On my beading tray -- Jan 9th Edition

Welcome to the first edition of On my beading tray, a new blog feature where I will show you what I've got in the works!

Today there are three projects on my tray:

1. I'm embroidering away on the cabochon pendant that I'm making with the bead mix from Allegory Gallery. The onyx cab has been bezeled with bronze Delicas and matte crystal AB size 15 Japanese seed beads. Now I'm adding a row of embroidery using the bead mix. I was frustrated to find that I don't have size 11s to match any of the red beads in the mix, which shows me that I should really buy more red 11s at gem show this year.

2. The marbled green leaves were my first attempt at making beaded leaves using this particular technique, and I will be turning them into dangly earrings. If I like how the earrings wear, I'll make them in different colors for the shop.

3. The three silver-y green leaves will be part of a necklace. There's also a partial matte green leaf. It didn't turn out well and the matte green doesn't go at all with the other green (inside the tubes, they were lovely together).

Twee Tweeter

The Woodland Jewelry section of my shop has been a little neglected lately, but I did recently add these adorable Nesting Time earrings. The charms are of course from Green Girl. How cute are they? They even inspired me to break my usual rule of not making matching earrings. Of course, they're close enough to matching.

So the truth is I have a ridiculous amount of Green Girl components. I mean, I use a lot of them, but I buy even more than I use. Each one is just so sweet, I have to have them all! The fantasy-themed ones are of course my favorite, but I like to throw a few sparrows and owls in for those of you who like your jewelry with a bird on it.

Keep the Sap Flowing -- FAE Team Art Dare!

The weather was beautiful today, so I snapped a few pictures and listed Keep the Sap Flowing, my entry for the Sap Moon Art Dare. The colors in the leaves should carry you through Spring, Summer, and Autumn. I love versatility in my jewelry!

For more great FAE Team dare results, see this post at our official blog. Most everyone else went for the Crow Moon theme, which I still hope to make something for before the month is over! I do so love corvids, and I have the perfect Green Girl bead for it (Oh Green Girl, is there any challenge that you don't make the perfect bead for?).

I spent the day weaving!

Making earrings and stringing necklaces is fun, but today I really felt like weaving. Unfortunately, I have more than a day of work left on the Medusa necklace, so I decided to come up with something else to work on. It felt like a good day to make a spiral rope bracelet, and then when I saw these leaves in my stash, I thought they'd look pretty at the ends of the bracelet, but it needed to be two strands to look right. I call it Elven Craftsmanship.

By the way, I am now a member of the Etsy BeadWeavers Team! Hurray! If you click the link, it will take you to their blog, and you can vote on the current challenge. I joined too late to be part of this challenge, but I am thinking about the next one. Be sure to do a search for "EBW Team" next time you're on Etsy, you'll find lots of beautiful work!

The one-hour necklace.

So, I had a dinner to go to on Thursday night. I'd never been to the restaurant and had no idea how nice it was, so I decided to play it safe and wear a pretty skirt and a nice top. I had this gorgeous burn-away velvet skirt that I'd never worn, which is black with silver and blue flowers and leaves on it. Since I'd never worn it, I'd also never made jewelry to go with it, and it didn't go with any of the blue jewelry I already had. I'd made the what-to-wear decision just an hour before I needed to leave, so I needed a necklace fast.

As it turns out, there's not a single blue bead in my collection which would match either of the two shades in the skirt. Luckily, I had lots of nice black and silver-grey and clear beads to choose from. I opted for some vintage faceted lustrous clear beads, some black Swarovski pearls, my favorite little black vintage flowers, and some pretty grey dime-shaped beads... plus a PMC-coated leaf that my friend Deborah at Bead Indulgences sent me.

I could have done a simple strung necklace, but I felt like doing something different. I'd seen this style of pendant before, and I decided it was definitely something I could do in an hour and have look all cute and trendy with my little black blouse. A few wrapped loops and a couple of jumprings later and ta da, it's a necklace! It didn't even take quite an hour, and that includes finding the beads I wanted to use, polishing the leaf, and trying it on two different pre-made chains to get just the right length to go with the blouse.

I think that the monochrome palette makes it modern and understated, whereas the leaf and flowers still pay homage to my love of nature. I expect to get a lot of wear out of this one!

A Simple Transformation.

This is a necklace that I've been wearing a lot lately. It's actually an old necklace, with a new component added.

