Fancy Beaded Mermaid Crown

Hey! I'm finally using up a little bit of my enormous bead stash. Tonight I sat down at my table surrounded by beads and made this messy, but lovely sea crown.

I began with 4 loops of wire, then wrapped it all around with more wire. Then I strung beads onto a long length and wrapped those around what would be the back, spacing the beads out semi-evenly.

 For the front, I twisted wire and beads willy-nilly to make the front taller. I wanted it to look kinda messy, so it wouldn't show much where I had to snip off and begin new pieces of wire.

I'm a mermaid. Happy Thursday!

Red Bird Necklace

 I mentioned that 50 Projects  in 2012 Craftalong on Craftster, and I'm already jumping in! Here's my first completed project to cross off my list for this year. I made this red colored birdy necklace/bracelet. This picture shows it as a bracelet, but a chain can be added to the back to wear as a necklace.

I've had a few of those little coral hummingbird beads forever and haven't done much with them. I did the wire work myself. There's something therapeutic about sitting down in front of a TV show with beads, round-nose pliers and a spool of wire and chaining stuff together. At some point, I want to make a big long multi-colored chain necklace... One of these days. Happy Monday!

Happy New Year!

Only a few more minutes until 2012! This year was a pretty good year. I've got some crafty resolutions for the New Year. The first is to participate in the 50 projects in 2012 craftalong over at Craftster.org, the second is to learn pottery, and the third is to art-calendar-along with Kate over at the Kathryn Wheel. She does some amazing art journal spreads and among my favorites are her art calendar pages. So this year, I plan to make an art calendar page for each month and journal a square a day as I go. At the end of the year, I'll bind them all together into a year-book :) This one is the first! I might change the size, though. Kate's are so roomy and delightful with lots of space for embellishments around the edges.

So how about you? Any crafty resolutions?!

PS. Funny: A squirrel fell down my chimney into my fireplace a few days ago, I actually called the police because I kept hearing sounds and thought there was someone in my house when I was home alone. Tink kept sniffing the fireplace today, so Bobby opened it up and there was a squirrel in there. We let it escape out the back door, and I'm sure he was glad to be OUT!