New seed bead sample sets and some wire from and auto supply store

 I found these bead sets at my favirote dollar store in town, Loonie Twoons dollar store. they were $1.29 each, which is a good price for a sampling of beads. I have already whipped up a few pairs of earrings that I will photograpgh and blog tomorrow.

I have already transferred these beads into tiny zip lock bags.

browns / pinks / teals

white/black / purple / greens

 ...... and a few other things I picked up at Princess auto supply store - the small containers are very small

o

new walmart goodies and some stuff i made

here are a few pairs of earrings and a bracelet I have made recently, as well as some walmart bargains. I used copper earring bases from Micheal's, with seed beads and other plastic beads. and two pairs of copper chains and seed beads. These were all super easy to make; however I find coming up with a design I like to be the hardest part.

Whenever I try to copy a piece of jewelery I have seen in a store or online I don't have any problem - but when I have to whip something up with beads and findings I have on hand I often take a long time to find a satisfactory finished product.

 black, brown & copper bracelet, copper earrings and copper chain earrings.

 pretty silver bugle beads, smaller toggle clasps, earring set ( times2) not shown, copper head pins

the new toggle clasps i bought on the left and the regular sized ones I usually use

even at full price, this is a good deal; except Walmart has changed their packaging and jacked up all their prices - i hate it when companies do that - but it is cool to find the discounted bargains........

 i snagged 3 of these for $1.85 each..... i never noticed this smaller size before

the larger size and the smaller size

O

a few new things & blue glass bead jewelery

 small glass beads from the dollar store

boooooo-  one of the dollar stores in my town went out of business, so everything was 1/2 price. I grabbed these few things below. I appreciate the beauty of glass beads but I am a fan of uniformity, so I very rarely use these in jewelery making or even purchase jewelery with glass beads = unless it is just 1 special glass bead.

anyhoo- here are few bargains I had picked up last month. On top is stuff from the dollar store.....and below is a small bag of plastic pearl beads as well as a large chain that I will utilize for other re-fashion projects.

 I have successfully painted these types of plastic pearls with nail polish - notably the discontinued sally Hansen chrome polish, and using a normal kitchen sponge to add some colour as well = they end up looking somewhat antique - but i like that. eventually i would like to use the nail polish water marbling technique on these in the future ( which is messy but soooooo pretty )....

on the right is a bracelet that I made with odd shaped glass beads from a beginners set of beads from Micheal's craft stores ( the pail of beads ) on the left is a bracelet I made with the smaller blue glass beads. I fished out the lighter coloured BI-CONE beads from the dollar store package and made the earrings, which i used jump rings to attach to a chain.

I know i don't have to jam pack these charm/bead bracelets with stuff, but they seem sparse on my wrists...... so I might make some small colour coordinated jump rings to add to the below bracelets

 For the above and below bracelets I used some large blue plastic beads that I found at the thrift store (a year ago!!!!!) real crystal, smaller faceted pale blue plastic beads and long cylindrical plastic beads from the .99 cent store.... those I also purchased quite a while ago. I used jump rings to attach them to a piece of chain and toggle clasps ( or course ) for the closures.

i thought that adding real crystals would really showcase the fake plastic blue beads = but = it actually isn't that bad. I especially love the silver wire cage i made for the beads on the left....

..... that's it for now, hopefully i will get the rest of my photos on here b weeks end to make up for the MONTH AND A HALF that i did not post stuff.

new stuff I bought - May/June 2011

above and below; here are some goodies I picked up at Micheal's last month. I am still waiting for their display of discount/clearance jewelry to be 50 cents each. However I have acquired a tonne of jewelery fix'ns in the last year at low, low prices.

this post is a few things I have picked up over the last month.

I picked these up at Portage La Prairie, Manitoba walmart on Clearance for $1.00 each. Walmart in Canada has  re-vamped it jewelery making section, and have raised their prices. It is still cheaper to hit up Micheal's with your 40% off coupon and get the same types of beads at Micheal's instead of Walmart.

They still sell these exact same beads - but have changed the packaging - sorry I missed out on this clearance in my town - but really, I could go without buying seed beads for at least a decade and be just fine.

I got this jewelery set at Micheal's on clearance for 13 bucks! one of the cases of seed beads was missing  (it was the pinks and yellows). I really didn't need to buy this, but I did want those copper, zinc and steel coloured metallic seed beads and the dark smokey black seed beads.

This is a terrible way to store seed beads because these plastic cases are poorly made, and so they pop open and all the beads will fall out. Thats why it was on clearance because the pink/yellow case exploded in the store. It took me almost 40 minutes to tape up sections, pour them into the zip lock bags  and  to keep them separated while I transferred them into the zip-lock bags pictured below.

There is very few pairs in this collection of glass beads that came along in this jewelery making kit but I am sure that I can whip up some pretty bracelets and necklaces with these. I already had a good pair of rounded jewelery pliers. The crimp beads and silver wire will come in handy.

- there is a tonne of seed beads in this cute little set -

ooo

Michelas and other haul'n

haul from Micheal's over the last few months.

