The Wigglebutt Blog

I know some people are already getting into full summer but we are just entering into Spring. Rhubarb a slight hint of green on the trees  just starting to leaf out  So far the weather has been awesome but it's still too early to do much planting. Still getting a little cool at night. (28º yesterday morning) Last weekend I spent prepping my garden area. I got it weeded and fertilized and ready for planting the 57 perennials that the post office was supposed to deliver Thursday that still haven't been delivered  that hopefully are still alive when they do finally get around to delivering them. This weekend I am getting my new pots ready to go. A few years ago, my husband decided that he wanted to put  in a garden area at the front of the house. So he hauled rocks and dirt and he shopped for plants and he did all of the planting himself. (He's not exactly a green thumb kinda guy) It's done quite well and I only have to nag a couple times each s...

Apparently I was planning on making these.  Beaded beads, yummy lampwork glass beads by Juls .  And these. Beaded beads, focal by Juls , Australian jasper, swarovski crystal They are currently residing in my Etsy shop .

See? The photo stinks but the beads are definately drool-worthy☺ All of these gorgeous beads made it all the way from Juls in Alabama  to Alaska in pristine condition. I spent a couple of hours one evening, opening tons of little bundles of bubble wrap. (It was better than Christmas morning!) When I went to bed that night I left the box of beads on the table next to my chair. Said box of beads also contained tissue paper - I know better. Lily-girl has a little addiction to all things paper. She can eat a half a box of kleenex in 10 minutes flat. Paper towels, napkins it doesn't matter, she can have a roll of toilet paper strung down the hall and halfway up the stairs in no time. And apparently the addiction includes, Yep, tissue paper.  The next morning when I went back upstairs there was a giant pile of gorgeous glass on the floor. After picking everything up and assessing the damage I found that there was  only one broken bead. I'm sure that was due to the workmanship ...

the clay kind☺ I have a really nice customer at my day job (Honey and I run an auto repair shop - yes! we work together, have for almost three years and we haven't tried to kill each other! yet.) Her and her husband have been coming in since they came to Alaska via military orders almost three years ago. She was originally nicknamed "The Jag Lady" since she drives an older Jaguar that she treats like her baby,  but she quickly became "The Dragon Lady" cuz I couldn't make baby dragons fast enough.   She would buy every one I could make. (Honey suggested I put a small display case in the lobby of the shop, smart guy) Well, I have been distracted by numerous pursuits lately and I haven't been working on my favs, the dragon babies. Well Kathy and her Hubby are being shipped out of Alaska in a couple of months so when they were in for a tire swap last week there was a request made and then a promise made, (all of which was much to the chagrin of Kathy'...

I was planning on cleaning up so I could find some room to do some sculpting. What happened is what usually happens... distraction☺ I liked the color combo of my last necklace so much that I wanted to make a set of earrings to match. Yeah... I thought it would be easy to just throw together a set since I already had the colors worked out. Yeah RIGHT! It was HARD to figure out how to string together that many shapes and  colors in earrings and not have it just look like a mess. And I should know cuz I had about 30 different "messes", (**~~mourning a gross of head and eye pins~~*)  but I finally ended up with a pair I like☺ They are funky but I think they have the same 'feel' as the necklace. And can somebody tell me where this stuff has been all my life??? I am in love with memory wire!  Who knew? After the initial distraction, which lasted almost a day and a half, between jewelry and laundry; I was able to accomplish this. There really is a table under ther...

...getting accomplished this week besides the occasional random spontaneous happy dance. And this... Actually this isn't what I ended up with, it's just what I started with (after 4 tries) I usually don't use a lot of different colors in my designs. It's not that I don't like color, I LOVE COLOR! It's just that I am not comfortable with my ability to put a lot of colors together in a pleasing way. Well, once I stood back and really looked at this I thought, "I like it but I think it could use some yellow." and since I didn't have anything in the yellow I was wanting, I had to make some. I made two different shades of yellow disks. So after curing, varnishing and re-curing, I started adding the yellow. Then I thought that maybe the focal looked kinda small with all of the others I was adding, so...................... I changed out the focal for a larger one, and I am SUPER-duper happy with this. To me it says "light, airy and happy". ...

Since learning the circular peyote stitch, I have completed two necklaces using it. the first one you can see here and here . Then I was over visiting Dawn's blog As she was talking about learning a new technique making the "chain" part of the necklace, she mentioned that she used a stitch called a "russian spiral"  ( Thanks Dawn☺)  and since I love the spiral look, I had to find out how to make it. I hunted around on the net and finally came across a video tutorial. To me it was totally worth the cost, I learn so much quicker if I can actually "see and do". Step by step photos in a printed tutorial are good, but it is much easier for me to 'get it' if I can work along with the instructor as they explain each step. Especially when it comes to seed beads. That was two weeks ago and I fell madly in love with this stitch. Once you get past the first three rounds you can do it without hardly thinking about it. It is the perfect  "curl up i...