One more month!

Friday Communique

Jane Austen wrote:

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the
most perfect refreshment.

Oh, boy, was she right. We've had so much rain this summer in Colorado that everything is gorgeous and green and lush - it's wonderful. So, I plan to spend a good portion of this weekend, as I have the past few weekends, on a deck in a gorgeous tree-filled yard with these two, Sophie and Cognac. They're as sweet as can be and don't mind at all if we supplement nature's refreshment with one that is brewed here in Fort Fun.

Check out what some of my crew were up to this week:

Sara Hardin (AKA SoftFlexGirl) is busy tweeting! Tweet-a-lot of Trios to win!

Kristen Fagan designed free gift tags for you to print and pretty up your handmade gifts with. Enjoy!

Have a lovely weekend! xoxo

Playing with Wire

Remember these beads? Well, they've been sitting on my "new bead shelf" since they arrived, patiently waiting for inspiration to strike so that I can make something grand. Well, it just so happens that I had all of my spools of colored Soft Flex wire sitting near them and I was struck. Look at how amazingly well these colors match up with the beads? Citrine, red jasper, purple amethyst, peridot, and garnet, I heart you. Now, off to create!

Playing with Wire

When I'm at a bead show demoing in the booth, I often have a few minutes here and there of free time. It's time when I can take some wire and beads and just create - I love that time. At Bead and Button I had some gorgeous bronze pearls and a spool of Soft Flex Wire in peridot, so decided to play around with them. All but a few of the pearls fit well onto the .019 diameter wire and I tried my luck with the Knitting Spool. It would have taken one more strand of pearls to knit a length of wire long enough for a complete bracelet, but I didn't know that when I started knitting, so I ended up with a knitted cord just short of bracelet length.

After playing around with it for a few weeks, I finally made a finished piece using the knitted section as a focal point. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the Lucite beads that comprise the chain are a marbled blend of the bronze of the pearls and the green of the beading wire, and I love how it turned out. I'd like to oxidize the metal a little bit and then I think I'll like this new piece even more.

Korto's Fabulous Jewelry

Remember Korto Momolu from Project Runway? Remember the amazing jewelry she created for her runway show? Well, according to Tom and Lorenzo (I love these guys!), Korto has a brand new line of jewelry available for sale. Her pieces are bright and bold and extremely inspiring. Check out TLo's post about it here and then go Korto's site to shop. Way to go Korto - you look amazing and so does your jewelry!

"Inconceivable!"

Laura and I went up to Red Rocks the other night - isn't is gorgeous?! We went to attend the Flim on the Rocks showing of The Princess Bride. Film on the Rocks is an awesome summer program put on by the Denver Film Society. It was the perfect night for Red Rocks, warm with a slight breeze and no rain.

The Princess Bride is a great movie and it's even more fun with an audience of 8000 people who cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys. Plus, there's beer, which makes it even better...

Playing with Wire

Well, to be exact, Kitting with Wire. This, my friends, is about 40 feet of Champagne Soft Flex Extreme Wire cut into 2 inch pieces. It's about one-fifth of all the wire I'll be cutting, counting, and bagging into one hundred class kits. When I make it through all six 50 foot spools, I'll have a total of 1800 two inch pieces of wire. Then I'll divide up and bag 600 jump rings and attach 200 ear wires to jump rings. Whew. So, if you're going to CHA at the end of the month and plan to attend the Champagne Dreams Earrings class, this kit is for you! Now, back to measuring and cutting...