"Trim The Tree" Contest At Happy Mango Beads

Ever since I discovered it, Happy Mango Beads has been one of my favorite online bead stores.  They are currently sponsoring a contest, and each lucky winner will receive a gift certificate to spend on the unique selection of beads that can be found on their website.

An entry into the contest would be a beaded Christmas ornament, suitable for hanging on a Christmas tree, and would fit into one of ten categories listed in the official rules.

One thing that I like about contests at Happy Mango Beads is that, unlike contests sponsored by other bead sites, they do not require entrants to use beads that were bought at their store.   You don't even have to be a customer of theirs to enter. 

Check out their Facebook page to see photos of the ornaments that have been entered so far.  Then try your hand at making your own ornament to enter into the contest.  Good luck with your entry!

Art Every Day Month

When I first read about Art Every Day Month last year I thought it was such a great idea to get your creative juices moving and to give your artistic impulses a place where they can be shared with other people who also have wonderful creations to share.  So this year I decided to commit to creating something every day during the month of November.

To help me with my task, I am borrowing from Sarah Bush, whose blog Make Great Stuff I have admired for some time.  Sarah has been promoting her 20-Minute Technique as a way to help us creative types to actually get down to work, even if for only twenty minutes at a time.

So, I set my timer for twenty minutes and I went to work making the earrings pictured above.  I had just gotten the black Swarovski crystal pearls, and I was looking for a way to use them.  I paired them up here with red aventurine beads.  It took slightly more than my allotted twenty minutes to make these earrings, but that's okay.  And by the time I finished with the photography, a collateral creative process that frequently bogs me down, it was about an hour later.  But that's okay, too.

As soon as I get the opportunity I will be posting these earrings for sale at my Etsy shop.

Triangles Are Speaking To Me

I wanted to add some new skills to my repertoire, so I decided to  take a jewelry design and casting class through my local recreation department.  I was working on some designs and looking through them to figure out which ones I liked the best.  As it turned out, most of my favorite designs included triangles in some fashion or other.  The instructor told me that it seems that triangles are speaking to me.  This was something that I never would have thought of without having done this exercise.

Serendipitously, when I got home I saw the triangular silver leaf jasper beads on sale at one of my favorite beading websites and I ordered them right away.  I was able to make these earrings before the next class session, and walk in with my triangles on.  This was a super fun project for me.

BTW, these earrings are not intended to match one another.  They belong to a new line that I have just begun working on and that I'm labelling "non-conformist."