Giveaway!!!

It's the new year and I have a lot to celebrate. I had a wonderful 2009 with lots of love from friends and family. I opened my Etsy shop and started a Facebook fan page, and now have over 200 fans! Can you believe it!
So, to celebrate, I'm having a giveaway and a sale! Today and tomorrow if you buy something from my Etsy store, you'll receive 15% off the purchase price! I'm also giving away this lovely bracelet for the New Year. I call it Turquoise Road and all you have to do to enter is to leave a comment answering this question: What is the worst fashion trend that you ever gave in to? I'm posting this on my facebook page also, so if you want to enter there you can. I'll draw a winner on Saturday morning! (I'm looking forward to getting a good laugh out of these comments!)

Happy New Year everybody!

Day after Christmas...or, How I Gained 5 Pounds...

Well, all the presents are opened, all the food has been eaten. Well, most of the food, there is still pecan pie in the fridge and I keep shoving it to the back everytime I get something out of the fridge so that the other pigs...ahem...members of my family will think it's gone and not eat it. (hence, the 5 pounds)
We spent yesterday doing nothing, playing with niece and nephew, watching t.v., played some board games, and I finished this necklace. I call it Evening Shade and it was inspired by the Elizabethan Necklace in the Dec/Jan 2008-2009 issue of Beadwork. I made the beaded beads using the pattern, but substituted Australian Jasper instead. It's going to be my entry for El Reto on the Beads Perles blog in January.

Here's a close-up of the beaded beads. This is the center focal bead. I did change the pattern a little from the one in the book. I made the bead hollow instead of using a center bead because I wanted to be able to have 3 strands coming from the bead. I like the look, and I'm going to try it in some softer colors next time, and see what I can come up with.

Today is going to be a bit more work. The Christmas mess has to be cleaned up and then we're going out tonight. This was a really good Christmas for me and my family and my wish for you is that you can say the same. Have a great day and Happy New Year!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Wow. Can you believe it's Christmas Eve already?? I think I'm ready though. All my presents are made, they just need to be wrapped and stuffed under the tree. And of course, there's the food. My sister and I haven't started cooking yet, but our menu isn't that crazy, so we should be able to get everything done in time to eat. But, most importantly, I'm looking forward to just spending a calm evening in front of the fire with my family. I know you are too!

Well, I thought I'd leave you with a final beady installment. About a week ago, I saw a post where someone mentioned beaded beads. Now, I've always liked the look of beaded beads, but never knew how to make them, so I decided to try to find some tutorials on the internet and see what I could come up with. The easiest I found was a tutorial using brick stitch. So, here's the goods. This first set is called Turquoise Beaded Beads (for obvious reasons).

This second set is called Midnight Beaded Beads. The small beads are really little and cute and I love the way they look. I've listed both sets in my store as loose beads. I have some beady friends who are so good at stringing beads together. I, on the other hand, am not. My 3-year-old nephew could make better wired loops than me and the one time I tried to make a cute little bird's nest, it ended up looking like a defunct rat's nest. So, having said that, I'll leave the stringing to the professionals!

Oh, and also, I started a Facebook page for La Bella Joya and I now have over 100 followers!! Crazy!! I owe that to some very good advertisement from my beady friends. If you're on Facebook look me up! Well, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

For a friend...

This Christmas for the first time, I actually sold some pieces of jewelry to some friends to give as presents to wives and girlfriends. I thought I'd show you a couple of my favorite pieces.
The first is a bracelet/necklace ensemble made with matte and metallic seed and bugle beads.
For whatever reason, I'm really enjoying using bugle beads in my beadwork. I used to find them completely useless, but lately, I've been imagining designs using them and the possibilities seem endless.
The bracelet is made with peyote and the necklace with herringbone. If you use bugle beads, I would advise doubling your thread (if you use Nymo), and with every stitch of a bugle bead, use a seed bead at each end to keep the glass bugle beads from cutting your thread.

The two pieces in the second set are made with just herringbone. The first is a bracelet with the bugle beads again, and the second is a necklace made with little beaded herringbone beads and chain.

The sets look really nice. Elegant enough to be special but very wearable for everyday. What's more, I used every single last teal bugle bead that I had! (which just means I'll have to buy more, dang.)

I'll try to get a picture of my last Christmas presents up for y'all to see. If I don't before Christmas, I hope you have a great one!

Long days...

Today is going to be another one of those long days. I'm getting ready to leave in about 30 min. to take my mom to a series of Dr. appointments. I'm sure we'll both be tired and ready for a nap when all is said and done today! But, I wanted to first of all post the pics that I promised:
This first necklace is a spiral rope and I beaded in little copper leaves. Finished the whole thing off with a copper leaf clasp and a little acorn so you could wear this necklace with the clasp in the front or back depending on what you wanted.
This second one is for my sister. It's a St. Petersburg stitched necklace with a Green Girl Studios butterfly (that I won, thank you Lorelei!). I stitched hematite rounds for a little interest and to try to pull the pewter color from the butterfly into the actual necklace.

Finally, I created this hair barrette for my sister as well, the centerpiece is a gunmetal filigree focal that I bought locally. The other beads are a mix of gemstones, czech faceted rounds, AB iris seed beads and just some gray transparent japanese seed beads thrown in for good measure. I really like this and it's gonna be hard giving it away!!

I hope you all have a wonderful, creative day. Enjoy the season and the ones that you love.

Some days are just hard...

