Dia De Los Muertos - A Celebration of Life Challenge Reveal

Today is the reveal day for Karen McGovern's Dia De Los Muertos - A Celebration of Life Challenge over at Love My Art Jewelry and I'm so excited!!!  I've been dying (hahaha - see what I did there?) to show you the necklace I've been working on.  

I love the sentiment behind the Day of the Dead traditions as demonstrated in this post and this one.  Heck, I even made Day of the Dead shoes!  So of course I was excited when Karen suggested a Day of the Dead challenge at Love My Art Jewelry.  I started with a sweet little sugar skull bead by Heather Powers of Humblebeads:

How stinkin' cute is that!  I knew I wanted to go crazy over-the-top with color on this piece, so I pulled all the colors from her bead and started knotting a little rainbow micro macrame section:

Then I transitioned into some flowers with colorful glass seed beads (because what's a Day of the Dead sugar skull without flowers?).

Finally, I added some braided square knot sinnets to make a strap and made a tassel to hang underneath for a little swingy movement.

Ta da!  

Links to other people's posts will be here - I can't wait to see what everyone made!!

And Summer is Gone Again...

As much as I love fall, it's always tinged with a little sadness at the passing of summer.  I've tried to console myself this year playing with some beautiful hand painted maple leaf buttons from Susan Clarke Originals.  The leaf in the macrame bracelet above had lots of rusty orange in it and I paired it with a neutral cord and shiny cut seed beads.  I had another leaf with much softer color in it that I paired with my trusted matte metallic khaki iris beads.  I think after much debate the bottom one came out ahead in the "which one do you like more" voting, but it was close.

After getting a little bored with the neutrals, I went in search of some color.  The colors people typically picture when they think of autumn are mostly warm colors and I have trouble with those, so these are my colors of fall this year:

The coppery colors give a nod to autumn (and the leaves themselves) but I gotta be me, so of course I had to include some shades of turquoise.

The colder weather also has me thinking about firing up the oven for some homemade bread or putting on a big pot of chili.  How about you?  Is the weather changing where you are?

Celebrating Life with the Day of the Dead

The season has certainly had a big part in my designs lately, with autumnal palettes, leaves and skulls galore.    

This week I've been big on Sugar Skulls. I'm not sure exactly what it is about the skulls that has me so fascinated, but I do find them incredibly beautiful.  Maybe it is the tradition behind them?  The Day of the Dead, or  Dia de los Muertos, is celebrated throughout Mexico with friends and family gathering to remember loved ones who have died.  It centers around a belief that the gates of heaven open for a short time and allow the spirits of lost children and loved ones to reunited with their families for one day.  How beautiful is that?  Although traditions vary from area to area, the holiday is generally not a sad, sober one; it's filled with love and color, food and flowers!  It is focused not on death but on remembering life.  If you are interested in learning about it, you can find much more information and lots of great photos here.  

Sugar skulls, or Calaveras, are often used as part of the Day of the Dead offerings.  They can be made of sugar or clay, but either way, they're colorful and fun.  

I have been using some skulls in my micro macrame jewelry pieces lately, and something clicked the other day (in the order of the head slap, duh "I could've had a V-8" kind of way) and I decided to Day of the Dead it up a little.

I added a riot of color to a macrame bracelet with a TierraCast skull button in the middle and came up with my own interpretation of a sugar skull.  

I've also been busy furiously trying to get items listed in my new Handmade at Amazon shop to be ready when they decided to go live.  I'm an old dog and this is very much a new trick, so it's been trying.  If you're working on a shop there yourself (or if you just need a good laugh today), pop over to the my post on the Love My Art Jewelry blog and read all about it.  Happy reading!

Skull Skills and Too Little Time!

I swear something has gone wrong with the part of the universe that controls time; days and weeks and months are just whizzing past!  I have been busy making some pieces influenced by the season (and the fact that TierraCast put out some new Skully buttons).  I had been working in an orange and blue color palette, so I messed around with a skull in those colors:

I'm always partial to the khaki colors with copper, too, so that led to this variation (and the rest in that first photo):

In the middle of the micro macrame jewelry making frenzy, I got sidetracked by this:

Because he has Grandma wrapped around his tiny little finger.  Seriously, is there anything better than being a grandparent?  

Other than that, I've been slowly working on setting up a shop at Amazon.  It isn't live yet (thank goodness), but I'm hoping to have it ready to go when Handmade at Amazon goes live.  Too much to do and too little time!

Hold the Boats, I'm Not as Crazy as I Thought

Don't get me wrong, I'm still not as normal as some folks, but it turns out I'm not completely off my rocker when it comes to autumn colors.  Remember when I showed you these pieces and said I thought of them as autumn colors?

I've come up with a theory on that.  I went to Valentine (my hometown) this past weekend and spent some time out and about naturing.  Apparently the colors made more of an impression that I realized.  Look what palette you get if you run that soapweed photo through a palette generator:

Mystery solved!  I'm not as nuts as I thought I was.  Well, okay, the mismatched sandals and the snood thing are definitely headed in that direction, but I'm sticking by my color choices on this one.  I think I'll call it August in the Sandhills.

It's a really beautiful area (I've posted photos several times before, but some favorites are here and here).  I'll leave you with this little glimpse of heaven.

I'm Not Normal

I accepted the fact long ago that I am not normal, not quite like everyone else, and I'm cool with it.  Yes, that's me in the photo and my mother swears she has no idea what was going on there.  I suspect this was just one of the early signs of my un-normalcy.

This time of year as the days are getting shorter and people are thinking of football and harvests and autumn colors, I'm still in summer mode.  I have to be drug into fall kicking and screaming.  I don't know if it's my reluctance to let go of summer or just "me", but my take on autumn colors is even different than most people's.

