New Works In Progress

Well here we are in the heart of holiday season. It took me a few days to recover from all the food that I prepared for Christmas - and we're still working on it! I'll try to remember that next year and cut down on my baking activities... Tonight will be the last night of my holiday food extravaganza. My birthday was yesterday, my stepdaughter's birthday was last Tuesday, and we're going out to dinner tonight to celebrate. There's a restaurant in Oakland (CA) that I'm very fond of, so we're all going to dine at Doña Tomás. Normally I don't care all that much for Mexican food, but this restaurant is wonderful!

Even though the big holiday crunch is over, I've managed to retain my ambition regarding projects. I've got several of them in progress, so I've decided that Mondays will be Works In Progress day.

I made a lariat out of the autumn leaf bead that I posted about earlier - the first lariat I've ever made - and after test driving it, I've decided to make several more. I raided my stash of leaf beads and pulled out a few that I think will look nice. The problem will be getting good pix of them. Here's the first one I'm working on. The colors in this piece are beautiful but very subtle. I put the piece on my scanner, but the colors just don't show up well. The leaf bead is a mixture of gray, amber, and some very subtle hints of blue. The veins are black, and the leaf has a few smatterings of fine silver dots. The bead above it is a mixture of blue and deep olive green, encased in clear with a few very faint blue lines around the circumference. The body of the lariat is done with various sizes of seed beads in rootbeer, iris peacock, silver, charcoal, light sage, and transparent aqua with a greenish cast to the center.



























I must be in a neutral mood these days - the second piece in progress is done in very similar colors but I'm thinking about livening it up with a bold splash of red. This will be a short necklace, and I'm thinking about attaching this center piece to a chain rather than beading the whole piece. We'll see how it goes... Along with my leaf and accessory beads, I've included some Czech glass leaves, a few wired coral beads, and some wired labradorite beads. I can't wait to test drive this one! I think it will look fabulous with a "little black dress".




Earlier today I was looking at the Etsy Treasury that was used to create the front page I happened upon, and when I hit the big blue arrow to go back to the Treasury I saw that it had come from Treasury West. I also saw that the blue box was just about to appear, so I managed to create another treasury. Here's my latest curation in Treasury West.

And now I'm off to work on these jewelry projects so that I can finish them up and get them into my Etsy store. Hope you all have a creative day!