You see, I've had this copper leaf for a long time. At one point, I was going to hang it from my really cool staff that I used to take to Ren Faire, but then I stopped taking the staff. Well, I found it when I was cleaning and I said "Hey! Wouldn't this look cool with a faerie on it?" First I tried the pretty green super model faerie that I bought at the September show (don't remember her? see her here!). Well, she didn't quite fit, due to the angle of her wings. Then I found this golden faerie, which was part of my secret birthday buddy present last year, and she lined up perfectly. I wired them up, and then figured I'd make a necklace eventually. In the meantime, I could wear the pendant on a ribbon.

When I did the wire, I shaped it into sort of a closed hook in the back, but it could be pushed open. Well, conveniently, that meant that I could hook it over this herringbone spiral, which has been part of my collection for 5+ years. I like how it looks so much that I think I'll leave it like that. The nice part is, I can take the pendant off whenever I want, and wear the spiral as a simple necklace like I used to.

Anyway, today is somewhat annoying because I'm sick. Blah. I have a bad sore throat, but I'm alert and coherent, so I'm going to try to get a lot done today... that way if I start to feel worse, I can get away with being lazy. Of course, so far all I've done today is a ton of e-mail and forum posts!

The fruits of my labors.

Sorry about yesterday's rather short post. I was so tired, and today isn't much better! I've been sleeping terribly. Our phone number is one digit off from a large hotel here, and we keep getting people who have mistakenly dialed us instead of the hotel. 4:20am on Monday morning, I get this guy calling for the Doubletree. Seriously! I think I'm going to start just unplugging the phone when I go to bed.

The image above is Fields of Arcadia, which I made yesterday morning and posted on the site last night. I love the necklace, but I'm not thrilled with the photograph. I kept getting a lot of glare... the other pictures I took were even worse. I also posted Budding Leaves on the site. The two of them go quite well together.

I guess I'm ready for Spring already, given the bright greens I'm working in. Or maybe I just can't get away from green no matter the season.

The Etsy shop is coming along quite well, too. I'm really happy with how easy the store is to manage, so I hope that it actually works out as a good venue for me. Head on over and check out the new items. You really have to check out Broken-Hearted Robot, I had too much fun writing the description.

If you're looking for Valentine's jewelry, definitely head over to Etsy. I put up some really cute heart earrings yesterday. And check out my friend Deb at Bead Indulgences, she has some gorgeous maille earrings accented with Swarovski hearts!

I'm not sure what's on the slate for today, other than laundry (bleh). Hopefully some dancing and working on my pants later tonight!

A Personal Favorite.

I have to say that I'm happy with everything that I've made so far for my Fall Line, but this one, Faerie Gold, is really a favorite. The addition of a few dangling leaves takes this already beautiful spiral bracelet to the next level. And the colors are, of course, pure Autumn. I'm looking forward to doing more bracelets in this style... though they may not be in Fall colors. Though I have various orange, yellow, brown, and red leaves, they're all side-drilled and wouldn't look good dangling like this.

I also added a crystal bracelet to the site today, Sophistication. I wish that the picture showed the detail of the button, it really is beautiful. I have a weakness for black glass buttons, I buy them whenever I see them, and then I use them almost as fast as I buy them. Also, I'm enjoying black and brown as a combination for Autumn. You've already seen it in the Pan's Grove earrings, and the Ancient Treasure bracelet. I'm planning to have at least one necklace in the same colors, I just haven't quite settled on a style for it.

Today's Cool Thing is Mary Tafoya's Moth Girl Spirit Pin. She's so cool, with her vintage leaf wings!

I've got a new toy!

Today I discovered the joy of Polyvore, where I created the awesome collage you see above. Polyvore lets you browse through a seemingly endless selection of clothing and accessories, to create fashionable collections along any theme you can imagine. If you decide that you want to buy the outfit, you just click on the image and it gives you a link to visit the shop that sells it. Best of all, you can grab images from all over the web, so if your favorite dress isn't already there, you can add it! This means that you could select almost any item from Erthe Fae Designs and pick out the perfect outfit for it, just like I did for this image.

And what is the gorgeous necklace that inspired this fashion frenzy? A little piece I like to call Medeine. Spring colors were supposed to be big for Autumn this year -- I haven't noticed that actually being the case, but it didn't stop me from creating Medeine, a serene blending of ivory and soft greens. Even if you can't find any Autumn fashions to pair the necklace with, neutrals like ivory are looking good for Winter. Plan ahead!

Medeine is today's new item, of course. I also did some general website maintenance today. Tomorrow should see one or two more items added, depending on how long my homework takes and how much time I spend Polyvore-ing it up.