Muffin Tin Challenge -- Completed!

Despite being too busy to bead this weekend, I completed the Muffin Tin Challenge today! My project tally: 5 necklaces, 4 pairs of earrings, 2 hair sticks, and a bracelet. And by the way, do you know how hard it is to fit a dozen pieces of jewelry (some of them quite large) into one photo?

I didn't quite stick perfectly to what I put in my muffin tin. For the big pair of earrings, I had picked out some malachite tear drops, but they didn't fit on the copper headpins! For the olive dragon necklace, I didn't have quite enough beads to make it long enough, so I added some bronze pearls to what I had picked out, and I also changed my mind on what style of clasp to use. And for the big dzi bead necklace, the focal was more red than I thought when I looked more closely, so in addition to the tiger's eye I had planned to use, I also used some red tiger's eye, which was actually in my tin because I used it for the key hairstick.

This was a great challenge. Picking out the beads for a dozen projects in one afternoon allowed me to sit down and create lots of jewelry at once without constantly interrupting myself to dig around in my collection for just the right beads. And it also took a way a lot of wasted time on decision making. Instead of wondering what I should make, I knew that I had to make something that was already in the tin, so I just sat down and did it. I'm pretty sure I'll do this again, even without a contest to urge me on. Thank you Art Bead Scene for turning me on to this idea.

Is that a muffin tin full of beads?

Why yes, it is in fact a muffin tin full of beads. If that doesn't make any sense at all to you (because it certainly wouldn't, under normal circumstances), then you should check out the Muffin Tin Jewelry Challenge over at Art Bead Scene. I decided to give it a shot since I do need to get some fresh new stock in my shop Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs, and it is way too hot to use this pan to actually, you know, bake muffins.

(Also, yes, that is Lira's tiny kitty paw in the top corner of the image)

Not all of this will actually end up in my Etsy shop, though. One necklace is a custom order for a friend, there's a necklace and a pair of earrings for me, and a few things for my secret new retail location.

I like how a lot of my projects are overflowing from their muffin cups! The beads refuse to be confined.

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.

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.

Full Steam Ahead!

Full Steam Ahead is the theme for this month's Art Bead Scene challenge. You know I am excited about it! I've already entered a couple of pieces, and I have a few more to add, including Safety Gear when it's finished. And of course, I'll also be entering The Inventors' Gala Ball, which I just listed on Etsy. Brown and steampunk are both so hot right now that I'm confident this necklace will find a home quickly.

Back to Safety Gear for a moment, it's coming along very nicely. I had a lot of beading time at last night's game, and then a lot of beading time today. And in fact, I'll have more beading time after I post this, too. I actually had to force myself to stop and go do the Etsy listing and all of my other on-line stuff. I was in a nice grove, stitching along, and it seemed almost a shame to let that momentum go.

Meanwhile, today's mail had two packages for me! I ordered some shower gel, lip balm and perfume from Etsy seller Savvii which arrived today. I'm especially pleased with the Chai lipbalm and the Midnight Pomegranate perfume. Haven't tried the shower gel yet, but it smells pretty nice, so it's promising. And I also received the beads, rivolis, and chain that I ordered from Whimbeads. The rivoli is just what I needed for my Snow Queen necklace, so I get to start that as soon as I finish Safet Gear.

All in all, a pretty satisfying day!

Faerie Stones and Faerie Tree.

This necklace features a bead by one of my new favorite artists: Michele Gabriel. I bought a much Gothier tree pendant from her, and then after I got it, I realized that I should have bought one which would go with these pretty mottled Czech glass beads... so I did. When it arrived in yesterday's mail, I saw that it was the perfect match, so I put the necklace together before I went to the game.

The Czech beads were among the stuff I purchased at gem show and then forgot to photograph. They're a lentil shape with a mottled, stone-line look. They're also matted, but it's a very smooth etching. They feel simply amazing. I want to make myself a bracelet with just them and some small spacers, because they feel so nice against my skin. There's also some amber-topaz firepolished beads, some copper-lined olivine faceted beads, and some dark turmaline Swarovski crystals.

