One Thousand Posts! (Plus Etsy Stuff)

Woohoo! My thousandth blog post, at last! I thought about putting some animated confetti images in here, but they're really annoying... so let's just pretend I'm throwing confetti and beads. Thank you all for following my blog, reading it, and making the occasional witty, encouraging or insightful comment.

And now, Etsy! Unfortunately, the only item I got listed this week was Necromancer's Mirror, which was created for FAE Team's Hunter's Moon/Blood Moon Art Dare. You can see the first of a series of blog posts about the Dare here -- my teammates have really outdone themselves this month!

Speaking of FAE Team, our latest Exhibition is up! Moonlit Masquerade features a beautiful array of moon and mask themed items. Of course, my current favorite mask from FAE Team is this brand new, stunning Raven Queen mask by Beadmask.

This week's cool Etsy shop is EnchantedCrafter, the shop of fantasy artist Jessica Galbreth. I've seen prints of her work before, but this shop features mixed media collages with her work as well as some pretty fantasy jewelry.

Dreaming of the Flower Moon

The FAE Team Art Dare for June is Rose Moon, Flower Moon, or Strawberry Moon. I have another one of these pretty floral crescent pendants, so I will definitely have to use it. What could be more perfect than a moon with flowers already on it?

I totally missed the Milk Moon Art Dare. I guess my muse is lactose intolerant.

Miss July, The Grass Moon Faerie Pin Up

Oh my goodness! Jewelry! New jewelry! On my blog and in my Etsy shop!

It seems like lately, I've mostly been talking about dancing and how busy I am, so it's time to get things back on track by sharing Miss July with you. Yes, my entry for the April challenge is named for July. I thought she looked more like a Summer faerie, since she's wearing bright yellow and orange and running through really tall grass. Well actually, maybe she's a tiny faerie and it's normal-sized grass. It's hard to tell with the wee folk.

I totally blew the deadline on Grass Moon/Egg Moon, but other teammates did not! Visit the FAE Team Blog to see the wonderful Spring creations of my imaginative friends.

Short and Sweet

Well, since I gushed all over yesterday's post, I'll keep today a little shorter!

Sometime this week, I'll be listing my Grass Moon challenge necklace. I finished it on Saturday, but haven't had a chance to take photos (it's strangely cloudy today). I'm also hoping to make an Egg Moon necklace, but I'd have to be fast, as the deadline for the challenge is Sunday, and I'll be in Phoenix all weekend.

I'll be in Phoenix, because I'm going to a friend's birthday party, spending the night, and then my recital is the next day! I'll be dancing twice this time, with the zill class and the tribal class.

Next week will be a big week, too. I'm starting a new job, spending a few hours a week working as an assistant for a friend of mine, plus I'll be practicing to dance a solo on the 30th. Two very exciting things in one week! Not to mention that I'm taking a hula workshop on the 1st... which happens to be my 28th birthday :)

Feeling Healthy

Once again, my immune system has triumphed over the evil tyranny of germs, and I'm back to feeling more-or-less normal. This means dancing, going to the gym, and yeah, working on the game room. It also means more jewelry making. The Grass Moon necklace is already in progress, and I have a pretty clear vision of what I'm doing with it, so it should probably get finished this week, if I'm not too busy.

My BFAC project has been delayed, which is why I'm able to work on FAE Team projects without guilt. My crystal supplier lives in Colorado, a strange place that gets SNOW in the SPRING. I hope to have my rivolis in hand by the end of the week, but I don't know if I'll start the necklace right away, or make my Egg Moon necklace, too, to make sure I don't miss April's deadline.

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?).

Crow Moon Inspiration

I'm almost done with my Sap Moon bracelet, but I still need to decide just what I'm doing for Crow Moon, the moon I most want to interpret. Last week, my friend Theresa posted this awesome painting called "A Murder of Crows" which I think is the perfect inspiration. The crows look so ominous, and then there's that cardinal, who clearly thinks he's some sort of badass. You should visit Theresa's She Loves Shiny blog to see more of her work and little treasures she has found.

