Sue Beads

It's the 7th Bead Soup Reveal day today, hosted by Lori Anderson of Pretty Things!  I have to say, she's pretty awesome to keep doing this, all by herself, with her health issues right now!  Thanks Lori! 

 My partner was Krista Quantrill, of Cornucopia of Crafts - she resides in Canada and is a newbie this year to the Bead Soup swap.  Above is a photo of what she sent me.
 I toyed with the idea of making a three-strand bracelet, but in the end, I decided to make a necklace with a "rosary chain" type design.  I just looked at Lori's soup from the second reveal, and I really like her idea of using jump rings to connect instead of the loops, so I may go back and do that.  But I am pretty pleased with the necklace as it is, too.  It is going to be for my daughter!

 Then I made a pair of earrings; I really loved those copper patinaed beads and had to use them for something!  I think the earrings turned out pretty cute!

Here's what I sent Krista - I'm looking …

I listed some new copper pendants and some beads in the SueBeads etsy store. The engineer got home from the wedding he attended on the weekend, and about an hour later was taking photos for me. Isn't he so nice!?!?! Since my business seems to be run by photos, I need to get better. I think I'm making progress, though!

We did go to Savannah today, and I went to a bead store called Beadstro. The beads above are what I picked up! Some dyed coral, 2 strands of czech glass, a strand of blue faceted chalcedony, a strand of faceted jasper, a strand of really cool turquoise beads and two agaty focal beads. I had fun! The photo isn't that great because it's so cloudy here today, I really couldn't do the beads justice, again. I think if you click on the picture, you can see it larger and maybe see how great the beads really are! The bridge photo is the one that goes into Savannah from South Carolina - it's pretty cool. It's a very large suspension bridge. You can see the day was very cloudy, as everything pretty much looks the same color! The lighthouse is the one in Palmetto Dunes, where we live when we are here. It's not a useful lighthouse right now, I'll have to look up the history to see if it ever was used. The engineer, the boy and I took a bike ride to it this morni…

Three more days to enter my giveaway that I blogged about here. All you have to do is leave a comment and what you do to combat the February BLAHs! I've already gotten some really great comments, but you have to play to win! Anyone in the world can play, but only one comment per person, please! Giveaway ends February 28th, probably around 7:30 pm EST. These beads and more are the prize!

In case you didn't notice from my little weather gizmo to the right, the weather here in the 'Burgh is fantastic today! I filled up my kiln with pretties and hope to get some listed tomorrow!

My friend Lorelei has these earrings up for sale in her etsy shop - they are made with beads that I made for her! Check them out - she added some really cool wood tiles to make a totally funky pair of earrings!

Everyone, check out Delightful Divas in Business today! I am offering a giveaway on their blog - a set of Peruvian Violet Sparkle beads, just for leaving a comment about what your favorite beads are on my SueBeads web site! Make sure you check it out - you could win a set of my beads!

Cristi, from 2ifbysea on etsy, made a really cool bracelet with one of my lampwork beads - just wanted to show you all since I think it's really pretty! You can click on the pic to go to the bracelet, if you want to buy it. Thanks for sharing the photo Cristi, and good luck!

Have you seen the Art Bead Scene blog? Heather announced the monthly challenge today, and the theme is Klimt's "The Kiss". In case you didn't notice, I happen to be a prize provider this month! YAY! Check it out here.

I have a scrabble tile pendant of "The Kiss" in my BellaHannahJane etsy store, which you can purchase if you want! Oh, and I can make more!

Have you heard about the Bead Cruise? I heard about it last year, and thought it was a really cool idea. I happened by Heather Powers'blog a few weeks ago and noticed she was organizing it again - in fact, it's been sold out! There was a link in case you wanted to be a donor to the "goody bag" that all the participants get. You can find my banner on the Bead Cruise sponsor web site page! I hope all the participants of the Bead Cruise have a great time and enjoy their goody bags!

That says it all, doesn't it? No football to watch this weekend - kind of boring. I'm going to have to finish laundry and stuff like that... However, I am quite excited about next Sunday when the Steelers are going to win the Superbowl! In the meantime, here's a cute little pair of earring beads for sale in my etsystore - made from pajama blue and wrapped with a pretty hand-pulled by moi twistie. You can click on the photo to buy them!

I just listed these happy hearts in my etsy store! Take a look! I can make more, if you need more or they get sold!

My engineer partner took this photo for me to use on some cards I'm including in the Bead Cruise Goody Bag and the Delightful Divas Sample Bag 'O The Month. It looks great to me - a huge pile of juicy beads! However, it did NOT transfer to the business card size at all. I guess I should really take a class or something - Photography for Dummies or CorelDraw for Dummies or something - he really spent a lot of time messing around with it, for me, but it just didn't look good when transferred to an ink-jet printer image. Oh well - at least you get some eye candy!