Because the pendant was named "Fairytale" and the lentils look like magical stones, I've named the necklace Faerie Stones and Faerie Tree. Now I just need to decide if I'm going to sell it on Etsy, on my website, or greedily keep it for myself!

While I'm here and blogging, I'd like to wish a belated happy birthday to my favorite blog* Art Bead Scene, which turned one year old yesterday. Woohoo! To celebrate, they're having a mega-contest with a new prize every five days. I've entered a few of my pieces, and I recommend that you do, too!

Now, as I said last night, I finished reading Perdido Street Station on Tuesday night. I did have a couple of quibbles with the ending, but over all I enjoyed the book and I hope to pick up The Scar next time I'm at a bookstore. I enjoyed the sci-fi/fantasy fusion. And contrary to the rumors I heard, things did happen in the book. They just took a really, really long time to happen. My next order of business, of course, is to circulate the book among my friends.

*In all fairness, ABS is tied with my other favorite blog, InsectPOD. There's enough room in my heart to love both of them!

Faerie Meadows and Faerie Movies.

This is my necklace Faerie Meadow. It features lampworked beads by Lois Oster. These beads were a sort-of custom order, as I needed 3 lentils and 5 spacers to make something similar to a necklace I'd already sold. I told her to make me something pretty in colors that I liked, maybe with some frit or something. This is what she came up with, and we're both quite pleased with them. The little flower drops are Thai silver, and I bought them at the 2007 gem show. It's only fair that they're in this necklace, as Lois is the one who enabled me to buy them! At the same time, I picked up the leaves that I used in Sylvan Jewels.

I've entered Faerie Meadow into Art Bead Scene's February Challenge -- Chains of Love. You should really check out the other entries, there's a lot of beautiful things. ABS continues to attract the attention of a lot of talented jewelry makers who are using the work of equally talented bead makers.

Last night, we saw The Spiderwick Chronicles. I'm not usually a fan of kid's movies, but they did a good job of allowing the film to have some dark and violent elements. I guess this may in part be because it's a Nickelodeon movie, when I was a kid they had some shows with horror themes and such, so I think they realize that kids can handle a little scariness and a little intensity.

The movie had some pretty cool graphics, and I loved the character designs for the faeries. My favorites were definitely the sylphs, which look like dandelion fluff until you see them up close. More importantly, they aptly illustrated the traditional personality of faeries -- alien, sometimes kind, sometimes malicious, always doing things for their own reasons.

Over all, I was a bit disappointed with how the movie played fast and loose with faerie lore, picking and choosing which bits it wanted to incorporate, and then re-interpreting it to suit the story. Most viewers won't even notice, of course, it's just a personal pet peeve of mine. The important thing is that the movie made the faeries awesome, and it may inspire kids and adults alike to research the lore on their own. I consider it a fascinating subject.

Hello, 2008!

The New Year is already off to a good start. This morning, Snow Angel won Art Bead Scene's December contest! I'm really excited and I can't wait to design with Gaea's pendants!

Last night was pretty nice, too. We went out to our favorite Japanese restaurant, then came home, played video games, and rang in the New Year with gourmet root beer. We also watched some Qi on YouTube. It's this hilarious British game show where all the contestants are actors or comedians, and they spend most of the time just joking around instead of answering the questions. I recommend looking it up on YouTube if that sort of thing is up your alley.

Today, my family is coming over. We do our winter holiday celebration on New Year's Day -- it's just less stressful that way! This is my first year hosting it. It's going to be a little crowded in my apartment, especially if my brother brings his best friend, but it will be nice to have everyone over. I just need to tidy things up a bit first. I know that some traditions hold that it's bad luck to do housework on the New Year, but I'm not very superstitious. If anything, I think it's good to start 2008 on the right foot... keeping things neat and clean!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday!

So good to be done!