Saturday was one of those days. Friday night found my mom lying in her bed with chest pain and naseua. Saturday morning found us driving to the emergency room. She was okay, we were in and out in 3 hours, but now she has a whole new ziplock bag full of medicine and her house is beginning to look more and more like a pharmacy.
I came home dog tired, so what did I decide to do? Go Christmas shopping! No, I'm not kidding you. You see I had this huge plan of exactly what I wanted to get my fiancé and my sisters, and I knew that I could get it for 20% off the already low sale price, but that I had to go on Saturday. So I brought my mom home, put her to bed, made sure there were at least two sisters there to take care of her and I was off.
I was tired, but I got it all done. Now, it's time to start working on the handmade gifts I plan on giving this year. I've already completed gifts for my mom-in-law, my sister-in-law, my mom and my oldest sister. I'll take pictures today for sure and post them tomorrow. (Definitely...they're going in the mail this afternoon.)
I hope you're doing well, and that you've finished (or are very close to finishing) Christmas shopping. And don't judge me too harshly for buying factory-made gifts, but if you know someone who creates their own PS3 games, send me their Etsy site and I will happily return what I've got to the Best Buy! :)
Okay, last thing, here's my entry for the Art Bead Scene Challenge this month. I really wanted to reflect the shapes and blocks of color in the painting, but I wanted more of a Fall palette. (I know Fall is over for most people, but around here it's still pretty much going strong) I also wanted to make the squares irregular like in the painting, but I didn't want to increase or decrease....so...Delicas to the rescue!! The smaller squares are Delicas and the larger are round Japanese Seed beads. I call it Geometric Blocks and I've just listed it on Etsy if you're interested. Oh, almost forgot...the button is by the Muddy Muse. They're local for me, and make the cutest ceramic jewelry components.

Alright guys, see ya' tomorrow!!

My shop is open!!!

My Etsy shop is finally open! Yea! If you'd like to visit, please follow this link:

La Bella Joya

Big thanks to everyone who encouraged me to put my things out there. You've all been so supportive and have left such wonderful comments about my creations and I sincerely thank you.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Do you remember?

This was my workspace. A disaster on the kitchen table. And all of my goodies in the four drawers you see in that little trunk.
Well, Christmas came early this year and this is my new workspace! A desk with task lighting and storage galore. We painted the desk, attached the cork board and the hooks and I moved in on Sunday.

There's plenty of room to store my things and all those plastic little storage boxes that I'd been keeping for so long came in handy and have been put to good use.

I always used to think that people were crazy when they said that their workspace could either make or break their creativity, but after working here for the past couple of days, I completely understand.

The other good news is that when I "moved" in to my new space I was able to take an inventory of what I have and what I didn't want, so...stay tuned, you might see some giveaways coming up soon!! I hope you guys have a better day than it looks like we're having. "The Storm" that has been tearing up the west and midwest just got to us and we've got the wind and rain, the whole nine yards. Having said that, picture taking will have to wait until tomorrow! So, have a good day and enjoy the season.

Bad, Bad Blogger

What can I say? I've been a bad blogger. It all started three weeks ago when I left to go overseas, and then I got home and we ate like pigs (a.k.a. Thanksgiving), and then on Saturday, just when I thought life was back to normal, my dad shows up from Abu Dhabi! Totally surprised us. Anyway, he left yesterday so maybe we can get back into the "normal" routine.
I did, however, manage to get some things done in the early mornings and late evenings. Here's some of them.
The first is a bead embroidered pendant made with an Elaine Ray bead. I'm lucky enough to live within driving distanced of Ornamentea and picked up this bead last month on a short trip. The bead itself was really light and I wanted the pendant to have more of a weight to it, so, before I sealed up the backing I slipped a quarter inside. It gives a great weight to the bead which means that it will hang really well on a leather or ribbon cord, and gives your pendant $.25 more value!! (Okay, just kidding)
And...#2...This is a necklace that I created as a Christmas present, don't worry the recipient doesn't read my blog (probably doesn't even know I have one). The beads are from Pam Ferrari.

Okay, last but not least, and I like this A LOT, is a bracelet I call Hardwear. It's made using washers and peyote stitch links. I've seen this technique used before, but I wanted to try it with washers because Erin Prais-Hintz has a challenge on her blog calling for artists to use hardware in their jewelry. Check out and ENTER her challenge here.

Alright, I hope you guys have a great weekend. My nephew is turning 3 today so it'll be cake (probably Elmo cake) and ice cream and we're gonna try to take him to a basketball game. Adios amigos, y que tengan buen fin de semana!

La Princesa de Musgo (The Moss Princess)

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being strangely missing the past week. Thanksgiving was fun, but busy and two days ago, my dad showed up and surprised us! He flew about 26 hours to be here from Abu Dhabi, so we've been entertaining him.
Okay, here's something that I've been wanting to show you for a long time. I created this headband for the Concurso of Beads Perles. Well, the contest ended last week and I didn't win, but I finally get to post the pictures of my entry. I originally created it to be just a headpiece, but when I realized that we had to create a necklace, I reworked the design and worked it so that it could be worn around the head or around the neck.

This is a picture of what it would look like as a choker. It has elastic on the back to help it stay around your head, and a ribbon to secure it around your neck if you choose to wear it that way. The entire thing is made with seed beads. It's bead embroidered, and inspired by this painting. I used the color scheme from the painting and created something that the princess in the painting could wear.

Also, at the same blog, Beads Perles, El Reto has begun! "El Reto" means "The Challenge" in Spanish and there are 14 artists who have entered a bracelet for this month's challenge. Please visit the blog and vote for your favorite bracelet. For those of you who can't read Spanish, be sure to look to the right on the bar to see the voting box. Have a great week guys!