Christmas and New Year wishes ...

Well 2008 has been an amazing year for me. Some recent low points such as redundancy and family illness, but mostly it has been a wonderful journey full of beady goodness. This was the year that I set up a website, an Etsy shop and started a blog - all quite alien things to me. I had my first design published and went on to have 16 projects published throughout the year and even made the cover of Bead & Button magazine. I found lots of fantastic new friends all over the world, either through beading or blogging and even found my best friend from school through Facebook after having lost touch with her many years ago. With the help of Beading Daily and my blogging friends, I raised a significant amount of money for various charities with my beaded Ribbon Awareness Pins. I learnt a great deal about beading and opened my eyes to some new possibilities which I can't wait to try in the New Year and I discovered many, many talented bead artists whose work excites and inspires me. All in all, a great year which I am very thankful for!

I hope life has been kind to you and that you were able to make the most of the opportunities that presented themselves to you. And finally, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I would like to wish everyone happiness and health and I look forward to 'seeing' you in 2009!

Kerrie x

Happy Birthday!

Yes it's my birthday today, 43 - where exactly did those years go? Anyway, the sun shone, the birds flew and the flowers were out, well the winter jasmine anyway! I've had lots of lovely cards, presents and good wishes and really I couldn't have wished for a better day.

I've been very busy over the past week as I had a commission to make earrings to match my Foxglove Trio necklace, Copper Hibiscus lariat and new Cosmic Peacock necklace. Obviously I wanted them all to complement the main piece but they needed to be much smaller and so they presented quite a challenge and turned out to be a little fiddly. I am happy with the results though, especially the foxgloves as they are much smaller than the picture suggests and fit onto my little finger like little fairy bonnets!

They are now all winging their way to their new owner.

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?