Snow Moon, Hunger Moon, and Buttery Spirits

Sky Will Feed My Heart, ACEO by Carapace.*

February is the month of the Snow Moon and the Hunger Moon. Snow and Hunger often went hand-in-hand in the old days. You had to get through the winter relying largely upon preserved foods that you'd set aside during the warmer months, and if the snowy days stretched on, your stores could dwindle down. It's a scary thought, isn't it? These days, most of us take food for granted. If there's nothing in the pantry, we either go down to the store or even treat ourselves to a meal out at the restaurant. We rarely have to think about rationing our food stores, stretching them out until warmer days return.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. The Hunger Moon made me think of Buttery Spirits. These gluttonous faeries eat and eat and eat, but they can only eat ill-gotten or misappropriated food. For instance, an innkeeper who tries to grow wealthy by serving his patrons only the nastiest meat and watered-down drinks may attract such a spirit to his cellar. The implication is not that the faerie is there specifically to teach the innkeeper a lesson, only to gorge itself on the only food it is allowed. Any moral revelations and changes of heart are purely incidental.

It's interesting that the Buttery Spirit does not act out of morality, because faeries are often described as having their own peculiar set of morals -- some of which match up with the traditional Christian values, others which are quite different. They're said to hate lazy and churlish maids, they hate to be spied on, and they often react strangely to gifts. Of course, we won't even get into their habits of abducting babies or beautiful women and leaving changelings in their place. That would be too far of a digression from the topic at hand.

I gave The Hungriest Pixie Ever a light-hearted description, but I could also have played her up as a relative of the Buttery Spirit. Perhaps the owner of the pomegranate tree sells only the nasty, over-ripe fruit, keeping the must luscious ones for himself. Disgusted by his greed, faeries descend upon his tree and devour the best fruits, leaving behind nothing but husks.

As for the Snow Moon, I have nothing more to say about that. Snow and I are not good friends.

Exciting clicky links for related blogginess:
Snow Moon, Hunger Moon on the official FAE Team blog.
The Snow Moon on Mermaiden Creations in the Otherworld.

*Not actually an ACEO. For some reason I thought it was.

The Hungriest Pixie Ever -- Hunger Moon Art Dare

The Hungriest Pixie Ever is my entry for FAE Team's February Art Dare. Our theme choices were Snow Moon and Hunger Moon. If I'd had more time, I would have made entries for both themes, but the month flew by, so I only had a chance to make a Hunger Moon necklace. As soon as I saw that theme, I knew I had to use the pomegranate faerie that I'd been hoarding for years, and the little pomegranate charms that I'd purchased to match her.

The pomegranate faerie focal is of course from Green Girl Studios. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you already know that I love designing with their work, because it perfectly fits my sense of style and they're such a nice family. As such, I was pretty peeved when I heard that someone had ripped off many of their designs! For details on this nasty incident, visit Cynthia Thornton's blog. Thankfully it looks like they are making progress on stopping the offender, which is especially important since this person was copying the work of many artists. That's just not cool!

The little poms are also by a favorite artist of mine, Melanie from Earthenwood Studios. Because they work in similar themes (faeries and steampunk and nature), Green Girl and Earthenwood components go great together, and I'm always happy when I can design a piece that combines them (for another example, see Her Airship Sailed Through Time).

It's important to me to continue supporting the bead/component designers I love, especially when they're facing the double whammy of a poor economy and increased design-piracy. I haven't been buying as much as I used to, since I haven't been selling much, but recent events have served as a good reminder that I should be spending a bit more, and giving them a bit more love in my blog!

Closing on a lighter note, the inspiration for the name of this necklace came from my dog Daisy. During the first few months that we had our corgis, I noticed Daisy sitting on the couch, head down, ears back, giving me the big eyes because I was doing something other than petting or feeding her. I declared her "the saddest puppy ever." But because she does everything to the full extent she can, she has numerous "-est puppy ever" moments, whether it's hungry, barky, happy, or something even more ridiculous. I couldn't help but use the same naming convention for the subject of this necklace!

FAE Team Howls at the Moon

I promised you more wonderful Wolf Moon and Old Moon beauties today, and I always keep my promises! The above image is Carapace's "Snow White Wolves Dance Around the New Old Winter Moon." I love Cara's use of color here. The wolves look ethereal, like spirit guides, as they flank the full moon.

I was not the only one who wanted to pay homage to the Old Moon, however. Mermaiden created this Talisman of Minas Ithil, Tower of the Moon, drawing on the lore of Tolkein. She also made a beautiful blog post about Earthshine and the Old Moon. The poem she featured could have been the inspiration for my Mother Moon at Dawn necklace, except that I'd never read it before today.

Meri Greenleaf lets you channel your own inner wolf with her awesome and fuzzy Crocheted Wolf Ears! They're perfect for cosplay, Halloween, or just letting the world know that you're feeling a little wild today.

