WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Heaps and not much!! LOL.
Still playing with my glass and beads albeit in slow motion at the moment.
I haven't posted any new pictures here for ages but if you'd like to keep up to date with what I have been doing ~ I post new pieces every Sunday morning at 9.00am (Qld. time) on to my Silvermoonlyn Facebook page   I know quite a few of my friends aren't on FB, but it is really quite simple to join if you'd like to keep track of what's happening in my little world of glassy things.

This is the pile of grinding and engraving I have in the works at the moment : 

And this is just one example of how the spotty ones in the lower part of the picture will look when finished :

And the ones on the top right hand side hopefully will end up like this one ~ sort of like little dichroic sugar crystals:

On the home front ~ Gary is up in Mackay working ~ has been since before Christmas and now it looks like we could be on the move soon. Well, we will be on the move, it's just a matter of when and where to!! We have an application in on a house at the moment and fingers are crossed XX XX the Real Estate agent will approve it.  It's a funny old place surrounded by cane fields (toads and snakes for friends...lol) but it is in a perfect spot for Gary for work and downstairs it has a huge big rumpus room that himself says would be absolutely perfect for me to set up as a craft room.  It will be the first time in over 20 years (since we moved from Melbourne) that I would have somewhere at home to be able to create without tripping over everything because it is jammed into such a tiny space!! Fingers are crossed, prayers are being said, I will even make sacrifices to whatever gods I need to so we can get into this house!!  So if you are of a mind ~ keep your fingers crossed for us too please  :)  It would be very hard knowing who to rent to for sure ~ we had some terrible tenants when we rented our unit out ages ago but we are the BEST tenants in the world and I would rent to us if I was on the other side of things! :)
The only thing I am dreading is packing ~ I have sooooooo much stuff even after getting rid of heaps...*sigh*
Anyway, that's about all my news for now ~ off to have a shower and then get stuck into some engraving.
HAVE FUN!!!

Edited to add ~ that particular house didn't happen so now we are looking, looking, looking.....

happy happy 2013...

YAY!!! 2012 is done and dusted and a New Year dawns.  Well and truly dawned, but as usual I'm a bit behind the 8 ball.  whoops.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas or whatever holiday they celebrate and a great New Year's Eve. 
Ours was a very quiet one, but that's not a bad thing :)
Gary's dad passed away just after Christmas so life was a lot more subdued than normal. We just kicked back and relaxed, ate too much, talked heaps about family and stuff & listened to lots of music.  Gary mucked around on the computer and I mucked around with some beads  :)
A really good idea if you lose someone you love ~ Gary's step sister made a fantastic slide show with a heap of pictures spanning many many years of his dad's life. They showed it at the service and then all the family got copies on CD.  It was brilliant, sort of sad and funny at the same time.  And what a great keepsake to have too :)

The annual clean up and cull has started again and if I'm lucky it'll be done by NEXT Christmas!! lol.  I finally got rid of all my ceramic stuff ~ I truly can't see me getting back to it in this lifetime anyway and what a liberating feeling that was!! Only problem with doing that is I had a bit more spare space ~ for all of 24 hours...new glass has arrived and filled it up pretty quickly!! ha ha
No new glass pieces yet, but there are samples of 'new to me glass' in the kiln and I do have some ideas and experiments on the boil at the moment. I'm thinking it will be a couple of weeks at least before there is anything new.
For now, I'm editing photos of cabs and pendants made during the year and will start uploading them to Artfire in the next week or so, attempting to sort out the bomb site that is my studio/work room and in between still playing with microscopic little bits of hollow glass and thread. 

Here's just a few pictures of some recent beady and glass bits.

This necklace is a bit longer than my usual ~ it's about 55cm long and sits just perfectly with a top or sweater with a round neck. The cab is a gorgeous patterned glass in a satin finish. A pretty simple beading style for the necklace part and the cab has been bead embroidered onto a base and then finished with an ultra suede backing.

This is the first necklace I made for the above pendant but I made it too short (approx 42cm) and the graduated beads in the front meant the pendant wouldn't sit right.  I really didn't want to pull it to bits and it looks really nice just by itself so I think I will send it off to a friend of mine who likes to wear her necklaces a bit shorter.  I hope you like it CW  :)

And lastly a pendant I made some time ago that I thought a simple little triangular bail would work with. I like how this came up and I think I may do more pieces like this with the embedded loop.  I just have this on a fine black neck wire but it would also work on something a bit heavier ~ either beaded or a perhaps a heavier chain???????

Now it's time to get moving and get stuck into some more work.

HAPPY THIS YEAR!!!!!   I hope it's a healthy, happy and prosperous one for all of us XX

MERRY CHRISTMAS....

I'd like to take a moment to wish all my friends and blog readers a very Merry Christmas.

Whatever you are doing this holiday season, I hope you have a happy and safe time with lots of love and laughter!!!

2012 is nearly done and dusted and the New Year is just around the corner.  

My wish is for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2013 for us all.  

I don't think that's too much to ask for ~ universe are you listening???

 *hugs* Lyn.

LONG TIME GONE...

Unreal banana peel!!  And I thought it was a long time between posts last time!! How slack am I???
I really will make a concerted effort to post more often again, but maybe not until after Christmas.  And hasn't that snuck up quickly???? It only feels like it was a month ago.. 

Anyway, I really wanted to share some fantastic news I got last week.

Coatings by Sandberg are the BEST dichroic glass manufacturers in the U.S. and every year (for the last few anyway) they have this huge dichroic glass competition with entries from all around the world.  It has many different sections in which you can enter ~ and jewelry is one of them....YAY!!!!
This is the prime reason I wanted to learn how to bead!!  I had this idea for the competition but it depended on me being able to do certain things myself.  I had no idea if it would work and actually look alright, so after ripping it out a couple of times I did manage to bring what I saw in my head into being.  This is also the very first time I attempted to do bead embroidery.
OK ~ enough waffling on and I'll cut to the chase ~ I placed third in this competition with this piece!!!!  