I've been making some pieces that seem autumnal (in my mind) with tree themed focals and greens with browns.  I found a brass tree of life button at a Renaissance Festival in Colorado this summer.  I think it looks pretty nice in a band with a combination of khaki and brown with some myrtle green and turquoise. The back really shows off the colors.

Oak leaves and an acorn are front and center on the next button.  I went a little more traditional on this one, keeping with the myrtle green (it's a sort of blue tinged green) but dropping the turquoise cord.

The overall piece is a little darker without the lighter turquoise and I sort of like that.

It "feels" kind of warm and cozy to me, like a snuggly sweater on a brisk evening.  

I might even be convinced to like fall if it didn't mean summer was over.  I've been known to wear sandals into November, trying desperately to hang on to the very last shred of summer.  And to go back to the not normal thing?  I've also been known to do this more than once.  *sigh*

Valentine's Day in Macrame

Whether or not you are a lover of Cupid and pink frilly hearts and red and lace and all things romantic (and I am not), if you were born and raised in a town named Valentine, you have to celebrate Valentine's Day.  I'm pretty sure that one's in the rule book - "Rules of Social Behavior and Societal Norms for Valentinians".  You just have to let yourself go with the flow.  Embrace it and feel the love.  If you missed that chapter about my life, check the posts here and here to see some pretty photos of my hometown and one really tragic photo of teenage humiliation (mine).  Moving right along...

In an effort to comply with Ye Old Rules, I'm trying to make nice with some old enemies.  Red and Pink don't like me and the feeling is reciprocated twofold.  I've tried to like them, but they just don't give me the warm fuzzy feeling I get from cool colors (and yes, I see the irony there).  But since it's in the rule book and all, I figured I'd give it another shot.  I spent days looking at red beads and red cord and ordered up a whole bunch to beef up my stash.  

Then I didn't use any of them.

I'm still sort of obsessed with cuffs, so I thought I would expand on that for this project.  I did the top the same as the cuffs I designed for the cuff class, but I switched up the main panel.  I knotted a heart outline in the center, then brought a leaf and vine pattern off the heart in each direction.  It sort of reminds me of a Pennsylvania Dutch design.  I also added a scalloped edging with beads along the bottom for a sort of lacy finish.  I wanted the knotting to be the star of the show here, so I kept the it all monochromatic.  And yes, it's pink.  Or pink-ish.  Take that Red.

I think it's quite festive and I'd love to hang around and tell you more about it, but I really have to go order my Valentine's Day candy.  This year I'm getting myself some really pretty handmade truffles.  What!?  It's not that I think I might be "that" person (the one who doesn't get a Valentine's Day gift), but I'm not taking any chances.

Celebrating Autumn - Octoberfest 2014 Blog Hop

My friend Rita of Toltec Jewels is hosting her third annual Octoberfest Blog Hop today and I thought it would be fun to join.  She asks only that participants do something - anything - to celebrate autumn and blog about it.  I've been enjoying autumn for the past several weeks, and what's more autumn than apples?  A friend has over twenty apple trees and sent home a whole bunch of apples for us.  

After conning my daughter and her friend into helping, we peeled and chopped apples until we couldn't stand it anymore.  We ended up with a huge roaster (the giant one I use for Thanksgiving turkeys), a huge dutch over and a large crock pot full of apples.  I added a little sugar and cinnamon and a splash of apple juice and set them all to cook for hours and hours and hours.  The sugar in the apples caramelizes and the apples break down and when all is said and done, you end up with apple butter.  

We ended up with something like 15 pints of apple butter and still had bags and bags of apples left.  I've been slicing them and drying them in my dehydrators every night for a week now.  And honestly?  I am not sure when I'll ever be able to even LOOK at another apple.

In the weekend between apple butter and dried apples, my husband and I took a trip up through the Rocky Mountains.  It's one of our favorite things to do in the fall and we always try to time a trip when the leaves are turning.  

My photography skills are just not good enough to capture the beauty, but I always try.  Notice the gorgeous waterfall in the distance in this one?  We hiked up to get this view and it was so worth it!

My favorite, though, is always the vibrant yellow.

A while back I found a great variegated cord and used it to make a chain of leaves (the class is available here if you want to try it).  I was never quite satisfied with the outcome, so I set it aside.  After being inspired by the mountain trip, I dug it back out and made a few changes.  At a suggestion from a friend (thanks, Lindsay!) I used some lizard leather to make connectors and added some swags of colorful glass seed beads between the leaves.

I also made a clasp to match and sponged on some of the necklace colors.

And I ended up with a colorful autumn necklace with cascading leaves, funky leather connectors and multiple strands of beads.

And that, my friends, is this year's ode to autumn from me.  I hope you'll take some time to visit the other participants below and see what they did.  And be sure to swing by Rita's site and tell her if you like her blog hop!

Toltec Jewels (Hostess)

Dini Bruinsma
Marybeth Rich
Karin Grosset Grange

Andrea Zenith Glick
Nan Smith

  Becky Pancake

Lennis Carrier
Sue Kennedy

Kim Dworak
Jennifer Reno

Veralynne Malone
Lori Schneider
Shaiha Williams

Pam Traub

Kathy Lindemer

Blanca Medina

Debbie Rasmussen
Heather Richter

Sherri Stokey <----You are Here
Michelle McCarthy

Dana Hickey
Claire Fabian
Renetha Stanziano

Jami Shipp

Toni Gifford

Sandra McGriff

Ann Schroeder
Inge von Roos
Robin Reed

Andrea Rivers

Janine Lucas
 Deb Fortin
Cynthia Kent Machata

Laurel Hanson

Jasvanti Patel

Lee Koopman
 Renetha Stanziano