Bead Table Wednesday

Heather at HumbleBeads has a little flickr

group going: Bead Table Wednesday

Just so we can take pictures of what's on our

bead table for the week. A little inspiration for us,

a nudge to keep our creative juices flowing, an

incentive to use all those good art beads and

other goodies we've just been staring at lately.

Well, maybe not for you, but this is gonna get me

motivated. Something fun for the New Year.

Grab that camera and post your projects.

Dreaming of Bead Cruise 2010

Well the weather has definitely taken a turn to the cooler side.
The leaves are turning, mums are everywhere, and I have my
load of pumpkins bought for decorating outside. I noticed the
days are getting shorter. So with all that happening, I've been
daydreaming about Bead Cruise 2010. This will be my fourth
one and all I can say is they have gotten better every time.
Heather puts in a lot of time and effort to make this an experience
to be remembered. I'm sharing some more of my pictures from
2009.

Blue skies and sunny days in Belize.




Warm sands and turquoise waters in Costa Maya. Oh yes,
and Mojitos too!



Chance to make lots of new friends and meet great teachers.



Great food. I love sushi and this was the best I've ever had.

Icing on the Cake

All righty then, I finally got a little caught up on all the

busyness of last week. Heather and I spent two days

working with our etching projects, but of course we

couldn't do a couple of stampings we managed to make

a hundred pieces of brass and copper. Talk about over

doing on a first time project! We cut, stamped, etched,

pickled, polished and made some killer stuff.

We have a nice video to that Heather is gonna edit and

put out so you can see.

Then our friend Melanie from Earthenwood Studios

came for a couple of days to visit with Heather and stay

at my house. We spent a day (a very long one), getting

our pieces ready to make some resin pendants.

Heather and Melanie pounding, heating and preparing

stuff to put into our pendants. I was taking some pictures

and making a couscous dish for lunch. I got a little behind,

couldn't find any of my small items to put into my pendants.

So needless to say I still have things to make. Beverly and

I can work on some when she gets here. I paid very close

attention and managed a couple of pieces, so I can finish my

stuff later .

These are the four finished pieces of mine, above.

A couple of Heather's pendants....above.

And these are Melanie's. Three totally different artists,

and three totally different looks. We used Ice Resin that

I purchased from Ornamentea.com. Very easy to mix and

super easy to pour. No smell, but could be messy, so take

your time! Heather will be heading home soon. That's gonna

be a sad day. We have had so much fun these last few weeks.

But she'll be back at Christmas and my sister and brother are

coming in here intwo weeks. Best summer I've had in a long time.

This week Geary and I head for the tennis championships in

Indianapolis. We love to go to those matches.

Twilight

Okay, I admit it...I'm a fool for the Twilight series of books

and movies. What can I say? I'm a sixteen year old trapped

in an older woman's body. Won't somebody let me out?

A Humblebead surrounded by Montana blue faceted roundels,

onyx faceted squares from Rings and Things. A

silver wire wrapped blood red drop of Czech glass.

Waterlilies

I couldn't let the ABS challenge go by without
using an art bead by Humblebeads. Soft New Jade
and faceted yellow jade accent the focal bead.
Nuggets of a blue stone ( I would call it Dumorite)
and Bali silver rondells.

A beautiful leaf clasp to finish it off.

Now we are off to play! Bailey is doing her early morning
stretches outside. We watched the deer along the wood
line eating grass and munching leaves. They watched us too,
then slipped silently away. Almost like ghosts....I'm gonna
slip away today and enjoy the afternoon with my Geary.
Yesterday was our 28th anniversary. My one true love,
may we share many more happy years.

Mixed Tapes Challenge - Class of '73

Class of '73...that's me.

I've been spending the last couple of days

tripping through memory lane with my husband.

Humblebeads has a contest going on...

Share your favorite high school songs,

make a playlist, find some pics from your

high school days. Three chances to win some

great Humblebead prizes. So I've put together

my playlist for your listening enjoyment.

