A Lot of Green (Beads and Garden)

I am surrounded by green. Green beads and green garden. I thought I'd share a little of that green with all of you. 

I finished these sweet little earrings awhile ago, I just haven't gotten a chance to take a lot of photos and prepare them for my Etsy shop. (Boy this sounds a lot like my last post.) The small cabochon in the center is an amazonite. I surrounded it with three different colors of green seed beads. It reminded me of all those great green colors you see at the beginning of summer.

And here's one of my garden's. This is the one I call my "house garden". Just because it is closest to the house. In this garden, we have tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, basil, cabbage, and a lot of beans. I love it right now because it is a sea of green. Everything is full and flowering and hopefully we will soon be picking. Well, technically we have been picking lettuce, but nothing else yet.

Pyrite Earrings

Here's the next pair of earrings. These earrings use a square pyrite bead and a pewter bead as the focal points. The beads are surrounded by matte gray and metallic blue seed beads. A beautiful metallic blue dagger bead hangs from the bottom with Czech glass beads on either side. The earrings hang from sterling silver ear wires and are backed in black ultrasuede.

It is a rainy weekend here so I hoping that I can get some more beading done. I'm also glad it's raining because I just don't feel like weeding the garden. I'd rather weed through my beads.

Then Suddenly It Came to Life

A few months ago, I was reading the Etsy forums and I came across a delightful post. Another Etsy seller (Natasha) was starting this blog project called "Thursday Sweet Treat". The basic plan was that each Friday she would post a theme and then on the following Thursday she would post what artists created based on that theme. I followed for a few weeks and finally decided to participate. Since then I've submitted many pieces and have really enjoyed see how other artists interpreted the weekly theme. In addition, Natasha has shared interviews with other artists, support, and inspiration. 

So... this weeks theme was "Then Suddenly It Came to Life". She asked us to take our favorite childhood book to life with one of our creations. I chose the book "Magic Friend Maker" by Gladys Baker Bond. The story begins with a lonely girl in a city neighborhood who longs for a friend. She finds a friend after sharing a special stone she's found. The girls share many fun times together, often playing with the rock, the "magic friend maker". When the owner of the rock must move, she shares the rock with her friend so that the magic can work all over again with a new friend.

In the story, the girls discover that the rock changes color when they put it under water. The piece of abalone I used for the centerpiece of the cuff reminded me of that stone. I created the cuff around the abalone's colors and the colors from the picture on the front of the book. The one little girl wore a green dress and the other a purple one. The bead embroidered cuff is embellished with seed beads, Swarovski crystals, pearls, glass beads, and bugle beads. I used black ultrasuede on the underside of the cuff.