Life Is Too Short

This I learned today: Life is simply too short to be worrying about things you can not control. Soooooo.......

Finally Friday--Finally, and an Epic Fail

The Doors Of Nagaland


Image Found Here

Quite some time ago I won a couple pendants from Joan at Off Center Productions. The pendants were inspired by the doors of Nagaland. I’m not sure if she actually visited there or took her inspiration from web photos.

Nagaland is in the far north-eastern part of India and is mostly a mountainous state. Agriculture is the most important economic activity, along with forestry, cottage industries and tourism.

There are 16 main tribes of Nagaland, and each one has its own unique design and colors, and their own language. Nagas speak 60 different dialects, and the traditional languages do not have any script of their own.



I’ve had Joan’s pendants for quite a while, waiting for the right time to use them. When I saw the door in the inspiration photo I knew I had to use this pendant. But time got away from me and I didn’t get my piece finished. Here is the collection of beads and findings I was going to use, though other than the pendant I had not yet come up with a real plan. There are various lampwork beads, some vintage beads I purchased from Judy Glende, Joan's pendant, and Vintaj components. Sorry for the rotten photos. That's what you get when you wait until the last minute. The inspiration color palette is from Design Seeds.



Here is a close-up of the pendant, to which I added a copper bail. It looks so much prettier than this photo shows, but the lighting this morning was not conducive to taking good photos.



Here are some great photos of the amazing people of Nagaland people-found on Pinterest.

Be sure to visit Shannon's blog for today's Finally Friday, and to play along.

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is mom's birthday. She would have been 79 today. Mom passed away June 23rd of last year from stage 4 metastatic, malignant melanoma. It was a difficult and painful journey for her, but she never complained to anyone about what she endured. She was determined to beat it so she could spend more time with the kids and grandchildren, but it was not meant to be.

Though I miss her terribly, I'm so thankful she is not suffering any more. I am very grateful for the many years we spent together, all the family vacations we took together, all the celebrations, and my daily visits for lunch at our favorite eating establishment--Pizza Hut. But what I miss most is her youthful attitude, her fierce love for her family, her ability to see the good in everything, and her never-ending generosity and compassion to those less fortunate than her.



“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” John 10:27-29



For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39



“Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Some Things You Might Want To See

You might remember this post from Sally Russick's Colors of Spring Challenge where I ran out of time to finish the last bracelet. I finished it a few weeks ago and here it is, better late than never.



Keirsten Giles and I were partnered up for Lori Anderson's Bead Swap. Here's the pretty package she sent me. It's not often that I remember to get a photo before I tear into the package.

Look at her beautiful Moo Card!



Keirsten was kind enough to send me a photo listing all the beads she sent for me to play with. Holy cow, she sent a lot! I've never seen the Javanese Glass beads before, and they are fantastic. But my favorite has to be her handmade components. I feel pretty lucky!



I have to say she didn't get that much from me. I had a difficult time trying to figure out what to send Keirsten--something she didn't already have, and something that would work well with her handmade components. It was much easier when I participated in the Bead Soup because it was a challenge to use something new. But this is all about our partner and what she likes. I was a bit nervous. So nervous in fact, that I didn't get a photo of what I sent to her. There is no set reveal date, but I hope to have several pieces to show you in the coming weeks.

I'm also participating in Cindy Wimmer's Button Swap, and here are the buttons I received from my partner Kim Bender. The vintage buttons are a rich, dark green color. I love that some are still on the original cards. I can't wait to work with these. I have not used many buttons in my designs so this will be a good challenge for me. The blog hop is May 13, so I have some time to play around with a few designs.



I was lucky to have won a pair of earrings from Marcia's recent giveaway. This lovley package came all the way from the UK. It was difficult not to rip open the envelope, but I thought you might want to see her sweet packaging.



The lovely earring card, a sweet thank you, and her business card-all gorgeous.



Aren't these lovely?!! The dangles are so sweet!



Playing around with the new options on Picasa--a free photo editing program.
This is a photo of the earrings still on the earring card. Sweeeet!




'Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.' ~ Picasso.

Finally Friday

Shannon from the For My Sweet Daughter blog is hosting ‘Finally Friday’ with inspiration color pallets from Design Seeds.

This week's inspiration is 'Indulgent Tones' I love the pretty muted colors along with the dark brown, which made me think of a spring nature walk.



I created 'Nature Walk' with rose and gray lampwork beads from Lyndas Bead Dreams, a sweet little bird from Raida at Havanabeads, an enameled flower from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Bead Box, and Vintaj components.



A close up of the beads and the sweet little bird.




Thanks to Shannon for hosting the Finally Friday inspiration. I hope to play along every week, and would love for you to do the same. You can link up with Shannon at her blog.

Frustrated With Blogger

So yesterday I spent much of the afternoon composing a post on various interesting things as skin rashes, skin care products, tornadoes, and some good news. Now I know Blogger has an automatic save feature, but just to be sure, I press that save button often when I'm composing. I had several photos to share (don't worry, none of them were of skin rashes) and things were looking good--that is until I switched from the HTML tab to the Compose tab. Poof, three quarters of the written portion of my post disappeared, and all the the photos were jumbled up, even after I had saved it all. No matter what I did to line the photos up on the left, the photos would always revert back to being all over the place when I previewed. Each time I switched back from preview I would lose more text. This has never happened to me until now. So I ended up ditching the entire post.

Today I decided to try again, with photos only--no text. And again the photos kept getting jumbled up. I think I have fixed them but it has taken much of the morning to get this post done. So here it is, more photos of our San Antonio trip (and here you thought you had seen the last of them, but I've still got a couple more installments). I'm hitting publish now, and what you get is what you get. Thes are photos of the San Antonio River Walk.

Needless to say I'm very frustrated with Blogger! Happy Monday to you!









UPDATE: So I switched back to the old interface and things worked just fine. My suggestion to blogger, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Lorelei's Headpin Challenge-Blog Hop

When I was young my father took us arrowhead hunting with him. He knew the best time to look according to when the fields were plowed or disked.  He could tell if a field was good hunting ground based on the slope of the land and the proximity to water.  Even when we went on vacation he could spot a good field from the highway, and we would stop to check it out (though mom did not always appreciate this interruption).It was so exciting to us kids to find even the smallest piece of flint and pull it out of the just-turned earth, and we thought we were in heaven when we actually found an arrowhead or knife. 

Dad is 82 now, and still hunts the fields on occasion.  His basement is filled with thousands of arrowheads, tomahawks, knifes, pottery shards, grinding stones, and many other Native American artifacts that he has found over the years.  And he instilled in us kids a love for the land and the Native Americans that once roamed here.

I played around with copper practice wire trying to find the right design. I was leaning towards something summery, but somehow it turned into earrings that reminded me of Native American colors and design. 

'Southern Plains' Earrings

'Southern Plains' ~ Made with Red Jasper beads, tiny lampwork spacers, and Vintaj components. The lovely headpins are from  Gardanne Beads; 

The blog hop is Thursday April 7th.  Please visit the other participants to see what they created.

http://pineridgetreasures.blogspot.com/
http://www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.com/
http://inspiredadornments.blogspot.com/
http://Lorelei1141.blogspot.com
http://songbeads.blogspot.com/
http://beads2die4.blogspot.com/
http://alice-dreaming.blogspot.com/  That's mehttp://acreativechelle.blogspot.com/
http://stargirlshop.blogspot.com/
http://www.re-maker.blogspot.com/