Yes, I know all the words to the songs and the

memories they dredge up are the most fun.

Thanks Heather for the laughs.

Feeling Froggy

Would you believe this is the only picture out of 300 that I

managed to get to Adobe? It has been a wonderful, wild two

weeks and I am still trying to get myself together. Work wants

to punish me for leaving it alone for so long and I am playing

catch up there.

Lucky for me I did get to stay an extra day in New Orleans with

my sister due to fog and plane cancellations. I came home to

my little girl Bailey, Geary had picked her up from my sister's

house so I could have her home that night. He even gave her

a bath...first one in all her 8 years for him. She must have

thought her world was coming to an end!

I am also sitting in front of a beautiful full screen HD monitor.

Geary was so excited about getting it. I have to admit it is a

beautiful thing. Really it is great to be back home.

Going away is fun, but the coming home is always so

much better. I beleive my husband really missed me this time!

I am STILL rocking and rolling from the swells we had at sea.

I wonder when will it go away, or if it could be something else

like an inner ear problem. More than anything, it is an

annoying problem.

So over the weekend I will get through the pictures, put most

of them on my Flickr page, and share the special ones with

you all. I promise I won't be boring, cause you've probably

seen a lot of them on other blogs.

I just want to add another thing. Heather puts on the

BEST cruises ever...that girl makes them better every year.

This year was especially great with all the sponsors who sent

stuff for the gift bags. They were SO full of great goodies.

It was like Christmas in the Tropics.

I loved seeing my old friends and making new ones.

The teachers were spectacular, Mary Hettsmanberger's class

was very inspiring and loads of fun. I made the best clay beads

Heather's class. Not as good as hers but I don't want to be...its

more fun getting them from her!

Have a Heart

Seems like everyone is gearing up for Valentines Day.
Everywhere I look I see hearts and more hearts and
lots of seasonal colors...red, pink, white.
I gathered a few of my favorites. Believe me there's
more than I have time to list! Check out their blogs,
and websites and then go to their shops, nobody
knows better than you what you like! Sorry Geary!

Lynn Davis

Nancy Schindler

Jennifer Jangles

Beth Hemmila, Hint Jewelry

Mellisa at Chinook Designs

Red poppies from Heather at Humblebeads I love these!

Mary Harding has new hearts...I got one today!

Lorelei one of my favorite jewelry designers.

And another one from Nancy...she opened a new shop today
Round Rabbit Extra. I got one of these too!Lucky me....

The Bead Star winner is coming...

The Bead Star winner is coming!

Bought my magazine yesterday.

Won't be long and Heather (a winner)

and family will be starting out for the

Great White Frozen Tundra. I love

this time of year. All of the family

hanging out and doing stuff. We're

all having a sleep over one night in

GR. Movies to watch, Wall E, Kung Fu Panda,

and Return to Narnia...We're all big kids at heart

around here. Ornaments to make.

I got some patterns for elf shoe ornaments,

gingerbread people and Bev got some

ornament kits too. Sledding and skating...

none of which I'm participating in.

We'll put together jigsaw puzzles.

A trip to the bead store is planned.

Card games to play.

I'm feeling the Christmas love, now if the

weather would just cooperate it would

be perfect. Its looking like a white

Christmas for sure.

Merry Christmas to Me

Its a little picture, but a BIG necklace. I treated

myself to a Christmas present and I got it in the

mail today. A Humblebead necklace and one that

she did as a collaboration with two other artists.

I really like Ginny's glass links and now that I've

seen them up close I think I will have to get myself

a few. And OMG she has them on sale on her website!

What a conundrum, should I wait or should I CHARGE?

I'm gonna need another job if I keep it up. But then,

someone has to keep the economy going right?

Just doing my part to save the world...lol.

Tomorrow my sister Beverly is coming from NO.