There's more lunar-inspired items coming up, so keep watching this blog for eye candy from the Fantasy Artists of Etsy.

Mother Moon at Dawn

As I mentioned before, I decided that for January's FAE Team Challenge, I would go with the Old Moon theme instead of the Wolf Moon. Mother Moon at Dawn has actually been done for a while, but cold, rainy weather does not lend itself well to outdoor photography. Luckily today is a beautiful day, because today is also the deadline for the challenge!

February is Snow Moon or Hunger Moon, and I think I'll do one of each. Snow Moon will be a good excuse to motivate me to put more white jewelry in my shop, and Hunger Moon will be a good excuse to use my Green Girl pomegranate faerie pendant.

Tomorrow I'll share some Old Moon/Wolf Moon beauties from my fellow FAEs.

Old Moon

Have I mentioned how much I love Creative Commons images on Flickr? Today I searched for Old Moon, and found the above beautiful image in Grafik Mekanik's photostream*. It's so perfectly haunting.

So anyway, I decided that the Wolf Moon theme wasn't doing it for me, but Old Moon... that's something I can work with, because vintage beads are old. And I found a pretty moon face pendant that I forgot I had, so I'm set. Just gotta pick out the right vintage beads, decide whether I'll weave or string, and get to creating.

*This link has some pictures of a girl wearing a shirt with a certain F word on it, so I suppose it's NSFW.

Wolf Moon

Starting this month, FAE Team is having new monthly challenges. For 2010, our themes are all drawn from old names for the lunar months. January is Wolf Moon or Old Moon. In searching for the perfect image for this blog post, I found the above Photoshop-enhanced photo by Ghetu Daniel. Could there be any more perfect evocation of the Wolf Moon?

I'm not sure yet what I want to do with this theme. I don't do a lot of animal jewelry, and I can't just wait until gem show to find the perfect wolf focal. Maybe I'll do something Old Moon inspired instead. I'll have to see what I can come up with in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned for more developments from FAE Team!

Art Bead Scene Challenge

For 2009, Art Bead Scene decided that all of their challenges would be inspired by classic or iconic paintings. A great idea, but unfortunately most of the paintings have been very uninspiring to me. Until this month! Finally, a faerie painting has been chosen. The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke by Richard Dadd. It's not my favorite faerie painting, because the colors are so muted and bizarre, but the level of detail is amazing and Dadd's story is quite sad.

I've already submitted Elvensoul to the challenge, as the colors and design are relatively evocative of the painting. I'll likely submit the Mushroom Pixie as well when I finish her. But I'd really like to make a necklace specifically inspired by the painting, probably using a Green Girl faerie pendant to go with those muted colors. It might be a good time to use the new Greige Swarovski crystals, too, although I had planned to use them with a Lillypilly shell pendant. Maybe I have enough for both.

By the way, yesterday's drive to Tempe went very well. Next week I hope to manage the round-trip.

Voting time again!

And still I can't get the mosaic to show up as a decent size... whatever. Voting has started for the Time Machine challenge. Go over to the Etsy BeadWeaver's blog to see the mosaic at full-size, links for all of the items, and the voting widget. Lots of great entries this time around, as usual.

The May challenge theme is Hollywood Red Carpet Creations. I don't know if I'll do it or not. It might be fun to make something extra glitzy, but I should probably get started on my BFAC project instead.

Speaking of BFAC, we were inadvertently participating in eBay's definition of shill bidding and they suspended our account for 14 days. That's right, no warning, no chance to cancel the bid, just "We're shutting you down for 2 weeks." Just another thing that I dislike about eBay. Makes me really annoyed that I'm stuck using one of their subsidiaries, PayPal, for a lot of things. Don't you hate it when a company that you don't like buys up the things that you do like?

I think I need to spend more time beading and less time at the computer. There's too many annoying things going on in Internet-land lately.

Her Airship Sailed Through Time

Her Airship Sailed Through Time is my entry for the EBW April Challenge, Time Machine. I'm very happy with how it turned out. I think it's attractive, wearable, and fits the theme pretty well. It's also completely not what I had planned originally.

Originally, I was going to make a necklace called Trinkets I Gathered on my Journey Through Time. The spiral was going to be a lariat with a dizzying array of nifty beads and found objects in the long fringe at each end. But as I was working, I realized that I might not have enough black size 8 beads to finish it, and since I had started it so late in the game, I didn't have time to order more. Remembering the neat steampunk heart toggle clasp that I bought from Green Girl at gem show, I decided that instead, it would be a front-clasping necklace with fringe spilling out from behind the clasp.

