

Such a tease!

Do you like these Hamsa earrings? Well, you can't have them! I did create them with the intention of listing them in my shop, Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs, but I tweeted about them while I was making them and one of my dance classmates saw and called dibs! I call that proof that social networking really is good for business.

Anyway, over the weekend I worked on my new crystal bracelet variant (with metal seed beads!), and I completed two of them, but I don't really feel like setting up my photography stuff just to take pictures of two bracelets. I have the beads picked out for a third bracelet to make while I'm watching DVDs tonight. I could have made it last night after finished the second bracelet, but honestly the thread that I have to use with the metal seed beads is hard on my hands, so I don't like to work with it for too long at a sitting.

So tomorrow afternoon I will have three bracelets to photograph and whatever I buy at the Rings & Things show in Mesa tomorrow. Yep, I'm going to drive almost 2 hours to buy beads again, even though I keep saying I have too many of them. Guess I should go use up some more tonight.

Belated Treasuries

Shame on me, not getting around to rounding up this week's treasuries until Friday! I'd like to say I have a great and valid excuse, but the truth is that I spent all day Wednesday reading a book. It was a really good book! And it's been so long since I allowed myself to just read all day. And it was unusually gray and cold. Yesterday, of course, was dance class day and I had to be out the door by 4:10pm, so I didn't have a lot of time to do anything.

Anyway, it was a great week for treasuries! My sexy mermaid necklace is in the one above, one of my crystal bracelets is in Magical Twilight Hour and the Phoenix Feathers necklace did it again, being included in The Heat is On.

My treasury offering for the week is A Bounty of Beautiful Bracelets.

The Mysterious Mr. Bird-Man.

 I already showed this necklace a bit ago, along with the hair stick that I made in the same week, but today The Mysterious Mr. Bird-Man gets to take center stage in his very own blog post.

 What is he? Is he Garuda? Quetzalcoatl? A Tengu? Some other fanciful blend of bird and man? We may never know. I saw him at the Bead Museum gift shop and simply had to have him. He spent a couple years just hanging out in my bead collection until I decided what to do with him.

Now he hangs from a strand of glass, stone, and pearls in lovely shades of olive and golden brown. Not really a tribal piece, but I've been wearing him to dance class a lot anyway.

I made something pink!

Talk about stepping outside of my comfort zone! I made this for my friend Meghan, based on the colors of a little hip scarf she wears to dance class sometimes. It was very weird to work on, because these colors are so bright and there's no neutral involved. But I kept telling myself that Meghan would like it, and that plenty of bead artists work in color combinations like this, so they can't all be wrong.

The pendant is a large Swarovski crystal bezeled with Delicas and Japanese seed beads, hanging from a hand-dyed silk ribbon that perfectly matches the crystal.

Feathery Treasury

I've been really into feathers lately, and then I saw that ridiculously awesome peacock mohawk. Wow! That had to go in a treasury! So I stepped outside of the usual box of making FAETeam-only Treasuries, and made one that had members of my team, but also other sellers whose work was beautiful and feathery and well-photographed. Along the way I found lots of things that I wanted to buy, especially hair accessories. I've been so crazy over my hair and things to go in it!

No treasury features for me this week, boohoo. Actually, not many people at all made FAETeam treasuries this week, so I'm not surprised. I can't expect Mermie to include me EVERY week!

I can't help but notice that my comments section has been really quiet this week. What's up, everyone? Let's talk! I just talked about how I've been obsessed with feathers and my hair... what are you obsessed with?

LL-BFAC Kit for 2012 Auctions

How pretty is this color palette? It's the latest Layne's Legacy -- Beading For A Cure kit, to be used to create items to be auctioned off in 2012. Betcey at Beyond Beadery provided this year's beautiful and generous kit, with lots of Japanese seed beads and Swarovski crystals. There are even some of those new-ish long Magatama drops that I haven't tried out yet.

I'll probably do some bead embroidery, but I haven't decided yet what I want to add. I was looking at some nice cabochons on Etsy last night, but my taste was running towards the expensive!

Soul Eater, rarh!

It feels good to be making new jewelry for my Etsy shop again, especially when that new jewelry includes Soul Eater Skull Necklace, the most badass tribal necklace I've ever made. The awesome skull pendant was one of my great gem show finds earlier this year and I'm happy to have it worked into a finished piece and up for sale at Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs.

Over the next day or so I'll also be adding another necklace and more Handmade Anklets, as well as whatever else I feel like creating and photographing. It's going to be a busy week.

FAETeam Exhibition!

Have you seen the latest FAETeam Exhibition? It's called Fairies, Elves & Pixies, Oh My! and it features a lot of great fae folk created by a lot of talented fae artists! Of course, two pieces of my faerie jewelry are in there. There are so many beautiful items this time around, I don't know that I could pick a favorite. The team has really been growing and attracting new, amazing artists.

Please pardon this short post, I have a lot to do before I leave for dance class in 5 hours!

Beautiful Treasuries!

Here we are at another Wednesday, which means it's time to take a look back at Tuesday! I was only included in one Treasury this week, but what a beauty it is! Click on any of the items in the Widget to have a closer look.

Our weekly theme was something May-ish, so I curated a collection called Adornments for the May Queen, which gave me an excuse to showcase things which were beautiful and green (or photographed on a green background).

I've also been quite busy adding new things to my shop Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs, so be sure to drop in!

A Rose for Jen

 My friend Jen's birthday was last month, so I made her a necklace. Because she often wears shades of purple and green together for belly dancing, and it's hard to find tribal jewelry in those colors, I strung some rainbow flourite and Thai silver together to make something that I felt fit her sense of style and her costuming choices. I'm happy to say that she likes it!

To achieve a nice random mix of purple, green and clear stones I left the flourite in the compartment box I had it stored in, and set it at the other end of my desk, so I could reach it but not see what I was grabbing. Otherwise I would have gotten too picky about not having too many greens or purples in a row, and it would not have looked as wonderfully random.

This also fits nicely with the continuation of Operation: Buried in Beads because the flourite and Thai focal had been part of my stash for a long time. I'd periodically tried to come up with a design to use that rose and never succeeded, so clearly it was waiting for Jen's birthday!

Interested in your own one-of-a-kind tribal necklace? Visit Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs!

Anklet Season is Here!

I know some parts of the country are still dealing with late snow storms, but here in Arizona it's warm and beautiful, which means that I have broken out the sundresses and the sandals and turned my thoughts to anklets. Today I listed three anklets, representing three of the four styles I currently make (I didn't have time to list the fourth, so it will go up tomorrow!). Above, Blue Bells is a beadwoven anklet featuring a chevron chain pattern and jingling bell accents.

 Bohemian Gothic is a chain and dangle model, featuring silver chain and vintage beads. Because I bought the chain years ago, the price does not reflect silver's current cost, which is about $45/oz. As such, it's quite the steal!

Spring Leaf features strung beads in a delightful vernal color combination. I love how top-drilled leaves look in anklets, they form the perfect little drops all around the ankle.

Keep an eye on Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs for more ankle bracelet designs, or hop right over to the Handmade Anklets section to see what is currently available!