Award!

Thank you to Smadar's Treasure for giving me the Arte Y Pico Award!

The rules of this award are as follows:

1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, regardless of language

2) Each award has to have the name of the author with a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him/her the award.

4) Award-winner and giver must show the link to the Arte y pico blog, so others can see the origin of this award

5) These rules must be shown

I will shortly start looking through creative blogs to pass on this award to others.  At that point, I will update this post!  Thanks again to Smadar's Treasure.  Go check out her blog - she does fantastic work!

New Bracelets

I've been super impressed with all the lovely bracelets I've seen made by EBW members lately.  Also, the concept of making your own closure has seemed particularly interesting, as I've been getting fed up with the quality of the clasps I bought.  So this week, I've been working on a few bracelets (and closures!) of my own.  

Saturday and Sunday:  I realized how few brown/earthy pieces I've made.  Which is odd, considering how much I like this family of colors.  So, I made a netted bracelet.

Sunday and Monday: I've been hearing 'peyote, peyote, peyote' ever since I joined EBW, so I thought I'd look into that stitch, and how it was made.  Well, I opened up some instructions, and realized it was a stitch I'd figured out for myself a few months back, but just hadn't done much with.  So I decided to use it for this bracelet, inspired by stained glass.

Tuesday and Wednesday:  Then I was on a roll, so I tried two-drop (?) peyote.  I really like how this bracelet turned out - the pattern is based on detailing I've been using in some drawing and just basically sketches in the margins of notebooks.  The bracelet drapes delightfully!

Thursday:  This idea just came into my head, and at the last minute, I decided to add the orange beads for a little extra flair.  Somehow, I keep coming back to floral themes...  They're just so fun to make!
Any of these that don't sell will go up on Etsy after I get back from the Ft. Sumner rodeo next week!  Maybe I'll have to check out the Billy the Kid Tombstone race while I'm there...

Jewelry Displays

In a little over a week, I'll be selling for the first time in person.  The last few days, I've been busy preparing my jewelry stands.  Here's a look at the process:

Plain boards and dowel rods... interesting starting place. :)  Step 1 was to get them all cut to acceptable sizes, and step 2 was to drill lots of holes for where they'd be attached.

Next, cover the boards in fabric.  I attached the fabric to the boards using electrical tape.  It seems to work so far, but if it starts coming off, I'll go back to good ol' duct tape.  I suppose wood staples, tacks, or nails would also suffice.  Also probably glue.  But that could get messy..

The tops of the boards look great, though!

The dowel rods got spray painted black.

And stuck full of nails.

Screw the dowel rods to the boards, and voila!  Some of the rods and nails are a bit catty-wompus, but it adds to the uniqueness....  right?

And finally, a preview with earrings.  I need to hem up the cloth they're resting on to use as my table cloth.