You have no idea how happy I am!!!!  Grinning like a total idiot every time I think about it!!!!!

If you'd like to see the other entries ~ and they are pretty incredible ~ this link  will zoom you over there.

A BIT OF A CATCH UP...

Oops, I can't believe it's been so long since I've updated my blog...my bad.

I've still been doing heaps of glass but mostly just cabs and orders. If you are interested there are quite a few albums on my silvermoonlyn page on FB.  You don't have to be a member of Facebook to see these, they are set up for public viewing.

I thought I'd share with you more pictures of what I've been doing after dinner most nights.
I'm very pleased with my progress so far.  Funny thing though if someone had said to me 3 months ago that I'd be beading with tiny little beads I would have just about peed myself laughing at their silliness!!!  Ah well, never say never!!! LOL.

The first picture is a bracelet that I really liked the look of ~ it fits (just) but there are issues with the tension ~ a bit loose and a bit too floppy.  The second picture, I was playing with pattern and did manage to get my tension right.  Only one problem ~ it's too small for my hand. lol.

Back to the drawing board and playing now with slightly different and larger beads. First one, way too loose with the stitching, but size is pretty good. The second ~ I finally cracked it!! Tension is spot on and it fits!!  Bonus  :^)  I think I might play around with a few different colourways and patterns.  Maybe someone else will like them as much as I do (??)

This next bracelet is from a tutorial by BettyStephanBeadwork on Etsy.  Lots and lots beads but I really love how it worked out. It's marginally different to the pattern, but I just had to go with what I had here.  It feels divine on :^)
The teal blue one is an adaptation of the base of a rope pattern by Nancy at NEDbeads also on Etsy. There are a kazillion (seems like) 4mm Swarovski crystals in this baby. For those that know what I'm talking about when I say I had HUGE trouble learning right angle weave, this actually got me past it.  The shape of the crystals (suggested by my friend Jo) really helped and it finally just 'clicked'.  Now I just have to get my head around doing cubic RAW!!! LOL.

This pendant is from a kit by the very clever Leayn at Anthelion Jewelry  
It's really beautiful in real life and was heaps of fun to make.

I made a simple necklace for it to hang from.

Another  necklace that just started out with me practising  to do a simple beaded bezel around one of my very small cabs.  I got a little bit carried away.
I also learnt that fringing might look easy ~ but what a pain in the bum it is!! It's very fiddly.
Nonetheless, I'm happy with what I did and it's now living in the U.S. 

This was my very first attempt at a beaded bezel. It worked out pretty well eventually ~ I ripped out all those tiny little beads on the back and redid them. So then I tried to add a bail. It looked a bit clunky so I ripped it out and did one a little bit narrower.  I think I like the new one better.  Added a beaded spiral necklace and it was good to go.  And I'm very happy to say it is also residing overseas  :^)

I do have a couple of other beading projects on the go, but they are miles away from being finished.  I will probably bore you senseless when they are done!!  ha ha ha.

I have a few (glass) pieces that are just waiting on bails, hopefully I can get them done this week sometime and post some pictures.

Now I'm off to play with beads again.

HAVE FUN!!  And have a great weekend!!

A QUIET WEEK...

A very quiet working week from me this week ~ I got some cabochons cut and fired, a pendant finished and wired up, but not a great deal more in the way of glass work.
It was just one of "those" weeks as far as work was concerned!  The absolutely hideous weather didn't help much either I might add.

As you may know I've been playing with beads of a night after dinner and trying to teach myself a few new things.
This bracelet got finished last night while I was sort of watching the footy.
I struggled big time with the weave that makes up the base of this and then, with a lot of help from some Facebook friends and a lot of ripping out and swearing ~ all of a sudden it just clicked.  I was one happy little vegemite!!!
175 Swarovski crystals later and some very tiny seed beads it was done. 

 

Seems like I was on a bit of a purple streak ~ these are a group of cabs for an order.  A very unusual colour combination in the glass but I love it!!

 

And lastly a wreath pendant (also an order) wired up with 14kt rose gold filled wire. It's such a pretty colour, I think much nicer than yellow gold.

 I did have some absolutely fantastic news though ~ I entered a blog competition by Karen from Skunk Hill Studio.  The first prize was this brilliant book she has written on freeform beading and a kit to make one of her awesome bracelets.  YAY!!! Doing the happy dance ~ yes I won it and my kit is on it's way across the big pond as we speak.  More fun to be had!!!!   :^)  :^)

OK ~ back to making dinner for me ~ have a fantabulous week everyone!!!! CYA.......

THE WEEK THAT WAS...

 A few new engraved pendants from me this last week, quite a few cabs that were posted to my silvermoonlyn page on Facebook and more of my learning beading bits.
I'm currently working on photos so I can get some more pieces added to my Artfire store too.

 Some of my latest cabs ~ you don't need to be a Facebook member to see these.  Just click the picture and it will whisk you away to where the pictures live  :^)

 And experimenting with pretty tiny dichroic glass seed beads.  The tubular beading is 30mm long but only 6mm across and the beaded bead is 8mm hole to hole and 13mm wide.
These could be destined to become supporting parts of a piece I'm thinking about entering in a competition later this year ~ maybe......

 

Hope everyone is having a great week and not too cold or too hot ~ I don't know what happened to Queensland's  "Beautiful one day, Perfect the next" weather ~ I'm freezing my backside off here!!!  Hoo Roo.......