And the Winner is...

The winner of the "Peace & Love" Giveaway is...

#1 Stefanie of Stefanie's Sammelsurium

Congratulations, Stefanie!
Please email me your mailing address and I'll get your package right out to you. Thank you and happy beading with your new wooden pendants!

Also, thank you to everyone who entered and thanks to Wholeport.com for the giveaway items.
Stay tuned next week for another fun jewelry piece, another giveaway and another chance to win!
Peace out.

A Necklace and the Peace & Love Giveaway

Recently, I received an email from the lovely gal, Jenny over at WholePort.com, inviting me to take a look at her website. I really appreciated the friendly, personal email I got from her. Wholeport is an online craft supply site and I was more than happy to take a look around. While there, I found a few things I liked a lot. The first was this wooden peace sign. Jenny was kind enough to send me some sample pendants to try out, along with a few other items that I will share in another post coming up.

Here's my "Peace on Earth" Necklace I made with my peace sign pendant from WholePort.com. For my necklace, I wanted to give the pendant a worn, vintage look as if the necklace had been around the neck of a flower child from the 60's and 70's. I distressed the wooden pendant with a piece of fine grit sandpaper. I really like the affect. It adds some extra interest and dimension to the focal and the light sanding also smoothed out any rough spots in the wood. My necklace also features handmade ceramic beads by the artists of Sedillo Hill Studio and some copper African trade beads. The beads are simply knotted on some chocolate brown waxed cotton cord and finished off with a loop and large wood bead closure. A perfect Summer necklace.

The "Peace & Love" Giveaway

Okay, now for the giveaway part!!! Jenny at Wholeport also sent me some extra items to host a giveaway on my blog. This will be the first of two giveaways. The second giveaway will be in a separate post coming up next week. The first giveaway package is this collection of wooden cut-out pendants I am calling the "Peace & Love" Giveaway:

You will receive the the item shown above: Two large cut-out heart pendants and three wood peace signs that are a good size for either a pendant or charm for a bracelet or even earrings, too.

If you would like to enter my "Peace & Love" giveaway, you can do one of the following:

"LIKE" WholePort on Face Book: www.facebook.com/wholeport

OR

"FOLLOW" WholePort on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wholeport
OR
If you don't have Facebook or Twitter, you can just visit the website: www.wholeport.com

Then, leave me a comment letting me know you want to enter.  

Leave a comment on this post by Thursday, July 14th. Then, I will randomly select a winner from the comments on Friday, July 15th.

Even if you're not interested in the giveaway, please feel free to comment without mentioning the giveaway in your comment.

Also, in addition to this giveaway, Jenny is happy to spread the love even more by offering 10% off all items at www.wholeport.com with coupon code: CRAFTFUN10 that's good until July 31st, 2011.

Good Luck on the Giveaway!

and 

happy shopping at WholePort.com for new beading or craft supplies.

Also, stay tuned for the second giveaway coming up next week.

Peace & Love, Baby!

Lucky Talisman Necklace

 This month, I received a lucky horseshoe pendant from Melanie Brooks of Earthenwood Studio for the design team challenge. I love this cute pendant! It has a horseshoe symbol on the front and the word "lucky" inscribed on the back. I knew right away I wanted to create a charm talisman necklace for myself. A special totem piece to remind me of important things in my day to day life. The idea of creating jewelry with powerful symbolic meaning really speaks to me. I chose a fairly simple design because I wanted the necklace to be a universal piece I would wear with everything.

  Originally, I thought I would buy some charms and hand pick specific ones for this necklace. I don't have as many charms as I would like, but I dug through my stash and I found these three. A feather, a heart-in-hand, and a dragonfly. I decided to just use what I had. After I finished my necklace, I decided to do a little research and find out the meanings of each symbol and charm. Here's what I found:

The Horseshoe - Horseshoes are a symbol of good luck in many cultures. Especially, Ireland and European countries. Legend has it that a horseshoe pointing upwards will gather your luck and hold it like a vessel. If the horseshoe is pointing downward, your luck will pour out and you will be showered with it.

The Feather - Feathers are a powerful symbol, especially in Native American cultures. They usually symbolize a higher spiritual path.