She's gonna freeze her butt off. But we'll have so

much fun we won't even notice how cold it is.

I see lots of beading and card playing. Hey, I'll win

all the quarters and then I can buy more beads.

Do you hear me Mom and Bev?

I WILL win them all..hahaha.

Humblebeads is having a sale!

If you've ever bought her beads or read her blog, now is the chance

to purchase a piece of jewelry made by her own little hands.

Humblebeads is having a jewelry sale. I've already picked my

favorite, but there's still some left for everybody else.

Some of the pieces are things she's shown on her blog,

like her collaboration pieces .

She's taken 30% off her asking price too. And she's getting to be more

famous all the time...she's a Bead Star winner and is gonna be in the

Bead Star magazine coming out next week.

Did you know she is my niece?

I'm just a little asteroid floating around in her universe....

I'm so proud of her!

And Beverly Herman is getting a dove too! I'll hold it till she comes

home next week. I can hardly wait!

Saturday Fun

Having a fun kind of Saturday night. Went to
the opening of the new Michael's today. it was
pretty crowded in there, but I managed to find a
couple of treasures, not of the beady kind. Then
we hopped over to JoAnn's and I got a couple of
new magazines....Bead Unique (that's a good one
to get). But the one I liked best was Living Crafts.
It's packed full of all kinds of fiber fun. A really
cute set of knitted acorns and leaves that you felt.
Nicky Epstein created the pattern, she has a lot of
great books on knitting and embellishing your knits.
I have a book or two myself. Then there are a couple
of needle felted cuties...a hedgehog for one, that is
almost as cute as Humblebead's hedgies. Lots of
cute children's hats. What I thought was really great
was a section they had called FiberWorks. It lists a
lot of places to get your wool to work with. And one
page was dedicated to my favorite yarn and wool shop;
Mar-Haven Wool Farms. Barb has a great shop and
her own line of wool yarn. She's a really sweet person
to visit with and willing to help you if you need it. With
all those fiber ideas, I think I'm gonna put my beads to
the side for a bit and go back to the thing I really love.
I have a sweater to finish and blankets to make, not to
mention the stuffies I want to get done before Christmas.
I better get my rear in gear or I'll never make it.
So I'm leaving you with this fun little video I found. Thanks
Bev for helping me figure it out, but I really have to thank
Lorelei too. She posted directions to a friend one time and
I remembered to look for that...so thanks Bev and Lorelei!

Learning Curve

I am feeling kind of proud of myself . I have been adding
things to my blog page, and doing it without having to ask
anyone for help. I joined Twitter yesterday. Added my
a few of my favorite things from Etsy. I say this with pride
because I usually have to call my sister Bev or Heather for
some kind of help. I am not very savvy when it comes to my
computer. Now all I need to do is get my Etsy store going.
I know I'm procrastinating, THAT is the thing I do very well.
Speaking of new and Etsy, Humblebeads has a new series of
beads she's posted. They are just beautiful! The Lily and Lanterns
and Garden Lanterns. Go look at them, buy them all up quickly.
That way I won't feel like I'm missing anything. I told myself I wasn't
buying anything from the Internet for a whole week.
That means till next Monday...what was I thinking?I'll just go
make something nice and purty and stay off the puter!

Harvest Fun and Tailgate Parties

I've been playing with Humblebeads lately. These are a couple of

her new designs for beads. Love the Harvest set, it really goes well

with copper findings. The purple ones above are from her new

Branches series. Love the color purple! What I love the best about

Heather's beads are that they are so lightweight you hardly know you

have them on. Love, love, love...are you feeling it Heather?...lol?

Anyway that's why I always put rubber backs on mine when

I wear them. Speaking of Humblebeads, she's come up with some of

cutest new critters...a hedgehog, a squirrel and a purple martin bird.

