Some new stuff and updates

Good news everybody.  I get to go back to work full time starting next week.  It's only for 3-6 months, but a full paycheck will be nice.  The downside of that is, I'll be working full time again, and I won't have as much time to work on beady goodness.  But I'm going to try and keep up on blogging, photo taking, and listing.  Let's see if I can do that.  Fingers crossed.

I've also been working on a cool custom project for one of my favorite customers.  You might remember that I made a bunch of bookmarks for her over the years.

I've made some for her after her dad passed for all of her family members.

I also made her some for her native american tribe.

So I've worked with her a lot and she always has really fun projects for me.  But she's also a jewelry artist herself.  She makes these great inlaid walnuts.

Pretty, right?!?  Well she asked me to incorporate the these three walnuts into a couple cuffs and a necklace.  She even provided me with the leather cuffs, which was nice.

She wanted the cuffs to be pretty simple and to mainly show off the walnut.  So this is what I came up with for those.

The bottom one I just used regular peyote stitch around the walnut and then trimmed the leather with some beads to give it a little more color.  The second one I used netting around the walnut to show off a little more of the cool sides.  I added a little bit of bronze to class it up a bit.  Sorry for the glare, I just couldn't get a good picture last night, I think I was tired.  I'll try to get a better one soon.

I'm pretty happy with how these two have turned out and I hope she is too.  The next project is the necklace.  That's going to be a much more involved project, but I can't wait to work on it.  I already have a pile of beads picked out to use and I'm just waiting on her final approval to get started.  Fun!!!

I really love how lovely these walnuts are.  I think I might purchase some from her to use in a few new pieces.  What do you think?  Do you like them?