At last, my style and versatility have been recognized!

As you surely already know, I am both stylish (in a Goth/steampunk/boho/jewelry addict sort of way)...
...and versatile. Why, I can't even begin to enumerate my various uses! Aquariann chose to recognize these two great assets of mine by sharing with me the blog awards that she was given for also being stylish and versatile. I'm suppose to choose 15 other blogs that I think are both Stylish and Versatile to pass the award on to, but I know most of the bloggers I follow are too busy for that sort of thing, so I'm just going to recommend that you visit them:
1: TotusMel's Wunderkammer
2: Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
3: Cephalopod Tea Party
4: The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
5: MadDesigns
6: Mermaiden Creations in the Underworld
(Around this time I realize that I might not even follow 15 active blogs right now)
7: Fantasy Artists of Etsy
8: SaraBeth's Belly Dancing Bead Blog
9: Multicultalism for Steampunk
10: Princess Farhana
(Fiiiiiiive moooooore)
11: SpeedieBeadie
12: Darkling Woods Studio
13: Bead Indulgences
14: Anne E. Mitchell
15: Art Bead Scene

But wait! I'm not done! Now I'm supposed to tell you 7 random things about myself. This is turning into a really weird acceptance speech.

1: I used to think blogs were dumb and I only started this one to promote Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs. Then I got addicted.
2: I met my husband in a chat room for on-line roleplaying. We were in character at the time. Gaming turned to friendship turned to romance turned to almost 11 years of marriage so far.
3: My favorite color used to be purple.
4: As far as I know I am not allergic to anything... except maybe vodka.
5: I enjoy learning new belly dance combos, but I have a hard time remembering them. I do not enjoy learning choreography, but I am good at learning it.
6: I have recurring dreams about being forced to walk through rooms full of dark aquariums full of inky water and things I can't quite see.
7: Any time I see a greyhound rescue group I have an irresistible urge to run up and pet a greyhound. They're just so sweet and calm and they have the sleekest, skinniest little heads!

Thank you, Meri!

You've probably seen Merily posting in my blog comments before. She's one of my wonderful teammates over at FAE Team, one of the crazy few who post regularly in our team thread on Etsy. The thread is a nice melange of daily life, random thoughts, and a little bit of self-promotion. Recently Meri decided that she wanted to run artist interviews on her blog, and today was my turn! Head over to Elbit Blog to read the interview and see the beautiful collage she made of me and my jewelry.

Make sure that you also visit Meri's shop. She does great work in jewelry, polymer clay, and crochet. I especially like these Autumn Leaf Rune Stones. If I were the sort to read runes, these are the ones I'd want to cast.

On completely unrelated news, Canon didn't want to let me install the camera software that I downloaded from their site without the CD (Dear Canon, if I knew wear the CD was, I wouldn't be downloading from your site), but I discovered that I can remove the photos from the camera without the software. Now I just need to install GIMP so that I can edit photos. Hopefully this means pictures in tomorrow's blog post!

Thank you, Artbeads.com and Art Bead Scene!

Today is a day for sites with Art Bead in their name being nice to me!

First, I woke up and found that Elvensoul had landed me a spot as the Featured Designer at Art Bead Scene. It always makes me happy when other people love this necklace as much as I do, as it was very experimental for me.

Then when I checked the mailbox this afternoon, I found an envelope from Artbeads.com. Inside was a $20 Gift Card for me, and a coupon code for my blog readers! So if you would like to do a little bead shopping, click the above link and enter the code SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424 when you check out for 10% off of your purchase.

I used my $20 to buy some Toho Hybrid seed beads and a really cool silver dragon pendant. I'll blog more about them when they arrive. Hopefully by then I'll have my camera and my computer talking to each other.

Blog Feature and Treasury

My Turtle Talisman necklace was featured by fellow Tucsonan and FAE Team member 88Links in her Tucson Thursday blog post! Make sure you check out her shop; her maille and wirework are beautiful!

While we're on the subject of Etsy, I'd like to direct you towards my latest Treasury, A Murder of Crows.

New York Ren Faire

Here's a picture of me vamping it up a bit at the NY Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, NY. If I look just a little rumpled, it's because this pic was taken at the end of the day and that top sash had taken several dives into the muddy ground, including one where I thought I'd lost it for good. Luckily a vendor saw it in the path and hung it on her booth, and we walked by and saw it.

My costume is pleasantly cobbled together from items that I brought from home and items that I bought while in NY. Oh yes, and I'm wearing elf ears! I wasn't going to get them, since I don't do faerie costuming as much any more, but everyone thought that I should try them on and they looked perfect on me, so my MIL gifted me with a pair. She also bought a pair for herself, to go with the horns she bought last year. She looked so cute with her elven ears! The vendor even poked a hole in them for her cartilage piercing, making them look even more natural.

Over all, the Faire was muddy but awesome. There was an incredibly light misty rain off and on throughout the day, but otherwise the weather was perfect. Neither too hot nor too cold for my costume, and the clouds kept me from adding to my collection of sunburns. I was a bit disappointed that I had to layer my white choli over my green tie-dye top, but I think it looked OK.

