The Wigglebutt Blog

And it is so PUUURRRTY☺ Look at those colors! There is magnesite and fresh water pearls and just look at that pink jade! I really love working with gemstones and pearls, but I am always drawn to the more subtle earth tones. When I opened Sheryl's package I was a little intimidated☺ I mean just get a look at this focal! The color is amazing and I love the shape. Everything about it is awesome. How the heck am I going to do this thing justice?! The color really is amazing in person, much better than my photos. Not going to be easy deciding which side to use as the front, but I am leaning towards the second one☺ Thank you Sheryl! I love my soup! And for the rest of you out there~ you should really check out Sheryl's shop . Not only does she have some great jewelry, but she has some really awesome beads too☺

 This project took me waaaay outside my comfort zone. I haven't really done any masculine jewelry. So when a fellow asked me to take this medallion and add a stamped copper bail, put it on a beefier braided "something" and add the two bears teeth,  one on either side,  attached somehow..... Oh and could I make the braid red and black... And it needed to be really tough cuz he is going to wear it pretty much all the time..... I was a little nervous☺ I decided we needed to go with leather, so I pulled out the Kumihimo disk that I had to have a while back because it looked like  it would be fun to learn, and up to this point  had never been used and  found a tutorial on youtube and made a couple different sized braid samples for him to choose from. (All I had was brown leather so I had to order the red and black. Only proving that I obviously don't have enough supplies) He went with a 12 strand s...

is the lovely and talented Sheryl Stephens of  Cool Moon Creations & Beads . Sheryl is a seed beader AND a stringer, so much talent☺ She sells her jewelry and some pretty awesome beads in her etsy shop And you can check out her blog at The Babbling Beader ☺ It was seriously crunch time this morning! I was determined to meet the deadline for sending out beads to our partners and apparently my time management skills are on vacation (I can only hope that they are enjoying sandy beaches and sunshine) Well, I finished the last of the components that I wanted to make myself LAST NIGHT! (Nothing like waiting until the last minute, I work better under pressure, yada yada yada☺) Which meant I was photographing, bagging, labeling and boxing everything this morning and I have to tell you that I realized just then, that I make Bead Soup the same way I make real soup. I start out with a small pot (there's only the two of us) and I add...

I am really loving this project (so far anyway). It is giving me the incentive that I need to create something new  every week AND it gives me at least one interesting thing to blog about at least once a week☺ I finally got to break out the clay (I really miss it when I don't have time to play with it) I had a request for a small earring version of some "Alaskana" pins and magnets I made a while ago. So I made a couple sets of each... Then I made a few more Bears.....  and I think I will make a few more whales... just because☺ I also signed up for Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Blog Party I'm supposed to have the beads I'm sending to my partner mailed by Feb. 10 and I have no idea what I want to send!! I'm also working on re-doing a man's necklace. I've never really done "masculine" jewelry, so this should be really interesting. I am taking the medallion from an existing 'choker...

I can't even tell you how happy I am with this one☺ With the exception of the 2 small pink beads (which are 'reconstructed turquoise') everything about this necklace is handmade☺ I made some "organic" links using steel wire and enameled them along with some iron beads. I added a couple of ceramic beads by an  "unknown to me" artist here in AK that I got at a bead show, and two JulsBeads. All of the wire wraps and links are made with annealed steel wire and I seriously believe my fingertips are actually swollen. This turned out even better than what I had in my head! It is totally different than what I am usually inclined to make and even with the dark wire work, I think it still looks bright and cheerful! Think maybe this Year of Jewelry Project might be doing me some good ~LOVE!~

Just thought I would share a pic of my yard If you look closely, you might notice that the snow looks a tad...shiny... Yep.. about 6" of snow covered with about 2" of solid ice, thanks to 24 hours of freezing rain a couple of weeks ago. The good thing is that the 6" of snow that fell last weekend blew away quite easily when the wind kicked up. (It's very windy here in the winter) The bad news is that 'break up' won't happen for another couple of months, so we are stuck with this stuff. Lily can't stand up on this stuff but she is learning to  walk where the tire tracks compacted the snow so it didn't blow away and she can get some traction☺

I swear I have other things happening in my life than just this project.☺ Hopefully I will start posting about some of those things.... sometime....soon☺ But in the mean time I will just show you my week 3 project I don't know why, but this one was really hard to photograph (do you ever have one of those days when everything looks like it spelled wrong) Oh well..........moving on........ I must have taken about 60 shots Using different "props" Different backgrounds And different angles and I still am not really thrilled with how any of the photos came out, but I do like how the bracelet came out. It was fun to just play. I am waiting for this book , but thought I would do some experimenting on my own. I used 16g dark annealed steel wire that I got at the hardware store. I scrubbed it good with a sanding sponge, then I shaped the links, whacked at them with a hammer. Then I made some jump rings with some 20g steel wire and joined th...