Tonight was skit performing night at Chinese class! Almost everyone did a great job. I messed up a bit on a couple of lines, but over all I'm pretty happy with how our skit went, too. The skits didn't take all night, so we also had a nice time chatting with our classmates before we buckled down and studied. Previously there hasn't been too much talking in class, because we've all been a little focused and insular, but everyone was nervous about our skits, it seems, so afterwards we were all relieved to be done and feeling more open. Anyway, we have another week and a half or so of class, with two more tests (one for the last chapter and one for the semester as a whole), but the skit was the big thing I was worried about!

The above necklace is Sacred Grove, which you may have already seen yesterday. I've entered it in Art Bead Scene's December contest. The theme is All Wrapped Up and the idea is to combine art beads with fiber... However, they've deemed that beading thread counts as a fiber, so any beadwoven piece with an art bead qualifies. Needless to say, I have a lot of jewelry that qualifies. The prize is a beautiful mix of wintry white ceramic pendants and beads by Gaea, and gorgeous fibers picked out by Melanie of Earthenwood Studio, so if you have any jewelry that qualifies, you should definitely enter, too! And if you don't, you should just keep an eye on the entries. I can't wait to see what Art Bead Scenes other very talented readers submit.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to do that earring update... Though I also have to do all of the homework that I ignored while I was memorizing the skit!

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!

Blogging About A Zillion Things!

It's been a very interesting weekend so far, so I have a lot of little things that I want to talk about. Let's go over them in no particular order.

Today Chris and I went back to Barnes and Noble, which had a much more reasonable Sunday afternoon crowd. He picked up his science book, and I bought Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman. I'm so happy that this book is finally in paperback! Granted, I've already read a few of the stories, but the vast majority are new to me. I'm really looking forward to reading them, especially since I know at least one of them has a Lovecraftian vibe (I read the first page of it one time when I was stranded at B&N, but then I got un-stranded right after I started it). Oh, and I'm really hoping that the creepiest story that I ever read is in there, so I can make Chris read it.

Afterwards we took a trip to Target for boring necessities, and I decided to look for clothes. It is almost time to put away my Summer clothes, so I need some Autumn stuff. I didn't see much that grabbed me, though. To be quite honest, a lot of the clothing that's being marketed at my demographic is downright ugly. Not just ugly, but so unflattering in cut that it's destined to make me look ugly. However, they had some blouses that looked nice enough, and this one line by some designer named Alice something, which had a really nice Victorian/Edwardian Gothic feel to it. There was this gorgeous black blouse with lace and ruffles and a high neck... and of course, they didn't have it in my size! I WILL own that blouse before the end of the month, and I WILL wear it with my elegant black velveteen skirt, and I WILL look smashing.

Oh yes! And this morning, when I woke up, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing Night Shift at the top of Art Bead Scene. This humble little blog got a shout-out in their "As The Bead Turns" blog post about blogs. So yes, I am blogging about how another blog blogged about me blogging about bat necklaces last week. Anyone want to blog about me blogging about this? :P

Anyway, Art Bead Scene has really been inspiring me to use up more of my stash of art beads. Yesterday I worked on a really cool Gothy green necklace, but the tiny lampworked hearts that I'm using didn't want to hang straight. I'm hoping that I can find a way to make them play nice, because honestly, I don't think I have anything else that matches the rest of the necklace... whoops! More on this story as it unfolds.

In other weekend news, and continuing with the largely overwhelming theme of things Gothic and/or Lovecraftian, the excellent people over at the HP Lovecraft Historical Society have just posted a teaser trailer for their next movie: The Whisperer in Darkness. While that's honestly not one of my favorite Lovecraft stories (honestly, I think the main two characters were kind of stupid and set the standard for characters in horror movies making dumb mistakes), I'm excited to see the movie. Note that while Call of Cthulhu was silent, this production is one of those new-fangled talkies. Clearly, this is so they can attempt to portray the eerie buzzing voice that forms a central part of the plot... I've not decided yet, based on the trailer, whether it would have been better to leave it the imagination. What I have decided is that I like the starkness of the title/logo.