Heart-in-Hand - This symbol represents compassion, charity or helping others in some way. It also symbolizes putting ones love, heart and soul into the things one makes with their hands.

The Dragonfly - As a creature of the wind, the dragonfly represents change. As a creature of the water, they represent emotions, the subconscious and/or dreams. These symbolic meanings are particularly found in Asian and Native American cultures. Some of the other symbolic meanings for dragonflies are prosperity, good luck, strength, peace and harmony.

I'm wondering what all this could mean for me? Yes, I do think there are some important messages here for me to think about. After all, it was my intention to make a lucky talisman/totem necklace for myself.

I will leave you while I ponder the deeper meanings of life....

  Oh, and if you know of any other meanings for the symbols in the necklace, please let me know in the comments! Or leave me any comment you like...I love your comments! :)

A Jewelry Accord: Making of a jewelry book: Tools, Materials and Fin...

 Hey, Everyone!

Check out my post on A Jewelry Accord blog. There's a little sneak peak and an update on our book!

A Jewelry Accord: Making of a jewelry book: Tools, Materials and Fin...: "Today, I'm going to give you a little update and a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of our upcoming jewelry instruction book due out in ..."

Zinnia

I love bright, vivid colors for Summer. Doesn't this cheery yellow just make you smile? :) Yellow isn't usually in my normal color palette to work with even though I like the color. I've seen it popping up everywhere in fashion the past few years, so I've been more attracted to it lately.

This happy, sunny color is in the inspirational artwork for the current Art Bead Scene Monthly Challenge. The perfect opportunity to work with some yellow in a jewelry piece! I love these lemony agate beads paired with this gorgeous Zinnia connector by Mellisa of Chinook Jewelry. The yellow beads really pop with the complimentary deep purple silk beading cord. I added a bit of purple dupioni silk from Ornamentea to accent the connector. I frayed the silk to add a little texture and interest; the perfect finishing touch!

Path of Life

I made a new bracelet design a few nights ago in the studio. I really like it! Here, I strung some blue crazy lace agate ovals, blue agate rounds, some Czech glass spacers that almost have the look of sterling silver, a copper "Path of Life" charm, and a few art beads from some of my favorite artisans: A copper raku ceramic pinch bead by Duane Collins of Elements Pottery and a "Soul Sister" lampwork bead by Kelley Wenzel of Kelley's Beads.

Instead of attaching a traditional clasp, I made an adjustable slide closure with a strand of soft suede lace and a large-hole copper bead. Can you see how I did that there? It's really simple to do. I ended my beading with two sterling rings that I fed the suede lace through. Then, I strung the large hole bead onto both ends of the suede. Lastly, I made sure I could slip my hand through the bracelet before finishing the suede off with a couple of knots.

Summer Bliss

When I received my ice cream cone pendant from Melanie of Earthenwood Studio for the design team challenge, it immediately brought to mind fun outdoor activities, laughter and happy times. It made me think of all my favorite things to do in the Summertime. For me, the best part of Summer is enjoying the warm weather and doing fun things like going to the beach, walking along the boardwalk eating ice cream, playing carnival games at a Summer fair, riding a roller coaster or two, eating an ice cream cone....that's after the roller coaster, and maybe a few rounds of mini golf! And...did I mention eating ice cream on a cone? Somehow, you can NOT do any of these Summer activities without ice cream being involved. It's the epitome of Summer and fun times. I love Summer and I love ice cream and who doesn't, right? It's pure bliss!

Here is the necklace I made with Melanie's pendant. I call it "Summer Bliss" and I would totally wear this doing the above mentioned activities and have a ball doing it.

"Summer Bliss"

Ice Cream Cone Pendant: Earthenwood Studio.

Ceramic Mermaid Beads: Gaea.

Happy Summer! 

Now, check out what the rest of the design team did with their ice cream...



Andrew ThorntonGaea Cannaday Denise Yezbak MooreErin Prais-Hintz Heather PowersLorelei Eurto Lori AndersonJean Yates Marie Dodd Guest Designers:   Michelle Mach and Amy Sprite