Less Than Two Weeks Until Christmas!

I can't believe Christmas is almost here! While I love Christmas, I relish the anticipation of the day. It is so depressing when it is over. The months after the holidays (Halloween through New Years) seem to dark and drab. All the decorations are put away and there is nothing but the rest of the cold winter to look forward to. I think I will have to come up with some exciting jewelry ideas to make those dark days brighter. In the meantime, I am still making some fun jewelry for the season. Today I made three fun pieces. One a red and white faux pearl wire woven bracelet, the second is a white and silver bracelet I call my winter bracelet, and the third is a fun sparkly blue crystal bracelet.

Christmas is getting closer and closer!

I can't believe it is only a few weeks until Christmas! How the time has flown! I have been working on promoting my items as much as possible on Facebook, and also making new items. I sold one of my copper bracelets, I hope the recipient enjoys it very much!

I have also been working on a variety of bracelets woven with wire and similar to the one above but silver tone.

 I think these bracelets really pop on your wrist and draw people's attention. I think they would make great gifts, hope I get some sales on these.

Christmas is Coming!

Time sure has flown by! I have been lax in posting anything lately, busy getting ready for the holidays! I have made many pretty items and have even taken pictures of them with a holiday theme!

I will also be offering free gift wrapping through Christmas.

I love gift wrapping, so it will be fun for me too! I am looking forward to Christmas and hope to have some good sales!

http://playfulkittenjewelry.artfire.com/

I am also selling Avon too, so crossing my fingers for sales! 

http://www.youravon.com/lindabohm

87 degrees and Snowing!

I am watching the weather channel. I can't believe how fast the temperatures are going from massive heat waves to snow in some areas. I think the weather may be a little bipolar! My mind may be a little bipolar too! I am sitting here in shorts, but I am thinking about winter and snow. I was walking around the craft store last week, and noticed that they are already putting out their Christmas items; decorations, craft items, etc. I could not resist picking up a few items to play with. I came across the cutest little snowflakes, and it gave me an idea to create a necklace using them and some light blue swarovski crystals to create icicles. I am really pleased with the way it turned out.

I also made a couple of pairs of earrings using other small decorations that I purchased.

I think I will be heading back to the craft store this week to see what other fun decorations I can find to work with. When I had been in the craft store previously, they had only just started setting up their Christmas aisles. I am sure they are finished with set up at this point, and I will have a much wider selection to shop.

I love holidays! There is nothing I enjoy more than creating holiday themed jewelry. I can really let my imagination run wild and create some fun pieces.

Mission Complete

I mentioned in my last post that I had seen all the new colors for fall while walking through Macy's. I have created two new pieces to complement the new color palette. In the first piece, I decided to use the Aventurine that I had purchased in Julian to make a purple and red necklace. Since I only had 7 pieces of the Aventurine, I spaced them out so that they would lay in an equidistant pattern. I bracketed the Aventurine with red beads and lay some chain pieces between them to make the connections. Here is the finished design.

I really love how the red really brings out the purple color of the Aventurine. It is a striking combination!

For the next design, I decided that I would work with teal and black. I laid them out alternately, but realized that I needed something extra for a little variety for the eye. I decided to alternate silver plated spacers between the beads. I really like the way the necklace came out. It is bright yet conservative looking depending on what you would wear it with.

September...Fall is coming soon!

I went to Julian today with some friends. We were supposed to go to a grape stomping festival, and we did get there, but it was a really lame festival...on top of that it was so hot I could feel my feet burning.  We decided to leave and head into the town of Julian to find someplace air conditioned to have some lunch. Unfortunately, the food was not exactly the best, but it was cooler than being outside. My friend did pick up some apple pies from the Julian bakery. Wow, these apple pies are amazingly good. Fresh picked apples in those pies. On the way home we stopped at a place where you could pick your own raspberries. Too hot for me in the sun, but my friend picked a quart. At this point we were all ready to head home, so we got in the car and started for home. We were getting close to home when we decided that we should stop for dinner. We had some kids with us and they wanted ice cream, so we found a place nearby called Farrell's. The restaurant was located in a mall in Mission Viejo, so we found the mall and parked the car. Of course, we parked at the complete other side of the mall from our goal. Sigh...always seems to happen that way. We parked near Macy's, so we walked through the store on the way into the mall and our goal.  Now you are probably wondering why I am telling you this story when I usually write about the jewelry I make. Well hold on! There is a point to this story! As I walked through Macy's I noticed that they had their fall items out...the color palette is so bold! Reds, Purples and Teals! Beautiful and vibrant colors! I am so excited, I want to start working on some pieces that will focus on these colors! Even better, I just picked up these lovely purple aventurine beads which will work perfectly in either a necklace or bracelet! Check back soon, I hope to have some beautiful new items to show you!

Creating a New Piece

I decided to create another necklace with Autumn colors. I have such wonderful beads and they are calling me to use them! I'm going to walk through the creation of a necklace step by step. Since this is going to be an Autumn themed necklace I decided to use a chocolate color chain. The first step was to decide how ling I wanted the necklace to be. I have decided to use chain draping, so I want the main part of the necklace to be relatively short. Almost a choker length, but nor quite that short, I decided on 17 inches in length. I added a chocolate clasp and connector ring to close the necklace. Since I want to attach draping chains, I measured out the distance that I wanted the chains to be from each other. I put the main connector directly opposite from the clasp. I then decided on adding two more connectors on each side of the clasp....after measuring the length, 3 inches apart was the correct length.

When you are done connecting your rings to the chain you should have 5 rings at three inches apart. Now the next step is to get the beads ready to be connected to the chain connectors. I decided to use some burgundy colored beads. I used five headpins, on four of them I used one 8mm bead and two 4mm beads; on the Fifth headpin I used one 10mm bead an 8mm bead and a 6mm bead. I made a loop to connect the headpins to my connector links.

I connected the headpin with the 10mm bead on the connector directly across from my clasp. The remaining headpins were connected to the connectors surrounding those beads.

Now you have all the beads connected to your chain, it is now time to start adding the draping chains. I measured out a good length of chain that would connect to the first two connectors surrounding the main bead piece, while leaving enough room for the main bead to hang within the loop.

Once this step was complete, I measured out four more chain lengths that were equal to be the draping cross chains. Two of the chains would connect from the last two connectors to the main bead and the other two chains would connect from the first two connectors to the clasp.

Here is the finished product!