Did you get your tree yet?

I have a few Christmas trees left in this year's crop, marked down to the low, low price of $18! Email me at studio23art at yahoo dot com if you want one!

Also pictured, a set of wine charms from this year's Christmas collection.

This one went to Florida!

I made this bag especially for my mother-in-law for her birthday last week. The fabric made me think of her in warm, sunny Florida so it was the perfect piece to make a bag from, just for her. And, she loved it!

Cool Camo

I made this bag from a pair of camouflage shorts and a recycled piece of big purple corduroy. And it's especially cool because it has a bright orange glass bead toggle, handmade by me. You can see most of my bags at this 'secret' link of my website: www.studio23art.com/bags.

Paisley and Precious!

My new new favorite! Okay, usually each new bag is my new favorite.

This bag is 100% recycled materials. The denim is from an old pair of jeans - yet another pair of pants that I bought because I thought they were so cute, but they never quite fit me right. Fortunately, I've stopped myself from buying like that anymore, but because I used to all the time, I have a lot of materials to work with! The paisley lining/accent materials are from discarded upholstery samples. I didn't have enough of the darker material but that turned out to be a good thing because I love the way the two paisley prints complement each other; and also how they look with the dark denim. To me, this is the ultimate fall combo!

Happiness is...

...A bright yellow smiley face necklace! Seems like everything is so gloomy right now - how about a little happiness to brighten your day? This little handmade glass bead in the form of a smiley face should do it! This is a kid-sized necklace, but I'd be happy to resize it for an adult. 

Auction Items

I am donating these items to a friend of mine for an auction that will raise money for her son's school. The necklace is a light transparent topaz heart on a sterling silver chain; and the bracelet is a variety of beads with a brown/ivory/amber/topaz theme.

CUTE!

This could be my new favorite! This bag is made from an old pair of cargo pants that were really cute - they just didn't fit right. They had cool stitching going up the leg, that is now on one side of the bag. The other side has a big pocket. I bought the pants because they were so cute, but in a couple years, I probably only wore them twice. The lining/accent fabric is a tapestry I got at a garage sale for dirt cheap (washed up clean, of course). I love the colors in it - berry, coral, peach, mango, orange; and it has a cool pattern.

Mary Poppins Bag

Finished another bag - the liner fabric on this one reminds me of Mary Poppins and her carpetbag. This bag is big and cozy.

Finished Products

The fun part of making a bag is the main body - picking the components for the outside and the lining; cutting up the pieces, sewing them together and then seeing how it looks pieced together. The hard part, and what takes the longest, is adding the final touches - like making the straps and the pockets, sewing them on, adding a snap or other type of closure... So I have several sewing projects that got through the body process, but then sit waiting for straps, etc. But I finally finished a couple.

The teal bag is from a skirt on the Target 75% off clearance rack - score! It's a nice, thick cotton material. The tan bag started with a thrift store skirt (all washed and clean); and is also really nice thick material. The insides are soft corduroy prints that I purchased. My goal is to use at least half "recycled" or "repurposed" materials for everything - or 100% if it's possible, which might be more realistic for smaller projects. The big bags take more material which can't always be scavenged from an old skirt or pair of cargo pants.

Works in Progress

Currently obsessed with sewing, bags in particular.

Just Beads

I love making jewelry out of my beads, but unfortunately, there's not enough time in the day to create them AND make something out of each and every bead. So my bead stash is growing and some poor beads aren't getting the attention they deserve. I think I'll post a few and see if there's any interest. These sets are available in my etsy shop at http://studio23art.etsy.com.

Isn't this cute?

I made a bunch of little medallion kind of beads the other day and I just think they're so cute. I'm not sure what I'll do with them yet, but I did make this necklace today using one of them. This one is black silver plum glass so it has a nice silvery shimmer to it - it doesn't even look like glass but more like a piece of metal. It has two cords - a thin brown leather one, and one strung with alternating aqua crystals, aqua seed beads and hematite spacers. It's between choker length and 16 inches. It's for sale in my etsy shop at www.studio23art.etsy.com for $28. By the way, this necklace is extra special because when I was measuring the two strands, the one with the crystals and seed beads slipped from my hand and every single bead but one or two fell off. I had to search the area for aqua, then restring it. 

New Wine Charms

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at Dexter Daze yesterday. A couple visitors said they might be interested in some wine charms.... here they are! These are two of the three sets we had on display yesterday. The first picture is a set of 8 assorted beads - all different colors and designs. These are really fun, chunky beads, about a half inch wide. This set is $36.  The second set is 8 different colors with raised dots. They're a little smaller than the first, but still a good chunky size. This set is $30. If you'd like to buy either of these, send us an email at studio23art@yahoo.com, or you can buy through our etsy shop at studio23art.etsy.com (etsy is a site where artists can sell their handmade wares). Remember, there's nothing like a glass of wine with a fun wine charm on it!

New site design at www.studio23art.com!

If you arrived here by way of studio23art.com, you may have already noticed that our site has a new look, but if not, please check it out - click here. It was time for an update and fresher look. It's still a work in progress but the basics are there and I'll be adding to it continually with pictures and more details. There's so much stuff that we haven't had a chance to photograph and post, so what you'll see there is just a sampling of our work... but there's definitely more to come. 

