The love and loss of leaves!

Although it's a crisp sunny day here today, things have been a bit gloomy now that all the deciduous trees have lost their leaves. I still struggle to come to terms with the contrast between the lushness of my garden in June and the bare black branches in December.

In fact, the view from my window for several days this week was so miserable, that it inspired me to do something about it and cheer myself up by making my own leaves!

Most of my beadwork has a nature theme and I've made lots and lots of different flowers over the past few years, so why not leaves? Of course my first attempt at leaves was Olive Earrings which was published in Beadwork magazine earlier this year, but this week I have 'branched out' and created Willow Earrings and some very festive Mistletoe Earrings!

I now have a pair of leafy earrings swinging merrily from my ears and I feel much happier - hmmmm, do you think I might be bordering on the eccentric?

A gap in the blog!

Guilty as charged! I have not blogged for almost three weeks! This is mainly due to the fact that I visited my parents for the whole of last week as it was Mum's birthday on the 17th July - Happy Birthday Mum!

I forgot to take my camera with me on holiday last week and missed lots of wonderful photo opportunities - the Kent countryside is at it's best at the moment with green trees and golden corn fields, poppies and daisies in fields and verges, gardens filled with fruit and flowers, vast blue skies, butterflies, birds and nature everywhere. I had a very happy time. Whilst we were there we read a newspaper article about ancient trees, one of which is only about two miles from my parent's house and so we went in search of the Law Day Oak. This tree is reputed to have been around since the reign of Queen Elizabeth the 1st and it turns out we have actually driven past it numerous times, but never really noticed it as it's set back a bit. I wanted to hug it but it was quite close to someone's garden so I resisted the urge!
 

Talking of poppies and corn, I have several projects out at the moment, one of which is my Poppies in the corn choker which is in the latest issue of Bead magazine that is just out. I have two projects in this issue, the other one being my Dragonfly Pendant which is the final one in the series of three.

I have now received my contributors copy of the August/September issue of Beadwork magazine and I am thrilled with the way my Olive Earrings and Periwinkle Choker have turned out with some great photography! I was also very excited to see that the latest issue of the Bead & Button email newsletter shows a picture of my Double Dragon necklace in the 'Coming in October' section.

Apart from the published projects I had two more pieces of lovely news on my return from my holiday, both involving my wonderful fellow Etsy BeadWeavers Street Team members. One is that Sarah of The Beaded Lily featured me on her beautiful blog Sketchbook in this profile - thank you Sarah! And finally, Ileana of Enchanted Beads created a gorgeous black and white Etsy treasury west which includes my Supernova Choker - thank you Ileana!

Rebellion!

One of the problems with only blogging once a week, is that so much happens within a single week! This week has seen a wonderful mixture of Etsy treasuries, blog awards, publications and the odd bit of beading when I get chance. So this week, I have made a decision to be a bit of a rebel. I have been very fortunate in that I have received three blog awards this week but I have decided to buck the trend and NOT pass them on - gasp! There are a few reasons for this, firstly, I notice that some of these awards are doing the rounds within a relatively small group of acquaintances and they keep ricocheting from blog to blog. Secondly, it would take me a fair amount of time and space to add 15 links to other blogs here (especially if I wanted to spread them outside the beady circle) and thirdly, as much as I love finding that I have received an award, it is quite difficult selecting who to pass it on to without offending anyone and making anyone feel left out. So I am not going to be passing any of these awards on this time, but rather would urge you to follow the links on my side-bar to discover many talented people.

To be fair to the people that kindly passed the awards on to me though, here are the links to their blogs; I received the Arte y Pico award from two talented friends, Susan of Clinkscales Arts and Emma of Glitter Glow Beading who are both fellow Etsy BeadWeavers team members. I also received the Sweet Home Blogger Award from the lovely Lesley of Coburg Crafts. A big thank you to all three of them and I hope you follow the links to see their wonderful work for yourself.

 

My work was featured in a couple of Etsy treasuries during the last week and I managed to snag and create one myself too. I decided to try and show just how truly cosmopolitan the Etsy BeadWeavers team is and featured work from America to Australia and just about everywhere in-between in my World Wide Weavers treasury.  I was also very flattered that the Etsy BeadWeavers team ran a little feature on me this week in the team blog in their Meet the Members slot and also included a link to the interview I did in March of this year on the jewelry guide section of Zoya Gutina's website.

Finally for this week, I noticed that Beadwork magazine has updated it's website with the contents of the August/September issue. I have two projects in this issue, my Olive Earrings and also my Periwinkle Choker - this was originally named Precious Petals and I have included a picture of the gunmetal colourway below.