Beads of Courage

"Beads of Courage" is a charitable organization that provides support to children with serious illnesses. They provide beads to the children to mark accomplishments and milestones on the treatment journey they are on. It is a non-profit organization that is currently supporting over 30,000 children around the world in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and United Kingdom. The beads are "earned" by the children as they make their way through their treatment plans. The beads give the children a tool to help them understand and tell the story of their illness. You can read more about it here.

Jennifer Cameron of Glass Addictions has organized a Blog Hop, Charm Swap and Charity Auction to provide awareness and donations to this great charity. It is taking place this weekend with over 60 jewelry artists participating. Jen co-ordinated the charms made by everyone and sent a package of 10 charms off to each of us after receiving 11 charms from each of us. Quite a mammoth undertaking on her part. We each received 10 different charms and will be showing them on our blogs Tuesday November 25th .
November 25th is the date of the eBay auction which features one of each of these charms. You can easily own one or more of these fabulous charms too! Head over to The Beads of Courage eBay site and put in a bid on whichever charm strikes your fancy. You can own an artisan made charm and donate to a wonderful charity at the same time. The auction will be here

As a teaser here's a picture of my charms ready to send off.

Please check back here on Tuesday to see the real charms and check out the auction.

Playing with Clay!

It's official.....I'm seriously addicted to polymer clay! My jewelry table has been taking over by all my polymer clay tools, work surfaces, texture sheets, rubbing alcohol, bag full of multiple shaping tools, paint, sandpaper, etc, etc, etc. I've been having so much fun as I search for my style and learn new techniques to create what I imagine I can do with this amazing media.
Last week after making a whole bunch of pc headpins and painting them fun colours I created this Garden of Strange which resembles a garden from another planet....or so I imagine. Lots of fun but I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

I've listed some pairs of headpins in my Etsy and Indiemade shop but no nibbles yet. I guess they are only appealing to a particular, quirky kind of jewelry maker. What do you think about them?

Octoberfest Blog Hop

Thank you Rita from Toltec Jewels for hostessing this wonderful blog hop. Autumn is my favorite time of year as well. I've become less of a fan of hot, humid weather as I have grown older ( and wiser!). I no longer sun bath due to an episode of skin cancer several years ago and I find the heat and humidity of a normal summer's day in Southern Ontario too uncomfortable to enjoy.
Ah, but with the autumn comes cool, refreshing breezes and sunny, clear days to bundle up and walk forever in. I love putting on a sweater, jeans and  a jacket and head out to explore the world.The changing colours of the leaves is the most stunning display that nature shows us. It's like the final blaze before the fire dies down and sleeps for the winter. Maybe it's knowing what is to come that makes me appreciate it so much.

I have been playing with clay for  several weeks and had planned to make some jewelry with my clay creations . However the amount of work and finishing that goes into polymer clay has used up all my time so I'll just have to show you some of my polymer clay creations made in honour of the Autumn.
These beads were made from some orange and black clay using the Mokune Gane technique that didn't quite work out as planned. I'm discovering that that is the rule rather than the exception with polymer clay!

These feathers were made using a feather/ leaf tutorial I found online but I can't remember who by!

I love using Gilder's Paste but have discovered that it doesn't take well to either Renaissance Wax ( removes the paste completely) or acrylic varnish ( makes it permanently sticky!). Needless to say I've had many trials and errors in my discovery journey with polymer clay!
The next set of pictures show some of my more successful attempts using Gilders Paste as a finishing touch for polymer clay.

Beads and Pendant

Pendant

My first headpins! ( I have since cleaned the wires)

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my latest attempts at creating with polymer clay. I am having a lot of fun and love most of what I've made but am not sure if it appeals to others. What do you think? Would you buy any of my components?

Have fun browsing through the rest of the blogs featured in this 3rd Annual Octoberfest Blog Hop. Check out Toltec Jewels post and see the list of all the participants you can hop to and enjoy their creations.

Thanks for looking!

Nan of nanMade Jewelry

Good Luck, Bad Luck!!

