Little Blog Updates

Hi my lovely readers!

I was playing around with the design on my blog today. I made it a little bit wider to show less background and more of my posts. When I did that I had to redo my header to fit the new size so I tried out a slightly different design.

The big change was to my tabs at the top. I split up all my past projects into different pages with bigger pictures so it will be easier to look up projects I have done. I also wanted to show what the main kinds of projects are that I work on to any possible new readers.

I hope you like my new changes and let me know if you have any other suggestions!

Have a great holiday weekend. I know I will enjoy having Monday off from work :)

Blue and Green Drop Necklace

The other day I was browsing Etsy wistfully looking at all the pretty drop necklaces I wanted to buy. I didn’t need a new necklace but I really wanted one. I forced myself to close my laptop and I decided to go make myself a necklace instead.
Let me just say I am no jewelry making expert. I have made a few necklaces but I still consider myself a beginner. Really basic jewelry making is easy to me but once it gets into bending head pins, I struggle to make it look professional. I think I am probably my biggest critic because I notice all the imperfections more than anyone else would.
Despite all it’s challenges, I love making myself a new necklace or pair of earrings. I get really excited when I get a compliment on a necklace I made. The more I make, the easier it gets. I’ve learned so much but there is so much still to learn!
Most of the time when I make a necklace the design evolves as I go. I usually start out with one plan and then it changes as I’m making the piece. For this necklace I based everything on these beads I got at Michaels.

Other supplies I used were three kinds of chain, head pins, jump rings, a clasp and seed beads.
I started out by adding a head pin to all of the beads. I don’t think I’m showing in this pic but some of the holes in the beads were a little too big and the head pin was slipping through. I added a matching seed bead in between the head pin and the large bead to prevent the head pin from slipping.

Next I bent the ends of the head pin into a loop. I am still not very good at this but you can find a good tutorial for this at Miss Lovie or Flamingo Toes.

The next part was really tough for me. It took me a couple of sessions to figure this out. I added all of the beads to the long piece of chain. I had trouble keeping the chain straight so I wrapped the chain around one of my craft storage containers and used a safety pin to hold it up. This helped to prevent the chain from moving around when I was adding the beads.

I felt like the necklace needed a little more weight so I cut two smaller lengths of different chains and added them above the beads with a jump ring.

I finished the necklace off with a clasp attached to a jump ring.

And my necklace was complete! I’m excited I finally found a use for these beads. I proudly wore my new necklace to work the other day :)



I may be linking up to these parties:

Bike Ride Pictures

 

Mike and I have been exploring the bike trails in our area. We spent a big chunk of our vacation discovering the local trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We learned that there is one huge trail with lots of points to hop on. It’s so fun to ride on it. The scenery is beautiful and most of the trail is covered by trees so it’s nice and cool when we are riding.

On one of our rides we found a place on the trail we both thought would be great for taking some pics. Mike got to practice with the DSLR camera. I mainly use it for taking pictures of my crafty endeavors so he had some fun getting familiar with it.

I think he did pretty great for his pictorial debut :)