I'm counting down the days before our Tailgate party(2). I have some

serious straightening and cleaning to do. The weather is looking

chilly so I think we'll be having it in the garage and the house. We

decided to not go to the haunted corn maze. $17 bucks a person

is kind of a lot of money to get the shit scared out of you.

Besides I have night blindness and seeing much in the dark is almost

impossible. I think I could really hurt myself or the people around me.

And being that I am usually the one that gets hurt, I don't feel bad

about us not going. So we are pulling out the decks of cards and

quarters...winning money, now that's something I'm kind of good at!

Show and Tell

They're here! The rest of my Humblebead's order came today. I just
love this new Kiss design! But I'm kinda mad, cause now I see she
has the disk beads for these! Sheesh....is there a prize for the one
with the most Humblebead beads? Cause I'm probably the winner
if there is. Really Heather, I'm just pulling your leg about the being
mad part. Speaking of Humblebeads, this is the night for
Bead Art Originals trunk show TONIGHT starting at 7pm (EST)!
Read all about it here: http://beadartoriginals.blogspot.com.
Giving away door prizes during the open house. Stop by and see
what's going on.

I also got this beautiful set of lampwork beads from Robert and
Moon Stumpp from MixedMediaJewelry. It's such a large set of
beads for a very reasonable price. There are sets up for sale now
that they call Pendleton Beads, and they are all the colors of the
beautiful Pendleton blankets (my favorite catalog to look at).
Another series that I like too is named Curmudgeons. Its all about
color and these beads have it. I'm drawn to color like a moth to
a flame! Nice stuff. Now I'm off to get ready for the trunk show...

Indian Summer

From Wikipedia:
Indian summer is a name given to a period of sunny, warm
weather in autumn, not long before winter. Usually occurring
after the first frost, Indian summer can be in September, October,
or early November in the northern hemisphere, and March,
April, or early May in the Southern hemisphere. It can persist
for a few days or extend to a week or more.

I hope I'm mistaken about it being our Indian Summer here! But we
did have a frost, and now its warming up again.
I made this necklace and entered it in the Art Bead Scene October
Challenge. The theme: Dark and Stormy Night. It's not too dark
looking, but it covers the cool autumn feeling and the shorter
days and darker nights.

Focal bead form Humblebeads,
disk bead from Blue Seraphim,
Vintaj Natural Brass filigree,
seed beads from Osiris Beads.
Some wood, amazonite, and green garnet squares.

Speaking of Humblebeads, I got a package in the mail with some
of her new beads. She put in a suprise for me. If you haven't looked
at her stuff lately I can tell you that you are missing out on some
great things! Her Gustav Klimt's Kiss beads are as great in person
as they look in her shop. I've lots of ideas rolling round my head
for these!

When life gives you fauna, what do you do?

Well thanks to my Humblebeads niece Heather, I've been making

molds for clay. And that's about as far as I have gotten. I'm gonna

do something more than make molds, but I either have to wait till

the cruise in March for her to show me how to add special finishing

techniques or I'm gonna have to experiment on my own.

Hmmmm....that's a tough one.

I have been rolling ideas for Christmas gifts around in my head.

Kind of making a list, I know, WHAT DO YOU MEAN CHRISTMAS?

But if we don't get started now, it will be here before we know it.

I have stuffies to make for the kids, and ideas for other things that

I can't mention. I make my own Christmas cards, I love to stamp

and emboss, not to mention embellishing. That takes a bit of time

to say the least. Geary actually helps with the cards, its kind of fun

to have him help with stuff...

Today Geary and I went together and picked another 15 pounds

of blueberries. I just can't get enough of them and they are still

so abundant! I picked some for my mom and froze some.

Left some for us to eat when we wanted. I see blueberry pancakes

in my future. And this is Blueberry Festival weekend in South Haven.

Tomorrow the Aunts and I are walking the craft show. The weather

has been totally perfect. Speaking of weather, we had waterspouts

off the lake Thursday. Really pretty cool. I saw the tail end of the

funnel rising up in the air. I probably should have been a little

more cautious, but we always go look to see whats coming instead

of seaking shelter. One of these days we'll get caught being stupid.

