Summer Beach

What better way to celebrate a holiday weekend than to take at least one day and do only fun, play kinda stuff

Going to see the movie The Last Airbender was a treat, I liked it so much we actually saw it twice over the holiday. I then dashed off to Borders to get the book, only to find it’s a graphic novel…  can I bring myself to read a graphic novel? I can roll with the times, why not?

Simple Pleasures

An easy beading project was just the ticket for a relaxing afternoon. The bracelet was a “build your own kit” from Alada Beads where I just had to pick the colors; my favorite colors of aqua,  sea green and copper. I had enough beads and components left over to improvise some matching earrings. Sometimes simple is very satisfying.

Aqua OOAK button bracelet

But that got me looking at the assortment of fused glass buttons on my design table. I’ve been designing buttons for a wholesale catalog. This, besides being a lot more time consuming and a lot more work than I could ever have imagined, has left me with a rather large selection of single OOAK (one of a kind) buttons. Looking at these with my freshly finished bracelet (above) in my hand was a short leap to the next project.

Button Bracelet

I raided my stash of novelty yarns and found some lovely aqua sparkly stuff, not too hairy – I don’t like hairy. I raided my stash of large beads and found some glass dangley things too (technical term, that). After a few false starts to try to achieve my vague vision, I settled on crocheting the novelty yarn with the buttons, beads and dangles not-quite randomly picked up and crocheted in the chain.

Button, button, who has the... ?

The yarn was mostly rayon and not disposed to wear as durable as I might like. In an effort to avoid strewing buttons and beads in a trail behind at the local RAVE (like I even know what one is, do they still have them?) I threaded Tigertail through all of the buttons and beads and cinched them up snugly to the right length. Adding a toggle catch with crimps was the final touch and viola! This would be a marvelous way to use any and all kinds of shanked buttons, I see more in my future! 

Deb H

PS – we can see the town fireworks from our back deck, they were beautiful but Shadow (our rescue husky) did not like them one little bit. It’s a real experience when a 65 pound dogs keeps trying to climb into your lap!

Earrings for the Writer

Sometimes you see an idea that that is a “must do”.

I get a vast number of newsletters in my e-mail box. Some are really great, some are only a quick glance. One that I really like is Embellishments by Quilting Arts. It’s a great source of ideas for jogging your mind off into other directions as they tend to be very mixed-media.

Elegant Pencils

I saw a photo of Belinda Spiwach’s pencil charms and knew that my writer daughter had to have some earrings. I decided a little wrapped silver wire and a couple of seed beads were in order too. Not too much, the pencils demanded simplicity.

Writer-Girl's well dressed ears

She loved them!

Deb H