This is a post of some things I have acquired in the last few moths..... I haven't been making as  much stuff as i wanted because I cut my finger and could not hold anything with that hand ( waaaah! ) I am slowly changing all my favirote jewelery to have toggle clasps. I constantly break nails with those ridiculous claw clasps. I would say 1/3 of the time, anything with a claw clasp that I have bought from Icing or Claire's jewelery stores, the claw clasp was either stuck or broken or very difficult to get open and I generally break my nails trying to open them.

On another note all 3 pieces of Jewelery I have purchased at Le Chateau stores in my life-time have fallen apart or were defective. So I never buy stuff from there.....

All The red tags were an additional 50 % off, so I found some good bargains here. I am waiting for these to be on sale for .50 cents each, usually Micheal's has a ridiculous clear out where there is a bin filled with stuff for 50 cents.  I have purchased a few finding and tools that I otherwise would not have, and figured out how to make a tonne of neat stuff this way.

Toggle-Clasps! Yeeeeeeeeah! love these things

Finally - I bought something with a 50% off coupon at Micheal's! 

and there was actually 63 in here, not 60!!!! Bonus!

yippee- I bought some of these last summer ( NOT on sale ) I like this finish and have found some chain that matches this perfectly, as well as some beads to go with this 'look'

I dont really like the deconstructed copper and gold finish, but I thought I should try some out. 

 BARGAINS!!!!!

I am leery about black powder coated jewelery fixings.... when I start working with these i hope the finish doesn't come off, but if it does I have my handy-dandy Wet n Wild black nail polish to fix these up.

These 3 things were from another purchase and even though they are on clearance for a good price, they were also supposed to be and extra 50% off! So they need to be taken back for a re-fund.

and some stickers... these are for some jewelery experiments and for my nail art. I need flat rhinestones for a few projects in the works.  I don't know why these were on sale?

whoops! This is upside down

this is supposed to be for knitting, but I saw this on an end-cap at walmart on sale and grabbed it so that I am not always jabbing pins, pliers and other sharp objects where I accidentally cut myself a few months ago.  I always end up hurting the pad of my finger on my left index finger....

♥

some things I whipped up - Feb 7th to 13th 2011

What I accomplished this week; I fixed up a too-big-for me necklace by making it smaller and removed some of the components and whipped up a pretty pair of earrings and a bracelet... I still have a few things to make with the material I took off of it. The shortened necklace is above, along with the earrings I made and the bracelet.

Below, the earrings in the top row on the left, and the earrings first on the bottom row used to be 1 earring.... they were very heavy and too big so I cut them apart, filed the jagged edges with an old metal nail file and added chains to them. I am not finished with the pair on the bottom, I still need to add more swooping chain and some jump rings to tie them together ( make sense? no I will have a better description when I finish this pair of earrings )

This is the original necklace, I took off those silver round things, and the two chain fringes on the side so it only has 1 fringe in the very center.

another beautiful hand model pose..... I missed my calling

accomplishments - Feb 7th to Feb 13th

I am still enjoying making these simple and easy earrings out of that black nylon string stuff that I found at the dollar store in my town. I used fold-able crimp beads from Micheal's, those things are fabulous. Since they are gold, and I am trying to use up the package I have before I buy anymore, I painted them black ( Wet n Wild Black Creme)

I strung on some silver and black beads, sooooooooo easy! I haven't added the ear-wire yet, its actually easier to take a photo without it,

and another pair.... the silver beads that look like grenades were found at my favirote dollar store in town. I used some random black circular beads and the beads I re-purposed from a beaded hair accessory that I didn't use anymore.

These were components from a necklace I found at dollarrama last weekend. I dismantled it and so far have put these together.

I did not take a proper photo of this necklace..... but it is very pretty, just a little too heavy for me.

This stuff is so awesome, there was two packages of these at my favirote dollar store...... just sitting there for months. I do recall picking them up and wondering they were for and what I could do with them, I am so glad I bought them because using this material has been fun and the earrings I have made are versatile, and definitely the easiest. I would love to find this in different colours one day!

Here is a sampling of some of the earrings I have made using this black nylon string. It is possible to make lightweight but bulky earrings.  I have used regular crimp beads, as well as those fabulous folding crimp beads from Micheal's. Next time I visit Micheal's I will hunt around EVERY section to see if this material is available, it may not even be for beads or jewelery.

Here is a package of crimp beads I purchased at Micheal's this weekend, 800 crimp beads for $3.99 !!!!!!! Dang that's awesome! I think that the package at Walmart is $2.50 for 100 beads so even at full price this would still be a great deal. STRANGELY I NEVER SAW THIS IN MICHEAL'S during my regular shopping. I must allot time to browse through that store every month, because this is a great deal!

..... and a silver metallic pen from DollarRama, which is awesome, and some necklace bases also from DollarRama. OKAY>>>>> I put on one of those necklaces and I couldn't get it off!!!!! I had to CUT it off, for some reason I kept trying to unscrew the silver component, but it is the actual BLACK piece of wire that you hold onto to unscrew! I panicked and just snipped it off.

seeeeeeeee what I mean. holding and twisting the black part to unscrew.

In conclusion ~ I did not create as much as I wanted to, I started alot of things and did not finish, but I am happy with what I have accomplished this week. My bare minimum goal is to accomplish at least 5 pieces, and I did that.

♥