Contest

Hey everyone! I've entered this contest at Artbeads.com:

This is my entry, a jewelry design inspired by a grapes and leaves, tendrils... the whole grape cluster and autumn harvest kind of idea.

I'd absolutely love it if you voted for my piece. You can vote every day between now and December 8th. While you are there, check out some of the other entries. I may post my other favorites if I get the chance.

Grape Cluster Entry

Simply click the sage green "VOTE" button in the top right of the listing to place your vote.

Check out the whole list of entries, there are lots of those and there is no easy way to click through them all.

You could vote every day, five votes per day, up until December 8th.

It feels good to see this kind of response to the first piece I made after I moved, got my new studio set up and got my jewelry making mojo back. I'm very grateful indeed, it's been a loooooonnnng time coming!

Thank You,

-Carmen Rose

New Earrings! (Plus a discount coupon code!)

The lovely folks at Artbeads.com dropped by my blog a while back and noticed some of the jewelry design work I have posted in the sidebar. They offered me the opportunity to choose some of their inventory that they’d send me for free if I’d blog about it and them. I can always use $35 worth of crystals so of course I agreed. I looked through the Swarovski crystals (check out this selection!) and chose these drops first:

It's the Swarovski 6100 24x12mm faceted teardrop pendant in "crystal volcano" and they are SO cool! When the package came in the mail it looked like this, all pretty in purple!
I opened it up to check out my loot! Yay!
I also picked up some of these lovely lil buggas, a small oval crystal in the same "crystal volcano" color. These are little delicate thinga-ma-bobs!
So I went searching through my stash of Swarovski crystals to find something to go with them and found some fuchsia bicones.
I looped a fine wire through the crystal and back up into the bicone and put a loop on the top and trimmed the edges.
I made some small "S" shaped curls and folded them over the ovals and dangled some bicones from them and then put them all together.
I added the ear wires and that was it. A very easy and quick pair of earrings that are really fun to wear!

I went to a costume party on October 31st. I went as a character from a black and white movie trying to break into the world of full color. I wore full black and white makeup, even my shoulders and back were white (which could be a post all itself) these colorful sparkling earrings, a crimson scarf and matching crimson lipstick (sadly this photo was taken before I put on the bright lipstick.) I enjoyed wearing the earrings a great deal and got lots of compliments!
I got a little card in the mail from the folks at Artbeads.com today, they've given me a little treat to pass along to you. If you go there and make a purchase before 12/31/09, you can use this coupon code and get 10% off your order. Feel free to pass this along to your beading friends! The coupon code is: "SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424" At holiday time a pair of earrings is a lovely gift, even nicer when you can pick up the beads at discount prices. Thanks to Artbeads.com for the lovely beads!

Happy creating my lovely readers, keep up the good work!

A Pair of Floral Quilts

Yesterday I had to get in the studio for a while just to have the feel of something in my hands. Creating isn’t just my therapy, it is who I am. And I can’t stay away from the studio for long before it starts to take a toll. So yesterday I put aside the lengthy “to do list” and spent some time in Studio B.


A local (well… it’s 45 minutes from me) art store is closing and they have all kinds of fabric dyes and paints at discounted prices. I counted my cash and then carefully spent every dollar I had. A few days later I went back and did it all over again, only BIGGER! Plus I’m expecting a huge order from Dharma tomorrow. I am prepared to explore marbling and procion dying in addition to a few interesting brands of fabric paint and metallics. Oh, nothing is as good for my spirit as color! And once that box gets here from Dharma, all bets are off for me getting anything done that doesn’t involve color and fabric! (Did I mention that “to do list?!” (I prefer writing a blog post to marking things off that list!)

I also found some old linen in my stash. More cotton and silk are in the box from Dharma. I love the textures of these things and can’t wait to see and feel these fabrics.

So in the process of painting one fabric, I put a layer of wet linen beneath it. It took whispers of the color in the places where the paint seeped through creating a very unique (and entirely accidental) effect. So two chunks of that linen formed the basis for these two 8x8 inch quilts.

Linen and cotton, some hand dyed fabrics and some commercial batiks. They are fused, machine pieced, machine quilted, embellished with glass E beads and MOP coin beads plus some hand stitching with embroidery floss. $65 each, $120 for the pair.

Jacob's Stairs

I finished a quilt today. I added a few beads and some quilting with embroidery floss. I came across a tiny little antique key while I was moving my sewing stuff into the new studio space and so I included it in the lower left part of the blue. I’ve hung it on the wall in my freshly painted kitchen where the turquoise batik comes pretty close to matching the wall. I don’t know if I will keep it there or not but I like it so far.

I was fighting a bad case of the ick last week and feel much better after a restful day Sunday. So that is a good thing indeed!

Tomorrow I’m going to visit my local yarn shop and see what I can find in the way of sock yarn. Melody has inspired me again and I am really curious to see what all they have now, I haven’t been there in quite a while.

I’ll be out of town most of the rest of the week and I’m hoping that knitting some socks may make the time go a little faster. Of course I could take along a quilt and do some hand quilting, that would also work. I’m just not great at sitting still for very long without something to do.