This is a very delayed blog post because I've had trouble getting myself organized. Any of you who have read my blog over the last year will know that I've had quite a lot of bad luck with my health since November 2013. To recap briefly...I retired after 38 years of nursing and moved to a new town . Soon after moving in I had an accident by tripping in my back yard which resulted in my breaking my neck! That's the bad luck but the good luck is I had no serious long term affects. I wore a neck brace for 4 months and took it easy for the winter.
Soon after the neck brace was removed, I ended up back in the hospital in heart failure for 1 week. Again, bad luck  but I survived which is more good luck! It's been another restful time period this summer as I adjusted to my new normal and all the new medications I now have to take. It has slowed me down but I now have all the time in the world to spend on polymer clay and jewelry making!!!!
Pretty good luck, I guess!
Running simultaneously with this run of bad luck has been an incredible string of wins on the internet. I've been hesitant to talk about this in my blog because I didn't want people to think I was bragging ( and I didn't want to jinx myself!). Once the holiday rush ended last year I started spending a lot of time online, reading blogs and facebook regularly. As you know there are many contests and giveaways so I got in the habit of entering everyone I came across. Starting in January and continuing until last week I kept winning. Now that I've revealed this I'm sure my luck will change but that's only fair since I've won more than my share...7 or 8 in all! I really wanted to share what I won from some incredibly talented artists and thank them publically for their giveaways. I hope I haven't neglected anyone but it's been a complicated year.
I haven't taken pictures of everything but will try to credit everyone who contributed to my winnings. I will start with pictures since there is way too much text here.
March saw me winning the Art Bead Scene monthly challenge and getting a gift certificate from Mary Harding. She asked me to choose anything I wanted and custom made the following goodies for me. Check out her blog and Etsy shop to see more of her work.

Beautiful Copper Clay bracelet bars....I haven't created the right pieces for them yet.

Beautiful ceramic maple leaves .....they became a giveaway for my blog hop July 1st.

My next big win was from  Esfera Jewellery who had featured an artist  interview, Jetta Sellers, on her blog and had a giveaway of jewelry she made with beads from Jetta Bug. Janine has a great blog and has interviews with jewlery artists and giveaways every month. You have to follow her blog....you never know! I was given a choice of 2 bracelets of Janine's and chose this one.

If you notice it's broken it's because I wore it all summer and had a habit of playing with it until the twine holding the blue beads broke. I will repair it soon. I literally wore it everyday.
 It is the cutest bracelet ever!

Another contest I entered on Facebook was given by Niky of Silver Nik Nats, a jewelry artist in England who does incredible silver and jewelry work. I love her style and follow her blog and Etsy shop all the time! The earrings she gave away are stunning, just my style and made with my favorite gemstone ever, Labradorite! I couldn't believe my luck when I saw that I had won! I really wanted those earrings and here they are! ( they go very well with my bunny bracelet!)

Thank you, Niky, I love them!

Please check out Niky's blog and Etsy shop. You'll love them and her creations!

My most recent win was another one from Art Bead Scene blog which is a fabulous blog to follow if you have any interest in art beads, handmade components or jewelry made using art beads! That's pretty much every jeweler I know! Every week this blog features a post by one of their many talented contributors called Inside the Studio. Whichever artist it is writes a post about their studio or something they create inside their own studios. It's great to read and see and hear about their artistic vision and process. As well as this fabulous post they also have a giveaway hosted by the artist who is featured that week.

September 19th featured Ema Kilroy who is another artist who's work I greatly admire. In fact her lamp work beads were the first ones I ever bought during an online auction on Facebook! I received these fabulous lamp work beads yesterday and was going to make some earrings before posting but decided not to delay this post any longer. Here they are.....

Aren't they the most beautiful colours?


OMG this is a VERY LONG blog post but I can't neglect all the other wonderful folks that I've won from. 
The year started out with Ann Schroder's giveaway on her blog, Bead Love, which  was the first one I won. Beautiful art beads from Jenny Blasen, Humblebeads, Round Rabbit and Scorched Earth. How's that for a score?

Next blog Hop I entered was the Grow Your Blog party which was created to encourage traffic to everybody's blog. Since I was pretty new to the blogosphere then I eagerly joined in. Well almost everybody else who joined in hosted a give away on their blogs and I won one of them! 
I received fabulous dark chocolate and some very good health conscious magazines which given the issues I've had this year were very apropos!

I also won a wonderful colour filled painting from a blog I started following as a result of the Grow Your Blog Hop but I'm so disorganized that I can't find the name of the artist or the blog. as soon as I do I will come back to this and add it.

I won a fabulous macrame bracelet this summer from another jewelry artist on Facebook. It was also on my wrist all summer until it got stretched out of shape.  I think I'm a little rough on bracelets!!!!
The bracelet is in great shades of blue and green and I love it! It was made by Medina of Medina Medibeads on Facebook.


That's all folks! Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

My charms are in the mail!!!!

    With a little nudging from my friend , Rita, of Toltec Jewels I joined in with the Beads of courage challenge organized by Jennifer Cameron. I've never made multiples of anything before and this challenge involved producing 11 charms to send off to Jen so she receives them by Oct. 20th. She'll organize everybody's contributions and send 10 charms back to each of us. Mine went off by Canada Post today. They told me they'd get there in 4-6 days but we'll have to see!

What fun it will be to get 10 different works of art from jewelry artists whose work I am in awe of. The Beads of Courage part involves a set of all the charms being auctioned off on eBay and the proceeds going to the organization Beads of Courage which supports children with serious illnesses .  It's a great charity and an admirable one to donate to. Here is their information.