The nice thing was that my brother-in-law Pete and his girlfriend Lisa were able to join us for the day. We wouldn't have been able to see them otherwise, as Pete is going to school a couple of hours away from home.

We caught quite a few shows throughout the day. I was excited to see that Wolgemut was performing that weekend, as I'd heard good things about their music but hadn't yet picked up any CDs. We spent a few minutes watching an impromptu jam session with them and another musician (one of the guys from Karpathos, I think), in an attempt to earn some free beer, and then we caught their 4pm show. Unfortunately, in the middle of their second song, their bagpipers pipe broke, a victim to the humidity. It was repairable, but not immediately so, so they apologized profusely and said they'd only be able to play one more song, which didn't involve the bagpipes. Then they said that everyone should clap along or dance, and of course, I chose the latter option. I was the only one who did so, and then to my utter amazement, they waved me up onto the stage.

So, without any warming up or preparation or anything, I improv-ed a dance to the song, using only a few moves because almost everything else that I knew totally fled my mind -- ha ha. But it was awesome! Possibly the coolest thing that has happened to me so far this year. After the song, they thanked me for my dancing, and Chris and his family told me how cool they thought it was, and of course, we bought CDs to make up for only getting a few minutes of music.

I was also able to get my shimmy on with the belly dancers later, when one of them caught me bouncing my hips along to the last song and pulled me out (they'd been pulling girls in throughout the show, but I was standing in the back avoiding notice... he he). It was a lot of fun, even if we were dancing in a muddy, grassy field (they were dancing in golashes!).

Anyway, my luggage finally arrived earlier (hence my ability to pull pictures off of my camera), so I should really go do some laundry and put away all of my purchases, so I can get the suitcases out of the living room.

FAE Team Feature

I'm August's Featured Artist on the FAE Team's Squidoo lens! Thank you, Aquariann, for bestowing this honor upon me.

I'm really enjoying my membership in FAE Team. It's nice to be part of a group of artists working in different media, all with a love of fantasy, faeries, renaissance faires, dragons, and more. I've found my teammates to be fun, friendly, and chatty -- you'll see a few of them posting in the comments section here on the blog on a pretty regular basis.

In other news, I have permission to share my Ugly Bead Project on my blog, so I think I'll do the big reveal tomorrow. Are you excited? I'm excited.

Oh yes, and Summer Dragonfly is today's Daily Special!

Things that make my day

A while back, I sold this brooch, Soaring Wyvern. It was the only brooch I'd ever made. I listed it on Etsy with only one image, and I didn't even have it sorted into a category -- and it sold anyway. Yesterday, the buyer posted her "Best of Ets" blog post and gave me and the Wyvern a glowing review. I've been walking on air ever since. There's nothing quite like a happy customer to make my day, especially when they've purchased something that I wasn't sure would sell.

Ever since Soaring Wyvern sold, I've been thinking that I should make more brooches -- so that's my goal for after I finish my BFAC project. If there's a particular color or style of brooch you'd like to see me make, please leave a comment here or go over to my Facebook fan page and join the Brooch discussion I've just started.

As for today's Daily Special, it's the Automatic Ankle Accelerator! Only $25 for a gorgeous steampunk anklet.

An Eventful Day!

First and foremost, the image says it all. Today, I was interviewed over at Art Bead Scene! Ok, actually, I was interviewed a bit ago, but I kept it under my hat so I could surprise everyone when it was posted. If you've been reading for a while, you know that I really enjoy the ABS community, so I was really thrilled to be invited to talk about myself and my business. Thank yous go out to Melanie and all the great gals at ABS!

And that was just the start of the day. One of my friends gifted me with a subscription to Simply Beads, and the December issue arrived today. I flipped through it and while most of the projects are very simple, they are also quite attractive. The designers have a good eye for color, balance, and trends. I've heard that there's going to be more seed bead work now that Barb Switzer has taken over as editor, so I look forward to that.

The afternoon was spent running errands, including mailing out the jewelry for the Anime NebrasKon auction. We hit Bookmans, where I picked up some old bead magazine issues, a cool encyclopedia of faerie lore (because I don't have enough already), and two books to read while I housesit next weekend. One is a collection of Lovecraft/Sherlock Holmes crossovers, which means that within one month's time, I went from having zero instances of A Study in Emerald to having two. The book also has stories by Barbara Hambly, the author who got me hooked on fantasy, and Poppy Z Brite. I think I like her, but I might just like her name. C'mon! Poppy Z Brite. It's the most awesome name ever. I wonder if it's a nom de plume? And if not, what does the Z stand for? Zinnia? Zenobia? Zelda? I could go look it up on Wikipedia, but every time I do that, I get distracted by twenty other things.

I realized today that I have nothing prepared for next week's update yet, which means that I need to be beading instead of playing on Wikipedia. I allowed myself to get too distracted by ornaments and anime conventions!

More new photos.

Slowly but surely, I've been replacing all of my "blah" old photos with nicer, newer ones. Jewelry-buying is a highly visual experience, so it's very important to me that I have the clearest, most accurate pictures that I can. This week I've updated the pictures for the Dragonscale Bracelet section. I really love these bracelets! They're comfortable, easy to wear, and texturally pleasing.

