Practice & Play with Polymer, Paper, Pop, Peyote, Pink & Peachy

        Let me start by letting you know I'm not talking about smoke but the Peyote stitch in bead work. As I looked back on the work of the past few weeks since I last wrote, I noticed a trend. I chose to work on several pieces that had polymer clay beads that Brad and I had made some time ago. This one is a bit "shabby chic".

      The first necklace came about because of the scrap of thread I showed how to weave into the cord in my last post. I have a hard time throwing things away that are still useful.  I finished the weaving until I got to the end of the string and then wondered how I could use it. I made another tube with beads added and joined them together with a polymer clay piece I had on hand, and also I used blue and white tube shaped beads Brad had made. I did macrame and bead work to attach them together.
            Next I beaded around another polymer clay pendant. It was an odd shape so I backed it with black leather and sewed a foundation of beads for the first row and then added more from there until I had it secure,using a peyote stitch. Then I went about making a necklace to attach it too,but as it progressed I didn't think it would look right together. I made that necklace into a separate project. Here are the two finished projects.

The project I worked on next was using a polymer piece that I thought looked like it needed to be a turtle. I beaded around that also with some seed beads, adding more beads for legs and a head. After I did that, I had a problem I couldn't see how I could keep the beads on the legs and so I added some metal rings. One thing led to another, and I was reminded that I had some feather-like polymer clay beads I had made at the same time. I only had two of them, but for this project it was just what was needed. I also used two large turquoise nugget beads along with some tube beads I had bought some time ago. I like the result.  

As I was working with this project, looking for things to add I found two pieces of heavy chain and formulated a plan for a bracelet using jasper and a large glass focal bead. 
     The next project to take shape was a tree of life necklace made with rose quartz and pink wire tree with a rose quartz tire swing and some tiny crystal butterflies. On the necklace part I added large rose quartz beads and some vintage glass pearls that I removed the flaking paint from, leaving  nice soft white beads. I used enameled flower beads as an accent. This is the result of that effort. 

 Then I found a piece I didn't feel was finished and spruced it up a bit.

 
 Brad and I had a bit of a milestone this last two weeks. I sold two items on my Etsy site.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/RenaissanceHeart Brad's milestone is he got his first check from selling his book on amazon as an ebook.  Fun! Fun! Fun!


     I finished two more projects. The one I will tell you about next is another polymer clay piece. I used more beadwork in this one too. It was a fun project. I also incorporated some vintage buttons into this project. 

 Last one for this adventure is one made with a vintage poker chip that I had attached an old picture of my dad to. I put black leather on the back of the poker chip and did more  beadwork around the poker chip to attach it. Then I made a bail sort to thing with some beads and then did a beaded necklace to attach it to.
 

So that is it for this time. Hope you enjoyed your visit. Thank you for looking.