In completely unrelated rambling, I saw a simply gorgeous woman at the grocery store today. She was middle-aged, with tan/olive skin and dark hair, slender. Though her looks were not what most people would consider exceptional, I was very struck by how she was dressed and how she carried herself. She had a long sage-green skirt with darker green trim along the bottom. Her top was a dark forest-y green with a touch of olive, sleeveless and low-cut. This deep neckline was largely taken up by a bib necklace of disks of paua shell that reflected the green of her clothes. I find that Trader Joe's is a great place to see women with stunning fashion sense, and today was just one of the many days when I've found myself envious of how beautiful and put-together someone looks!

One final thing: my weekly website update will probably be this Tuesday, not Monday. Chris is off of work tomorrow, so I'll be hanging out with him instead of doing photography. I may possibly have to push it all the way back to Wednesday, but only if my homework takes longer than I expect it to.

Various and Sundry Things

Today I finally get to all of the things that I've wanted to post about, but have been too busy to collect my thoughts on.

First! Isn't the above Greenman awesome? My equally awesome mother made him for me a couple of weeks ago, and I keep forgetting to post a picture. He's made out of polymer clay, with a dusting of mica powder on the face. Eventually I'm going to hang him on the wall, but for now he's sitting on my desk, guarding one of the many stacks of books.

Second! As you may already know, I love to write. My work to date includes assorted novels and short stories (all of them unpublished, sadly); roleplaying gaming columns; reviews of movies, comic books, books, and whatever else that I feel I can get away with reviewing; some of the text on the LL-BFAC site; bios and artist statements for several of my beading pals; and of course, all of the text on my site and this blog. Armed with all of that experience, I've branched out into the world of writing website text and such for others. My first client is Hollyrose Aromatherapy! I had a lot of fun re-writing her product descriptions. Oh, and by the way, I highly recommend the Patchouli Woods scent if you decide to order anything.

Third! Art Bead Scene's challenge theme this month is "Gothic Queen." Needless to say, this theme appeals to me a lot, and of course, it's perfect for October. I am all kinds of jazzed. So far I've entered Dark Lady of the Depths and Devil Duckies! Be sure to look at the other entries, there's some great stuff up already and the month has only just begun.

Fourth! I am working on two other exciting things that I will post about as they develop.

What I made for myself.

Image: Lady Aerelin's Prize-Winning Flower Garden

I simply had to make this necklace for myself! Actually, it all started with an idea that involved a faerie pendant from Green Girl Studios, and I couldn't decide whether to make the necklace for myself, using colors that would match the faerie outfit that I got at the NY Ren Faire, or if I should make it in other colors to sell, or if I should buy another pendant and make two. Then I realized that this beautiful faerie, by Mavis Smith, went really well with the colors of the outfit, and that decided it. Now I can use the Green Girl pendant to make another one to sell, and I have this one for me!

I wore the necklace to the Sept Best Bead, and I got a lot of compliments. The necklace wasn't even done yet, I still had to add the final strand. Each strand is wrapped around the previous ones. There are four strands total, a plain one to form the core and three embellished ones. I used three colors of Japanese seed beads in size 11 and 15, numerous pressed glass leaves -- vintage and modern -- one style of pressed glass flower, Swarovski crystal butterflies, and two different colors of lampworked leaves by Joan Eckard. It's much more free-form than my usual work, and it was a little hard for me to get used to the chaotic array of leaves, but the look really suits the nature of a faerie, don't you think?

Lady Aerelin's Prize-Winning Flower Garden is one of my entries in Art Bead Scene's September contest. This month's theme is "When Beads Collide!" and the challenge is to use beads created by two or more artists. I also entered Faerie Bride, and an older necklace of mine, Purple Dawn. I hope to manage one or two more submissions before the end of the month, if my muse cooperates.

Oh, and by the way? YARH! I can't wait for tomorrow :D