JEWELRY

 I was taking pictures of some jewelry for a customer and decided to post some of my favorites. You will probably recognize some the these as the prototypes for my kits. There are still some dragonfly and the feather earrings kits available, $45.00 for the kits. $150.00 for the bluejay feather earrings and $350.00 for the dragonfly and the death head moth pendants. The cuffs are $450.00 each. I really had fun working on the treasure ship, it has a great piece of scrimshaw and all kinds of fun little treasures on it. I think it looks really cool with my amber necklace, the color schemes are the same. This necklace has an amazing amber pendant, you can literally see that it is a big piece of prehistoric tree sap! I also love the giant carved bone beads in this piece. It is $450.00. The shell hair barrette was something I was playing around with when I was working on sea themes ( $225.00 ). And last but not least, my 49 stone fetish necklace. I've been collecting fetishes for a long time and finally, I did something with them. $400.00 for this necklace. The little pipestone cats are my favorites. 

NEEDLE CASE HELP AND CORRECTION

First I want to apologize for the wrong wording on step 5. This is where you are using your single piece of felt not a double like I have written. You take the single piece of felt, fold in half, creating a little pocket, and then stuff with the white poly. Then you sewing it up. The next step is to is to sew your snap on, then you can sew the felt pocket stuffed with the white poly to the bottom half of the leather, staying close to the edge so you can hide these stitches under your lazy stitch. Next you can attach your beadwork to the non suede side, which will be the flap of the needle case. Time to whip stitch! In these pics the paper is the beadwork.  Please feel free to contact me if you still have questions. I've been living in a sick haze for three weeks now. I've gotten, the not covid, not flu, virus and it literally the worst I've ever felt. We both went to the doc but really no antibiotics work, on this virus, so it's just over the the counter stuff that is woefully inadequate. Robert brought it home from school, he's the janitor at the elementary school. 1/3 of the kids are out and a bunch of the staff and teachers. So all my bead friends, mask up out there, seriously, this is one you do NOT want to catch!

FRINGE!

 To follow up on my last post, thank you everyone for helping me decide on which bag to carry. The wolf won! While I love the image, I do think the fringe was the deciding factor. I love fondling it. I think I'm going to have to do more fringe bags. Back in the day, I made tons and tons of fringe! While living in Juneau I had orders for regalia for the dancers. I wonder if anyone in southeast ever sees this killer whale cape at Celebration?? This was probably 40 years ago, omg, that's shocking. LOL When you're dancing you must have the swaying, swishing, swinging fringe! 

WHICH ONE WOULD YOU PICK?

 I've decided to change things up and take a new bag for myself. It started with me carrying a wristlet, when my arm was really bad, but then I found out that it was just too small for me. So these are the bags that I've got for sale in the gallery right now. I've carried them all downstairs to the living room and laid them out on the couch. For a few days now I've been pondering and trying them on. Decisions, decisions! The single pic of the bald eagle and the dog is my current bag and I'm ready to go with something new. I only do this once every 5 years or so. What I want to know is, if you were me, which one would you choose??

A THANK YOU GIFT DRAWING!

 As I sit here today looking at the giant stack of kit boxes ready to be mailed tomorrow, I'm feeling good. This is the final batch of the 53 kits that were ordered and it's always a sense of accomplishment when a project is completed.  But, really when I analyze why I feel good, it's because of all of you who responded when I posted about my fractured shoulder. I was sort of crying the blues, and you all ordered kits. This kept me busy, and then by buying them, you helped me pay for all the doc and physical therapy bills. The silver lining in this was all the connections made, wonderful conversation from wise and witty beadworkers had, and the genuine goodwill and warmth spread about by all. So, this little Christmas ornament (which was a previous kit from long ago) will be a gift. I'm putting all of the kit buyers names in a hat, or maybe a coffee can, lol, and will have Robert draw one name. We will do it on Tuesday, and I will announce the winner on Facebook because that's where I correspond with you all. Hope this small token of gratitude will be fun! Keep a look out on Tuesday for the winner! Thank you!!!

FLORAL NEEDLE CASE KITS

 So I just want to say something about the construction of the needle cases. You can go to BLOG ARCHIVES, here on the blog. It's right under the little pic of Robert and me. The go to August 2021 and the 10 videos post.You will see everything you need to know about the beading of your piece. I'm finding the making of a video thing one handed isn't working so I'm just putting up a few pics. You will see in your kit you have three pieces of felt. Two of these are for you to do the beadwork on, I like to double up the felt. The third piece will be cut into the shape of the needle case, folded in half, stuffed with the white poly and then basted together. This is where the needles will live. SEE THE PIC This is in the instructions but I just thought a picture would be helpful. Feel free to call with any questions you might have.  Also I've used the lazy stitch and whip stitch instruction for all three kits using the blue lotus design. This is the simplest of the three so that was my thinking there. 

About the of the origin of these needle cases. Probably around 15 years ago I did a class using this cool little antique Iroquois style needle case as my inspiration. In the original class we used the velvet style with the up raised beadwork. But true to form for me, I'm back to my beloved couching style of beadwork. I hope you have alot of fun with these, and thank you everyone for your support. When I fractured my shoulder I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself. Being able to put together these kits one handed has saved me from the ennui I could feel setting in. Life throws you a curve every now and then, but I feel grateful to be part of such a wonderful beading community even when I can't bead!

UKRAINE LOVE BAG

 The finished "Ukraine Love Bag" is in the mail and off to its new home.