Next I'll be replacing the old Collar pictures. New ones have been taken, but I haven't retouched them yet. I tend to take a few dozen pictures in a sitting, but then it may be a few weeks until they're all prettied up and ready for the web!

You may recall that yesterday I mentioned the indie*galore blog. Well, after I posted, Jenn did an excellent write up on Erthe Fae Designs! You should all go over, read her kind words, then explore her blog, visit her sponsors, and check out her shop, too!

Today's Cool Thing is Handbound, a blog/shop for handmade books. I love books, I think you all know that by now, and I have a soft spot for handbound books. They're simply beautiful. This artist uses some gorgeous papers in rich colors to make particularly elegant tomes. I mean, just look at the jewel-like teal and gold of this one! Yum.

Beautiful Brown Birthday Bauble.

I got into jewelry making partially because I love jewelry. So every year, for my birthday, the holidays, and sometimes gem show if I have time, I make sure to create something really special for myself. Well, Tuesday is my 25th birthday, and tonight is the joint celebration for my brother and I (his birthday was this past Weds), so this weekend I decided to bead something beautiful to wear to dinner. The result is the "Beautiful Brown Birthday Bauble." I might eventually give it a more flowery name, but I am a fan of alliteration!

I'd recently received the gorgeous dark topaz faceted glass cabochon and accompanying seed beads in a bead swap, and I'd also recently noticed that I have some beautiful brown clothes, but all of my brown jewelry is actually mostly green with brown accents. Not a surprise, but also not acceptable.

Due to its transparency, the cabochon really looks best with an open-backed bezel, so I opted for this style. I love the look of netting (it's one of my favorite stitches), and it has the added benefit of working up very quickly. I think it took me about two hours to do the bezel itself. I decided to add the flat-backed coppery pearls for some extra pizazz.

Originally I'd intended to do fringe along the bottom, but I really enjoy the double-focal look that some artists get by either attaching two cabs, or using a cab and a pendant. When I found the brown leaf bead by Wolf Song Designs in my collection, I knew this was the route I had to go. The fact that I love leaves certainly helped the decision along. The twin swags also hold beads that are found in the neck strap.

The neck strap itself is a single strung strand using a variety of beautiful topaz-hued beads, including Czech glass and citrine, as well as the pearls that I used in the bezel. It's not visible in the picture, but I finished it off with a vermeil double-leaf clasp. It's strung on golden SoftFlex, which helps give an inner glow to the transparent beads.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the results! I wouldn't mind trying the same technique in different colors, perhaps even substituting vintage nailheads for the flat-back pearls.

Today's Cool Thing is this absolutely awesome mosaic Day Of The Dead box. I really love the decorated skulls associated with Dia De Los Muertos, the juxtaposition of bright colors and something that is normally a little creepy. And of course, mosaics are just cool.

Blogging on my laptop!

Ahhh, this is the life. I'm sitting here with a nice mug of pina colada/peach rooibos tea, typing away on my laptop. The laptop is so nice to use in the winter, it's much like having a cat in my lap, except that there are no sharp claws and it doesn't bite me when I type (my cat Topher likes to attack my fingers when he thinks I should be petting him instead of doing my e-mail).

Today was a pretty good day all around, actually. The weather warmed up and Mom and I went out for lunch and shopping, which we hadn't done since well before the holidays. We hit our favorite thrift store, where I picked up a bit of clothing (some of which I can wear for gem show, yeah!), and then we were off on a quest for Bead Unique! JoAnn's didn't have it, but Mom found some fabric to make herself some nice pants. Michael's didn't have it, but we killed plenty of time browsing. And then, we hit Borders, which actually had it! Hooray!

So are you ready for the big news?!? My BFAC project is on page 66! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I really did not expect to be one of the people featured -- my necklace is nice, sure, but there is some downright phenomenal beadwork done by BFAC contributors! Of course, they also chose some of the very best items to showcase, including Jen Kuhns' beaded baby dragon and egg.

Well anyway, I also picked up an awesome album, covered in sari-style ribbon and little mirrors, and we hit the check out. I was wearing my tribal necklace with the bone crow, and the cashier complemented me on it. When I said my standard "Oh thank you, I made it myself" she seemed impressed, and then Mom did the Mom thing and said "Well, she had to come in and buy the magazine because she's in it!" So the cashier turned to the article and ooh'ed and aah'ed. It was a very nice ego-boosting moment. My real hope is that she'll remember, check the magazine out, and go bid on our auctions when they start ;)

Tonight I started a new necklace for Friday's update, something with a little "Asian Flair" as my friend Deb likes to say. I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow at the game, and then Thursday I might make a couple more little things, and then I have a necklace that I need to make to go with something I bought today. Gem show demands cool clothes AND cool jewelry.

Speaking of which, gem show countdown is down to FOUR brief days!

I don't have hardly any bookmarks on the laptop, so for tonight's cool thing you are going to have to settle for the fact that I am in a magazine! Hey! I think it's cool!