Chinese New Year hair tie

I'm still loving these fake Chinese coin dangly things. I made a shrinky-dink (shrink plastic) square with the word Fu (Happiness) on it - upside down which means Happiness is arriving. I put it on a regular black hair tie thingy. I wore a set of these to the Lion Dance dinner last night at C & Y Restaurant in Cleveland's Asiatown. It was awesome. Best General Tso's chicken I've ever had.

I'm a girl with a pearl earring.

Earrings I made... Sterling silver "link" with spiral/leaf, and one glass pearl drop.

Bok choy and coin necklace

peter max pouch

I "inherited" the 1970's Peter Max bedspread from my sister, so I made her this little zippered pouch as a consolation prize. There's plenty of bedspread left for more items! The pouch was fun to try - I lined it and sewed the zipper in between the lining and outside - an interesting spatial relations problem. And, I linked those hippie jingly bells onto the zipper (it was a recycled zipper from my kid's old backpack). The whole thing is about 6" x 8". I'd like to try making some more lined pouches like this.

cuff bracelet

I made this on the loom, I really like it but continue to be ambivalent about the method of knotting/weaving in ends to connect the two ends of the bracelet. It's hard to weave in the thick elastic strands properly. But I love the color & shape & feel of the thing. I used cube beads for the band and then sewed the round beads on as "fringe" along the edges.

Made chandelier earring

I'm excited because I finally made a chandelier earring that I like. I went to a beadshow last weekend and got these turquoise nugget beads - the lumpy, bubblegum-looking kind. Plus, these wonderful Indian bells - a whole bag of them.

So now I have a turquoise necklace and jingly-earring set. These earrings are super jingly. Almost to the point of being annoyingly cheerful. But I feel they are keeping away the uncheerful spirits.

Making the earrings wasn't too hard- kind of labor intensive, but I think it would get easier with practice. Lots of issues with making pins the right length and getting the loops right. Plus, I did my first "wire working" in which I hammered flat the little spiral at the bottom of the center turquoise bead. It came out pretty nice, I think.

Dolomite slab clock

My friend makes these. Hand-collected in Michigan, sliced and polished, clearcoated, and made into a desk clock.

bead hanging

Beads knotted on clear fishing line.
The Cat likes it. Hanging in the window for the colors to shine through.