So yesterday, I went into my temporary beadroom (aka the laundry room) and picked out all sorts of awesome items. Keys, a coin, a carved skull, a carved moon face, various little lampwork beads (domestic and import), vintage beads, stone beads, Czech glass, a scarab, nuts and washers, etc etc. Then I laid them all out on a bead mat and strung a single eclectic fringe. I went to the mirror, tried it on, and found that the fringe did not hang nicely from behind the clasp like I had planned.

Well drat, I thought, now what? Maybe I could attach the fringe to the extra hole at the bottom of the clasp. Except that it was a small hole, so not a lot of fringe would fit. Then I hit on the idea of using one of the washers as a ring to hang the fringe from, so I used a little chain and a jump ring to attach it to the clasp. But it looked so cute that I couldn't stand the idea of overwhelming it with all of that chaotic fringe. What to do, what to do?

I remembered my stash of Earthenwood Studios Steam Stones, so I dug those out and my muse demanded that I use the ship's wheel and the "freedom" charm. Unfortunately, the ship's wheel had a very odd hanging loop configuration. I wasn't convinced that I could cut the superfluous loops off without either leaving poky bits or damaging the tile. But wait! I could use chain to attach the freedom charm to the bottom, and chain to attach the extra loops to the extra hole in the clasp. I could make it work!

At this point, I had the idea that maybe I should get a second opinion, but Chris was working and couldn't be interrupted. Well, forget the approval of others. Like a mad scientist, I was caught in the grip of an idea that wouldn't let me go, and I had to create! I returned to my little beading spot and began linking chains and rings and components until it all came together in the piece you see above.

And all of those eclectic beads and found objects? They're still sitting on my table, waiting for me to put them away before the cat decides that they'd look better on the floor.

It's done!

I finished my Time Machine challenge entry just a few minutes ago. I changed my mind on what to do, and I think it turned out pretty awesomely.

The problem is that I changed my mind after I picked out all of the components I was going to use for the original idea, which was very bead-intensive. Now I have to put them all away. A beader's work is never done!

Pictures and full story tomorrow :)

An Auction Win

This awesome doll was created by Cynthia S. Bicker, and I won it in last week's BFAC auctions. Woohoo! I think I'll hang it in my guest room, to keep vigilant watch over the well-being of my guests.

I took a break from working on my beaded flower to create an entry for the April EBW Challenge: Time Machine. I'm hoping to finish the necklace tomorrow or Friday at the latest. It's going to be a little different from what I normally do, more eclectic, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Allow me to tempt you...

I never seem to get these mosaics to load up at a size I like! It would probably help if I did HTML instead of using the basic blogger thingie, but if I took the time to learn HTML, I would have less time to bead, dance, and write.

Anyway! Voting has begun for the Temptation challenge! There are 35 gorgeous items to choose from. Click Here to view the mosaic at a more realistic size, visit all of the item listings, and cast your vote.

April's theme is Time Machine. I can't wait to get started on that! I might even put off my BFAC project, in order to have more time to dedicate to the Challenge. If I can settle on an idea, that is.

Moonlit Seductress, an EBWC piece

Last night, at around 11:45pm, I finished Moonlit Seductress, my entry for the Etsy BeadWeavers' March Challenge, "Temptation." Given that it had to be completed and listed by the 5th (you know, yesterday), I was really, really cutting it close. I had planned to finish it on Wednesday, but Wednesday ended up being a bad day and I didn't bead at all. In a way, that was for the best, because the ideas that I woke up with yesterday are better than the ones I'd been toying with all week. I didn't come up with the cab edging or the idea to stitch beads onto the edge of a ribbon until I was finishing the embroidery around the cab yesterday afternoon. I wish that the pictures were better, but let's face it, this is what happens when you finish a project 15 minutes before it has to be listed on Etsy.

In other bead and jewelry related news, the 2009 Layne's Legacy -- Beading For A Cure auctions are under way! All photography and auction descriptions by yours truly. All beadwork by around 70 incredibly talented artists. It's a couple weeks yet until my Locked Away necklace goes up for bids, but by all means, you should visit the rest of the auctions and see if there's anything else you'd like to bid on. Remember, all proceeds (minus our small operating expenses) get donated to the National Colorectal Cancer Research Association. Bid early, bid often!