Sue Beads

It's that time of month again already! It's the Art Jewelry Elements Component of the Month!  This month, the lovely Jo Tinley, of Daisychain Designs, supplied us with one of her handmade copper hollow beads!  I chose one with flowers on it.  She showed how to make them on the Art Jewelry Elements blog and, let me tell you, it's a lot of work!  I really love her work and I hope you visit her blog and shop!


I paired my bracelet with these gorgeous blue beads I picked up at a bead show in Monroeville a week or so ago.  I meant to show you photos on my blog of what I made, but seriously just cannot keep up at the moment!  These are faceted and such an amazing color, I'm sure they're dyed but I still like them!

So this is the bracelet I made.  I love the blue color of the beads with the antiqued copper of Jo's bead.  The only issue I have with this bracelet is that the clasp is too big.  I didn't have ANY other clasps in antiqued copper and didn't have time…

It's that time again!  Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge reveal!  Here's what I made!  Both pairs of earrings are made with my little lampwork beads and Kristi Bowman-Gruel's newest polymer clay creations!  Don't you love them!  Check out AJE Blog to see what everyone else made!

This week Sally Russick's prompt for the Focus On Life Photography Series is Knock Knock.  Photos of doors.  In or out.  What's on the other side?  My photo is from Santorini, Greece.  I was there years ago (and by years I mean probably almost 8).  I don't travel as much anymore but I have fond memories of my travels.  I went to Greece with an ex-boyfriend for business (he was an invited speaker at a conference) and before we went to the conference we decided to visit Santorini for a couple of days.  This was the door at the top of the steps that went down to the hotel we were staying in.  At the top of the photo you can see the caldera - a caldera is a sunken volcano that has filled in with water.  Imagine sitting outside on the patio chairs watching the sunset from right here!!!!!  Head on over to Sally's blog to see everyone else's doors!

Today is the reveal for Erin Prais-Hintz' Challenge of Music.  The challenge this year was music with no words, or instrumental.  I chose Holst "The Planets".


I have always loved music, mostly contemporary, although my dad and I would play a game in the car where I would have to name the music that was playing and of course, he wasn't playing Led Zeppelin!  But I did gain an appreciation for all sorts of music.  TV shows of the 70's like Lawrence Welk (we watched this with my grandmother all the time!!!) or Hee Haw (yep, even Hee Haw had music!) allowed me to learn about different music.  It wasn't until I took a college course in Classical Music (we called it Clap for Credit) that I gained a real appreciation for instrumental, classical music.

In this class we learned about Gustav Holst and "The Planets."  This 7-movement piece was written between 1914-1916 and each movement is about one of the planets in the solar system - not including Earth, and…

This month the Art Jewelry Elements Component of the Month was made by Francesca Watson.  Francesca is a very sweet person who makes beautiful jewelry.  This month she made the enameled discs with silver accents for us to use in our creations!  I made a bracelet this time, this is not the first one I made either!  I had something in mind and it wasn't coming out the way it was supposed to, so I put it down.  I let it percolate a little bit and finally the design happened!  I'm using ebony twisted wood beads and three of my own lampwork beads, separated by sweet little silver heishe spacers.  Stop over at AJE to see what everyone else made!

My latest pair of earrings for Art Jewelry Elements Earring challenge - lampwork by me (SueBeads) and charms by Marla James (Marla's Mud).  Check out Art Jewelry Elements daily for new and inspiring work and tutorials and information!

My latest pair of earrings for the Art Jewelry Elements earring challenge!  Made with my own lampwork rounds, and Kristi Bowman's copper charms.  Brass findings and sterling earwires!

This is week 8 of Sally Russick's Focus on Life challenge and the word is Monochromatic.  This strawberry photo was the one I used for a previous challenge word.  I have been having a lot of fun playing on my phone with Pixlr and Pixlromatic and this is what I made.  I love the effects you can get from a simple phone app!  Too much fun!  Please check Sally's blog for everyone else's photos!

My bead soup arrived from my partner, Krista Quantrill! It only took a week to go from Canada to Pittsburgh, and mine only took a week to get to her.  We mailed them on the same day, and they both arrived on the same day - that's too funny!

Here's what she sent me.  The focal is a really cool ceramic greek focal, there's wood, swarovski pearls, copper rice beads, two very cool patinated copper beads, the patinated clasp and really cool czech blue-green melons.  I love the soup!  Can't wait to get started!

We both happened to send our soup in pink packaging, really funny coincidence again!

This is the teaser shot I published a few days ago:

And here's what I sent to Krista:

Another funny coincidence, we both sent the same color scheme!  I'm looking forward to seeing what we both make out of our soup!

Our prompt this week from Sally Russick is Beauty of Flowers!  I'm all over this one!  My daughter recently had her Senior Banquet and on the tables were potted orchids from Manchester Craftsman's Guild; all the girls got to take an orchid plant home!  This is a flower on her plant that I mixed up a little with Pixlr on my phone!  I love that app!  Just wish I could see a bit better to use it lol!  Head on over to Sally's blog to see the rest of the photos!

Here's my week 6 entry for the Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge!  I used my own enameled copper teardrop beads and enameled headpins, with some copper daisy spacers and a small bronze seed bead at the top!  Copper ear wires I made myself, as well! 

I received my Bead Soup partner over the weekend - she's Krista Quantrill of Kanata, Ontario, Canada!  I was finally able to mail her bead soup today - here's a little teaser of what I sent her!  I used a photo editor called Be Funky - it was fun, and easy to use!  When she finally receives her bead soup, I'll repost with a photo of what I sent!

As you may know, over at Art Jewelry Elements we have a year-long earring challenge occuring! This is the second reveal for the challenge! Below you will find my entries!


These first ones are made with my silvered aqua terra beads, which were my bead special of the week last week.


This second pair is made with my little clear frosted heart beads, perfect for Valentine's day!  You can find both of these pairs of earrings in my SueBeads Jewelry shop on etsy!

Please check out Art Jewelry Elements were you can see everyone's link to their entries!

Tracy Statler, over at Make Bracelets, is hosting a Wellness Words Blog Hop today!  We were supposed to take a word that meant something to us and make a piece of jewelry that interpreted that word.  My word was health.  However, that's pretty generic, so my real word is more like thyroid-health.  I had thyroid cancer about 9 years ago. I had surgery and radiation and I am fine now.  Yes, there are side-effects to both the surgery and radiation, but I want to concentrate on figuring out how to feel better at this point.  I haven't been treating myself very well, and this year I am going to change that!

I concentrated on two parts of that - the chakra, for one, and in particular, the blue chakra for the throat and ability to express truth through the spoken word.  I feel deeply that my habit of holding in feelings contributed to my getting cancer in this area.  Please see Three Hearts Company - they give you a really good overview of the chakra and meanings.

The first bracelet …

This week's prompt for Sally Russick's 52 Weeks Focus on Life Challenge is "Capture Our Hearts."  Our assignment was to capture some hearts this week in the world around us.  Hmmmm.  While there were definitely hearts all around us, I wasn't out much this past week.  AND my photo for last week was a heart I made.  So here's my image for the week - I was cutting up strawberries for the kids and found this one!  Woo Hoo!