Sue Beads

Diana Ptaszynski had a great idea, instead of a Tacky Christmas Sweater blog hop, a Tacky Holiday Earring blog hop! I was on it.  I had ideas right away.  I had so many I had to control myself.  You can buy these for $15 each, too!  Here we go!

I found these awesome wreaths in the miniature Christmas section in Michaels, and they go perfectly with silver and copper colored plastic beads!


These trees were found in Michaels, on an end-cap - I assume they are scrapbook or card making supplies, but make fantastic earrings.  The holes were a little small and far down, so I had to make LARGE loops.  Paired these with cute little gold colored jingle bells!

And, finally, the ones I had in my head the moment she announced the blog hop.  Dr. Seuss sparkly puff balls with ribbons.  The only thing that would have made these better for me is if I could have found the red ribbons I really wanted to pair these with - don't get me wrong, the silver is cool and all, but in my head they were red.

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Today is the reveal for the Beading Back in Time Group - our time period this quarter was Early Civilization (3500 BC - 500 AD).  I had aspirations of getting more done, but being a single parent with lots going on, it just wasn't possible.  I did make my version of faux Roman Glass. I originally wanted to also make Cleopatra beads (as shown in the photo below) but just didn't have time.

Photo Credit - Siberian Times, 01 Feb 2013
I still will probably make some, just to see if I can get the same look and texture.  But on to the faux Roman Glass!

I decided to choose pale aqua and medium blue for the beads, as these colors seemed pretty prevalent in Roman Glass that I've seen. Treatments with baking soda and tumble etching with silicon carbide made the beads look "ancient" to me.

I like this pale aqua better - for whatever reason, this color took the treatments better and didn't leave a residue of baking soda.

The medium blue ones are still interesting but there…

My friend and fellow Art Jewelry Elements member, Diana Ptaszynski, is hosting today's Waxed Linen Cord Blog Hop!  A big thank you to Diana, as this is a really big job!  I was excited to join in, I have been making some new chicklet beads recently and wanted to show off some ways you can use them!

 I used a pretty spicy orange color of waxed linen cord, and a great button I got from someone on etsy who I will have to find again because I love his buttons!  I used indonesian glass in between my flower chicklet beads.  And finally, some silver accent beads I picked up at a bead show here last year! 
To finish the bracelet off, I used two indonesian glass triangle beads!

And then, to be annoying and over-achieverish, I made these earrings.  I used salmon cord, copper accent beads, my chicklet beads in a different orientation, and mustard colored seed beads!  I also used the new shape feature on Picmonkey!

Please check out what everyone else made in the blog hop by visiting the link…

Diana Ptaszynski (Suburban Girl Studio) is hosting a blog hop today - Halloween/Day of the Dead!  I have to admit that I had loftier plans than what I ended up making.  I bit off more than I could chew this past weekend and while we did get two of my new windows installed and all of the stuff in the yard cut down and a big plant moved etc. etc.  I did not get to make what I wanted.  But here's what I did make.


This cute little necklace was made from a charm I picked up in a little antique store in Bedford, PA.  It looks like one of those vintage Halloween cards - below the the back of the charm.


I also made these pumpkin earrings, complete with emerald green seed bead stems!  These were made with a pretty yellow color enamel powder on clear glass.  I kind of like how subtle they are!


And since I didn't get to make anything else, I thought I'd show you some eye candy  - my collection of halloweeny/day of the dead beads!

Below is an owl head from Marti Conrad and a sugar sku…