Yuk! Hospital Stay

I've been out of the loop for a few days. Unfortunately, I was in the hospital. Nothing serious, I hope. I had 3 siezures over a period of two days so they admitted me. I think they took half of the blood out of my body doing blood tests. One day they took so much blood in such a short period of time that I actually got nauseous from it.

They did tons of tests on my heart and my brain, and everything came back normal, so nobody knows why I had the siezures. I had just started taking Medrol (a steroid) for some pain I was having in my shoulder, so I don't know if it was related to that or not. I've taken Medrol before with no ill effects, but now I'm afraid to ever take it again.

Anyway, it hasn't happened again, so I'm hoping it was just a flukey thing and that was the end of it.

I just got home yesterday and I've been resting, but I'm feeling like beading again now, so I think I'll work on my wine bottle today. It's about time I got that thing finished up! I am also eager to try some more designs with beads and chain. I'm having a hard time trying to get the finished work to look like the ideas in my head though.

Hope all of you are in good health!

Cat

Woohoo!

I told you I would have some news to share this week.  Here it is.  Look what I received today!

Yay!  Woohoo!  Yippee!

Cat

Earwires

I’m really having fun playing around with my wire.  I’m pretty slow at it though, I have to work on that.  I made a pair of earwires with little crystals on them.  But, oops, I made the little loops backwards!

Does it really matter which direction the loops face?  Does the dangle part hang differently if the loop is faced around backwards?  I guess I’ll find out.  I’ll make something and hang it on there.

I can’t wait to get good at this.  I really want to work with silver, but I don’t want to make any mistakes, it’s too expensive.  I’ll just keep practicing with copper for awhile.

Cat

Another Addiction

I’ve had some (well, a lot of) wire stashed in my beading supplies since years ago, when I thought I would do something with it and then never did.  I’ve made a few simple loops and wrapped loops here and there when I needed to, but never took it much further.

I finally got out all my wire today and went looking for tutorials. I found plenty of them at Jewelry Lessons.   After I finished drooling over all the pretty things, I picked a tutorial marked ‘beginner’ by Pat Capo, called Single Spiral Ring.  Her directions were fantastic, and I managed to make this:

One thing I definitely learned – It’s important to file the cut ends of your wire!  I tried to put the ring on before I filed it and I cut my finger.  Ouch!  But now that I’ve filed it properly, it fits well and it’s very comfortable.

And I think I have a new addiction.  I downloaded a bunch of tutorials in my thirst for wire knowledge.  I think I grabbed every free one they had, and once I pick up some basic skills I can go on to the more advanced paid tutorials.  Jewelry Lessons is a great site!  Many experienced teachers with lots of knowledge to share.

On another note, I think I might have some exciting (to me, at least) news to report at the beginning of this coming week!  Stay tuned.

Cat

My Crazy Heart

I had to take a break from working on the wine bottle for a while. I have taken it apart so many times it isn't funny. I thought decreasing in less spots would make it look rounder, but it made it look like a triangle, lol. So I will undo the top of it again, and hopefully this will be the last time I reconstruct it.

Meantime, I made a quick project today. I wish I could link to where I got the instuctions, but I can't find the blog now. Cute little heart, only took me about an hour. I think I'll make a few more of them, try some different variations.

But as I was adding the jump ring, I realized that not all the jump rings in this package of closed rings that I have are soldered properly. Darn! Now I'm going to have to inspect every jump ring in the package before I buy them in the future? I'm a perfectionist, I can't help it.

Cat

A New Look?

I've had this green blog for years, and I'm starting to get a little tired of it. I think I'm going to play around with some of the templates here on Blogger, and maybe change my blog to a brighter color.

Knowing me, I'll push a wrong button somewhere, though, and wipe out my blog. Well, we will see what happens.

Cat

Wine Bottle Finished

I finally finished the little wine bottle.  Here it is.  It’s 1 3/4 inches tall.

I don’t like it though.  I might do it over.  The label is too high, it should be closer to the bottom of the bottle.  And for some reason, it looks more like a beer bottle than a wine bottle.  I can’t figure out why.  Maybe the neck is too short in comparison to the body?

OK, I just measured a wine bottle to see what the actual proportions are for neck to body.  The bottle is 11½ inches tall, and the neck starts at 6 inches.  So, I do need more neck and less body.  Alright, I’m going to try another one.  I guess it would have been a good idea to measure the actual wine bottle before I started.  Oh, well, live and learn.

And look at the bright side.  I know how to make a beer bottle!

If I can do a good job on this, I might be able to sell some.  My friend is a wine consultant, and she said all her colleagues go crazy over any kind of wine decoration.  So I could probably make a bunch of these as purse charms and sell them, if I can get it to look like what I envisioned.

Cat 

HUH???

What happened to the spacing in that last post?  BlogSpot does some really weird things sometimes.  I must remember to write my posts using Windows Live from now on.  The only thing is, I can’t edit a previous post from there.

Cat

Google+

Has anyone tried Google+ yet?

It’s similar to Facebook, but run by Google (obviously…).

I’m feeling kind of lonely over there right now. I signed up for it, but hardly anyone else that I know has it, so I’m following three people: the person who I got the invitation from, one person who I invited, and writer Wil Wheaton. Or I’m friends with three people, I don’t know, I haven’t quite got the concept of “circles” yet, and I don’t know the difference between following someone and being their friend.

If you’d like to try it out, let me know and I’ll e-mail you an invitation. Maybe we can liven up my page, or wall, or whatever. I think Google calls it my “stream”. I’m learning.

Edited to add: Oh, well, that's me, always a day late and a dollar short. Just when I finally wrangle an invite to Google+, sign up, and offer to send out more invitations, they open the whole thing up to everybody, LOL. They probably did it because everyone is so mad at Facebook today and they think they can get a bunch of people to switch over, or at least try it out.

Cat

One bracelet done

I'm learning a few things about working with the chain. A lot of the designs that I had in mind didn't work, because the chain I'm using has oval links. When I attached the chain to the beadwork, the attached link would move so that the "short" end of the link was attached, not the "long" end as I had imagined. I will have to either work up some designs where that would be incorporated or buy chain with round links, lol.

Another thing I've learned is that chain has a mind of it's own. What looks really great on paper doesn't work out so well in practice because the chain has a tendency to move where it wants to go. Fine, but I just have to plan for that in my design. I'm really determined to merge chain and beads.

After working half the night and all day, I only ended up with one simple bracelet so far, mostly because I just wanted to have something to wear after all that time working. So I just made a simple daisy chain with the copper-colored seeds and some aquamarine AB crystals, and attached it to a slide clasp. Then I attached chains on each side of the beaded work. It's okay, but not WOW. I'll probably end up taking it apart and reworking it.

Meanwhile, back to the drawing board.

Cat