     This group of jewelry makers donates time, energy and money to this charity. The money raised by the eBay auction of charms is donated totally to this charity. Last year $1500.00 was donated and hopefully we'll see more this year.

The reveal for this challenge is November 14th and that is also the day of the auction. I hope all of my readers will remember and check out the auction on that day. I'll be revealing the charms I made on my blog that day but they have to remain a secret until then.  Here are some teaser pics to pique your interest. See you on the 14th.

You'll have to come back November 14th to see what I made

Gemstone and Metal Blog Hop

I finally have the chance to be in one of Lisa Lodge's blog hops. I have always enjoyed seeing what everybody creates using the jewels selected and sent out by Lisa of A Grateful Artist  Pine Ridge Treasures. When I saw the first notice about this hop I jumped at the chance to participate.
When I received my goodies from Lisa I immediately started planning what I would do and forgot to take a picture. I remembered halfway through the project so here is a picture of some of them.

Silver Leaf Jasper gemstones and antique brass metal .

My first impression of these stones was that the colour of the jasper is very dull especially with all the bright jewel tones we've been seeing this summer.  So there was my challenge....to brighten up these stones which are quite beautiful but needed something. I decided to work with the reddish-orange stones in my blog kit and use that family of colour to highlight the grey stones.

Carnelian and Agate gemstones with Silver Leaf Jasper

Jasper with antique brass clasp and Carnelian dangle

Lamp Work  Beads from Judith Billig

 I ventured further into the colour wheel and used some soft orange lamp work beads in this bracelet which is my favorite of the three. Probably because it feels more summery than the others which seem more suited to autumn.

Please hop on over to Lisa's blog to enjoy her creations then check out all the other participants. I can't wait to how everybody met the challenge

Your hostess:  Lisa Lodge, A Grateful Artist

Kim Dworak, Cianci Blue

Marybeth Rich, A Few Words from within the Pines

Karen Grosset Grange, Ginkgo et Coquelicot

Veralynne Malone, Designed by Vera

Katrina Taylor, I Wanna Go Out

Ann Schroeder, Bead Love

Kathleen Breeding, 99 Bottles of Beads on the Wall

Terri Wlaschin, Dances in Fog

Margaret Pelech, Big Margaret

Jo-Ann Woolverton, It's a Beadiful Creation

Kathy Zeigler Lindemer, Bay Moon Design

Heather Richter, Desert Jewelry Designs

Carolyn Lawson, Carolyn's Creations

Toltec  Jewels, Jewel School Friends

Melissa Trudinger, Bead Recipes

Shaiha Williams, Shaiha's Ramblings

Chris Eisenberg, Wanderware (May be delayed a few days)

Eleanor Burian Moore, The Charmed Life

Christine Stonefield, Sweet Girl Design

Robin Reed, Artistry HCBD

Laurie Vyselaar, Lefthand Jewelry

Cassi Renee Paslick, Beads: Rolling Downhill

Crystal Thain, Here Bead Dragons

Alicia Marinache, All the Pretty Things (May be delayed a few days)

Becky Pancake, Becky Pancake Bead Designs

Judy Campbell, Macmillanmarie Jewellery Design

Nan Smith, Handmade Jewelry Nanmade

Marde Lowe, FanciMarDesigns

Linda Anderson, From the Bead Board

Leithleach Alainn Seodra, Alainn Jewelry

Lisa E. Prewitt Knappenberger, LiRaysa Designs
Paige Maxim, Paige Maxim Designs

My favorite time of year!

I always breath a big sigh of relief when Autumn arrives each year. For many people it is just the harbinger of winter but for me it is a much needed respite from the hot, humid weather of southern Ontario. I loved summer when I was younger and healthier but since my heart disease appeared I can't tolerate the heat and humidity and spend most of my time indoors in air conditioned comfort.
I also love the clothes at this time of year.....wool sweaters, jackets, cozy scarves and socks.I love going for a brisk walk on a cool, sunny day and not break out in a sweat after 5 minutes! And the changing colours are so inspirational!

September has always felt like the New Year for me and I find it easier to get started on new projects and get organized for the rest of the year. I've been playing all summer with new jewelry techniques and having a blast experimenting with polymer clay but now it's time to pull it all together. I am getting  my jewelry and components photographed and will be adding to my Etsy  and Zibbet shop this week. Stay tuned!

Here are some of what I've been working on over the summer. Some will be in my shop and some are stepping stones to future projects.

              Polymer Clay, Acrylic Paint and Gilders' Paste Zentangle Experiments

                         

Summer Earrings

                                        Birthday Bracelets for my BFFs

                                                   Adora Bunny

Happy September!