No shoes for the shoe makers children, no jewerly for the bead making potter

Have you ever heard the old proverb about the shoemaker who was so busy making shoes for his customer that his children went without shoes. Well that applies to me, except my children have shoes I just don't often have time to make myself jewelry.  Which is silly considering I have 100's of beads and supplies.  

So here goes a crazy story....

I went last week with a pottery cuff bead to the local craft store to buy a few beads to coordinate with one of my sea green beads, which are actually more brown than green but that's the glaze color so to keep me from being confused I use the glaze name.

ramble --- ramble  

While I am holding my bead up to the round beads on display trying to find a match while frustrated with the terrible fluorescent lighting blaring down from over head.  A nice lady shopping at the same time commented on how much she liked the bead and she proceeds to tell me that she donates 100's of bracelets to benefit cancer patients.  Knowing I had more of this bead I offered her the bead as a gift, which she declined but instead wanted me to make her a bracelet with the beads I had just chosen and the cuff bead tin hand.  

So I made this for the nice lady and I will get it to her later this week.  

LOL  I am glad she is getting a treat for herself since she gives so much to others.

Now on to the shoe proverb...

I made her a bracelet, I made one for a friend and I made a handful for a donation to a scholarship fund raiser.

Wait, I didn't make one for me yet.

But I will...

I did not take photos of the process but wanted to explain the details.

Open up a jump ring for each side of the bead, then I knot the elastic thread onto the jump ring and I hide the knot in the cone shaped bead next to the jump ring.  I then thread on how many beads you need for your wrist side and end with another cone.  I then stretch the elastic and tie a knot which I loop on to the other jump ring and that knot is hid under the cone.  I close up the jump rings, and apply a dot of glue to the elastic knots, let the glue dry overnight and then cut the end of the elastic that is left from tying the knot.  I can make one in about 15 minutes.

Stunning new set of four pottery beads, hot out of the kiln

 

I will admit that my favorite color is turquoise, so I may be biased about my love of these new beads.  The worldly mix of blues, greens and browns.  This is a combination of an experiment of glazes gone right.  I made one set for myself and loved them so much I have made a handful of sets and just posted them to my ETSY shop.  They are slightly different as I did not add the side holes on the earring beads.  The finished pieces were made by adding some copper wire to the beads by stitching it to the beads thru the set of two holes and I dangled some small glass seed beads from the set of three holes on the side.The cuff bead is 30X60 and has a  hole at each end, I attached it to a leather cuff using copper screws and nuts and a few daisy beads as washers.

 

 The earrings were made by adding small glass beads to the bottom using jump rings and I attaching to fish hook wires.  I also stitched some copper wire thru the bead. Please note the ones in my shop  do not have the additional side holes, I found they were not surviving productions due to their small size, so the ones in the shop are missing the additional holes.

 The pendant was made in a similar manner, I fashioned a simple bail by winding the wire around a small mandrel.  (don't have a mandrel just use a screwdriver as it is round piece of metal and will work fine)

 Here are the beads that are in the shop, BEAUTIFUL.  They cost a little more, being a supply item I really try to keep the cost as economical as possible, but these are much more labor intensive and I had to charge a tiny bit more.

Available at www.CapturedMoments.ETSY.com