My new friend Lorelei and I participated in a trade recently; I sent her some beads and she sent me a beautiful necklace! You can read about it here. Over the weekend, Lorelei got the beading bug and made a bunch of beautiful pieces with my beads. The first bracelet is sold already, but you can click on the other three (earrings above and necklace and last bracelet below) in case you want to buy them! She really does such unique work - she has a style all her own! I really like it. It's earthy, organic, and peaceful to me. I really like how she combines different elements to bring them together as a beautiful piece of jewelry.

Pretty bright bead pairs on etsy right now! Five pairs of pretty sunshiny beads for you to make earrings, or whatever! Click to buy them!

And try the Pepperoni Pizza Dip recipe below - it's good!

Sometimes, I cruise etsy, when I don't have anything else to do (HAH!) and find things I like. I saw the above bracelet (you can click on it and go to the etsy shop of alyson1234 to see her jewelry and this bracelet! The reason I kept it as a favorite is because, as soon as I saw it, I loved the beads. I love the bracelet too, Alyson, but the beads inspired me! Turns out they are called aqua terra jasper. What I really liked about them was that I thought I could make some lampwork beads that are very similar! So I did - or tried to, depending on if you think the below beads resemble the jasper!
SOLD - THANKS DI! These beads were made with vetrofond dark ivory and I layered some moretti aqua over the top of them, in a similar pattern to the natural patterns of the jasper. They turned out pretty good, I think. I like them enough, anyways. I made them in the lentil shape, instead of nugget.

SOLD - THANKS LORELEI! These beads are the same makeup, but before I layered the aqua, I wrapped …

Well, what a bust - we were supposed to get our first big snowfall of the year overnight last night, and while some places are getting it, here in Pittsburgh we have NO new snow since yesterday at dinner time. If you got snow, perhaps you are sitting there wondering what to do - I know, you can check out my beads on http://www.suebeads.com/, http://www.suebeads.etsy.com/ and on ebay! There's an idea!

UPDATE: These earrings and beads will be on ePatterns Central, at some point, which you can find on the http://www.simplybeadsmagazine.com/ web site. There will be instructions there for purchase, if you need them. I'll give an update when I find out when! In the meantime, as I mentioned, the beads are great for many other projects as well, I'm thinking bracelets, necklaces and purse charms, just as a start!

Well, I received my Simply Beads magazine today and to my surprise, my earring design is not in the February issue. I'm not sure what happened, I'll let you know when I find out. In the meantime, I'm disappointed, but here's a photo of what they looked like (click on the picture to make them larger) - feel free to order the beads anyways! If it doesn't get published in one of their upcoming earrings books, I'll be glad to share supply information and directions as a free tutorial. I'll let you know!

Hi everyone - tonight I listed a limited amount of barrel beadsthat will appear in the February 2009 issue of Simply Beads - limited only because I didn't have enough time to list all the colors of barrel sparkle beads I have available to make my earring design. I will list the rest of what I have tomorrow, and then throughout the week I will make more colors in more choices. I have a few bead orders to do, but am excited about the magazine beads too, so make sure you check it out and order the beads! They are some fun, flirty earrings I think you will enjoy!

Hi! How's everyone's new year going so far? We went to see Tale of Despereauxtoday - it's not at all like I remember the book, so I guess I'm going to have to read it again and see what's what. Luckily, the first time I read it, I read it in one night. It was really cute and actually a good book, so hopefully it won't take me forever to read like books do now - for some reason, I can't get much reading done at night anymore - I can read 5 or 10 pages then need to go to sleep. Then, I can't sleep. But I guess that's another post.

In the meantime, I listed some more focals and some valentine beads in the etsy SueBeads shop today - take a look! The focals are certainly cool, but I am particularly fond of the heart I made, pictured. It's basically a ready to wear necklace, if you want, because it's strung on some beautiful black silk cord. The silver spacers are sterling brushed silver and the accent beads are so pretty too! The heart is only dec…

I recently did a trade with Lorelei Eurto (click the link to go to her blog!). It was the first trade I ever did - it was fun! I picked out a necklace from her shop, and she had two specific bead sets in mind that she wanted of mine. The first photo is of the necklace I chose from her shop, and the next two photos are the beads that she chose! The neckalce is beautiful and incredibly well-made - I highlly recommend her! You can check her blog today, too, as she has a post about the trade! I'll be exicted to see what she makes from the beads.