New bracelets, necklace on Etsy

I posted these items on Etsy today. The bracelets are $30 each and the cross necklace is $24. Click here to visit my etsy shop. You can buy through etsy or by contacting me at studio23art@yahoo.com.

Still loving the beach glass

Here's another bracelet in my beach glass craze collection - I'm not sick of these yet! I made these beads a while back and they were just sitting around waiting to be made into something. I mixed them with brown seed beads instead of trying to match the colors in the glass, and I'm happy with the way it came out. 

Chunky and funky

This is a bracelet/necklace I made for myself to go with a dress I was wearing to my friend's wedding. I learned a new way to make semi-hollow beads that are pretty big compared to what I normally make, and I still love the etched transparent glass, so this is what I came up with. This has 3 huge beads - almost an inch wide - with a bunch of smaller, "normal" sized ones. I wore it all day as a double wrapped bracelet, and then when it was colder and I had to put on a jacket, I switched it to a choker necklace so you could still see it - perfect! And it's been years since I've worn gold, but my dress had some gold tones in it and so I used kind of a tarnished gold wire. I like the look - the chunkiness is different and so is the gold. Here's the dress, too - on the Ann Taylor Loft model - forgot to get pictures of myself with the dress and the jewelry!  

New golf beads

I made a few more sets of golf beads with fun colors. Click to enlarge the picture. The picture doesn't really do justice to the colors. The blue in the blue/green one is really a dark royal or cobalt blue. It looks nice with the lime green.

Trying something new

There's this really cool site where people can sell all things handmade - it's called Etsy.com. I've been curious for a while about how it works. There's a lot of neat stuff on there, but I wonder with so much stuff for sale, does anybody buy any of it, or is it mostly the crafters (like me) who browse the site (but don't buy anything)? There really is a ton of stuff - I just searched on "lampwork necklace" and got 410 pages of stuff. What if your listing is on page 410? How does anyone ever see it? Well, there's not much to lose by listing stuff there so I set up an account and I'll see how it goes. Anyway, here are the necklaces I posted on my etsy account. They're all solid hearts strung with either seed beads and/or freshwater pearls. $48 each. You can visit my etsy shop directly at www.studio23art.etsy.com.

New Stuff

It's finally spring again! Time to get out on the golf course with your new stroke counter and enjoy a drink afterwards with a handy wine charm on your glass - with the fun colors of the season. These particular sets are for sale at the Lochmoor Club Pro Shop, but are also available by special order. See the Studio23art.com "Other" page. Choose colors to match your golf bag or your mood!

Perfectly Imperfect Beads

It's hard for me to make beads that aren't uniform... once I get an idea in my head of what I want to make, I want that particular set to be perfect and all the same, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for certain jewelry designs, but it makes me feel like I'm not being adventurous enough sometimes. So I tried yesterday to make beads that weren't quite so "perfect." They're definitely not uniform, but what I realized was that once I made the first imperfect one of the set, I kept trying to make the others just like it. Luckily for my experiment, the glass and the torch wouldn't let them be the same. These are the beads that came out of it.

My new wardrobe staple

This is a new design that I've been wearing a lot - either for work or for dressing up an outfit a little bit. It's a plain black heart strung with freshwater pearls and seed beads. Pretty simple, but kind of classy looking and really practical. 

And here's the auction bracelet...

This goes with the necklace below for the Defer Auction. There's also a pair of earrings in the light aqua color on the bracelet.

Necklace for school auction

I'm donating a jewelry set (necklace, bracelet and earrings) for the Defer School spring auction, which is this Saturday, April 5. I wanted to make something different than the usual necklace on cord or chain and have had this design in mind for a while (as you can see by the colors, this is part of my ocean-inspired collection). I have to finish up the bracelet and earrings, but here's the necklace. It's a 3-strand style with a handmade blue/green/teal heart that's accented by a mix of green, blue, aqua and teal seed beads and silver plated spacers.

Florida Seashells

Well, I had my hopes set on finding beach/seaglass in Florida, but instead we found a ton of cool seashells. I guess the seaglass is more rare than I realized, or maybe we just weren't in the right area to find any. The shells are cool though, and I have a few ideas on how I might incorporate some of them into jewelry. I have to be careful though, because shells and/or shell jewelry probably aren't as attractive as they would be when you're on a beach vacation. It was really fun looking for them.

Inspired by Beach Glass

It was so cold here in our pre-vacation months that I couldn't even make beads because the studio heater wasn't powerful enough to battle sub-freezing temps outside. But as soon as we had a 40+ degree day, I got out there. These are my sea glass inspired beads. Simple, but beautiful... soothing almost. Kinda like the ocean.   

Dreaming of the Beach

Over the past couple months, I've grown extremely tired of this dreary winter - this year more than years past. Maybe it's because I knew we were going to Florida in March and so I was looking forward to that, and in the meantime, we just kept getting more and more Michigan snow. With Florida and sunshine in mind, I got inspired by images of sea glass, or beach glass, which is glass that has been discarded and has ended up in the ocean - basically as litter. Over time, the glass is broken up and tossed around by the waves and rocks and gets this really cool smooth, etched look.