I can say we don't stand outside during a thunderstorm anymore..

dah!

Last night we celebrated my Uncle Rick's daughter's wedding. How

sweet it was...a little out of the ordinary. I can finally say I went to

a wedding where the Groom and the Best Man wore camo.

The Grooms cake was decorated in camo frosting. Jenny's garter

was camo elastic, but thank goodness she wore a beautiful gown.

They didn't go on a Honeymoon right away, as goose hunting

opens on Monday. Yee Haw!

But really, we had a great time with all the relatives being there.

Lately that seems to be the only time we all get together. And of

course I forgot my camera....

SHUT UP! Its already August!

Where in the world has the summer gone too?

It was just the Fourth if July not too long ago.

I was outside looking at my plants and I noticed

they looked a little tired and stressed out. Winding

down already. The tops of the maple trees in the back

yard are already showing colors of yellow and orange.

Of all the seasons, I find autumn a strange melancholy

mix of emotions....glad the heat is going away, but sad

that the cold weather is coming. But then, I love the autumn

holidays, my favorites are Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Boo Hoo what a baby! Enough of that...I can't hardly stand

myself. I think I'm still recovering from spending time in the

hospital and having the reaction to the antibiotics, from

which I am still scratching at. I feel like a dawg with fleas.

And from the the looks of it the fleas have won.

On a lighter note I see my favorite Nephew-n-law (Jess)

Has put more items in his Etsy shop. Poetry for Skeptics.

My favorite is the Angels and Saints.

And Heather is adding more fun pendants too.

We made some great molds while she was home and

she has put them up in her shop too. Take a look...

Humblebeads.

I actually own the coin that we made the owl mold

from. Got it about ten years ago at a coin/jewelry shop

in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. Its Greek about 200 BC.

I keep it in the safe...so its nice to see it in clay and

wearable.

Parting Shots

Today we put Heather and the girls on their bird

to San Antonio. Now there's just this big hole left
in my day that used to be spent having fun. It was

almost like I was on vacation too. That time just flew

by. I think we managed to do all the fun stuff we could.

Here's some parting shots of what we did this week....

Getting ready to pick our blueberries. I think we ended up with 40

pounds. Blueberry Cobbler for dessert that night. And Heather made

it herself (I thought she couldn't cook...lol). Mine are in the freezer.

Sailing on Lake Michigan. Friends Good Will is way too cool. It was

an interactive kind of cruise too. They had just about everyone that

was able pull ropes, hoist the sails and turn the ship about.

We couldn't have asked for a better day. High 70's, slight breeze and

lots of sunshine. That's the crew below....

I think my Mom is gonna miss the noise too. But I think there are

plans for Christmas. Only I'm not gonna wish that one to hurry up.

Last, but not least is a picture of my bedroom all cleaned up...I have

Melanie to thank for that. My friends and family know what I mean.

I didn't do a before picture because its too embarrassing.

Friends Good Will, A sailing we will go!

Big fun day for us. We booked a ride on the Friends Good Will
ship, sailing at 3 pm this afternoon. I am so excited and so are
Heather and the girls. Taking my Dramamine as soon as I can
so I don't get dizzy and fall of the ship. With my luck, anything is possible....
I'm bringing my camera to take lots of pictures! Not many days
left and Heather has to go home. It will leave a big empty gap in
our days when she does.
But I'm not gonna dwell on that now, we have better things to do.
Last night we made molds and beads. Some of the coolest stuff.
We used antique spoons and ancient coins. Now everything I look
has a whole different meaning, any possibilities for molds?
Its really addicting. We are gonna finish them tonight...

The Friends Good Will is a replica of an 1810 square topsail sloop,
commissioned by and built for the Michigan Maritime Museum in 2004.