Susan Sto-helit. Because in this world, after everyone panics,

Another Project Finished

2026-02-21T02:01:30Z

I got this idea in my head. It just wouldn’t go away. All I could do was create it. So here it is. ( Behold, )

comments

Another Shiny Thing

2026-02-06T18:24:25Z

I recently bought these plated lava star beads at Michaels because they were pretty and I had a reward. This morning I had an idea. The ear threads are about 3” long and they’re from my jewelry supply hoard. The holes in the beads are big enough that they slid easily onto the threads, and the gold balls at the ends keep the beads in place. Fast, shiny, and fun.

comments

Yet more shiny things

2025-12-02T04:37:22Z

I received from somewhere a mental image of earrings that looked like faerie or magical wands. So of course I just had to try making them. These are pretty much what I imagined.

Sterling earwires, 18 gauge sterling wire, 25 gauge brass wire, Czech glass star beads, glass beads. The trickiest bit was wrapping the brass wire coils around the sterling. I finally found the good sense to find my favorite wireworking book, Bead on a Wire by Sharilyn Miller, which reminded me to use a small piece of rubbery shelf liner to grip the piece I was wrapping around. The second trickiest bit was finding star beads with big enough holes to fit onto the heavy sterling wire. They’re light and fun and I’m pleased with them.

comments

More Boxes

2025-11-28T04:33:27Z

Two more Books by Hand Box kits. The one on top is, obviously, a different style with a tray insert. The one underneath is the paper and bookcloth from a box-with-lid kit and bookboard I cut myself. So it’s a little wonky because I’m not good at bookboard cutting yet.

comments

2025 Box Kits

2025-11-23T01:41:14Z

I finished two boxes-with-lids. The pink floral paper came from a kit with lilac bookcloth, which looked so drab and boring that I had to change it. I had a piece of linen bookcloth that I think works much better. The night sky paper and black bookcloth on the other are from my hoard. The bookboard was all precut from a couple of Books By Hand kits, but next time I’m cutting my own. I have a box cutter and a cutter ruler and I’m not afraid to use them - much.

Oh, the thing the black box rests on is a sand-filled weight made from Japanese fabric. It was in the Aged Parents’ house; my dad used it to hold open the pages of books he wanted on display.

comments

2025 Japanese Journals

2025-11-14T19:28:07Z

They’re done. Top three are noble binding, bottom three are hemp leaf binding. I made the blue journal top left for me, the paper is tigers and spirals. The top right one was claimed by Kitty. The rest are for gifts because I wanted a little something to add to this year’s gift cards, and, yes, I needed an excuse to play with bookbinding. The leftover ones I’ll stash for next time I need a little gift or next time Kitty needs another small sketchbook. I think I’ll just spend the rest of November working through my hoard of bookbinding and fancy box kits. I’ve chosen the next one, but I’m going to need more black bookcloth. Woe is me, I have to visit an art supply shop soon.

comments

Progress: Japanese Journals Project 2025 Post the 2nd

2025-11-13T03:02:34Z

I got a lot done over the last few days. All I have to do now is choose the stitch patterns for each journal, drill all the holes, and stitch them all.

Bookcloth corners glued onto tied page blocks. First pass at binding thread selections.

Covers glued on. I made one mistake, swapped page blocks for two journals. So the one with black bookcloth got the cover meant for the navy blue and vice versa. No one but me knows, and the colors are close, so it doesn’t really matter. Also I revised my thread choices a bit.

comments

Progress: Japanese Journals Project 2025

2025-11-10T04:50:24Z

I had enough of one type of paper for six journals, with some extra. Which I needed after I miscut a stack of pages. I cut out all 6x34 4x6” pages, drilled and tied the page blocks, chose and cut out the various cover papers and bookcloth for all the journals, and cleaned up those supplies.

I have errands to run tomorrow morning, but after that it’s time to set up for glueing.

comments

Afghan Dress Finished

2025-11-07T18:16:15Z

Here it is. Folkwear pattern 107 Afghan Dress, assorted cotton batiks from the hoard, except the blue & green skirt and upper sleeve fabric. I got that at Joann’s going out of business sale. Bias tape, satin ribbon for trim on sleeves and hem.

comments

Afghan Dress Post the Second

2025-10-31T01:25:59Z

I sewed the skirt to the bodice. That took all morning, what with pinning with my very long very sharp Japanese pins, adjusting gathers, wrangling all that fabric around on the sewing machine, ripping out and restitching where the bodice got caught in the seam, and so on and so forth.

But that’s finished. Tomorrow I’ll put it on, see if I need to adjust anywhere, and start hemming. I also want to put two rows of the same ribbon I used on the sleeves around the hem. Maybe I’ll have it finished by, say, Monday next? Onward, Excelsior, All That Jazz.

comments

Life, the Universe, and Everything

2025-10-29T14:56:16Z

It’s our 42nd anniversary!

comments

Deck the Halls

2025-10-18T00:42:52Z

The front door, anyway. I put this festive holiday wreath together this morning. Dollar Store spiderweb wreath with glow in the dark spider, I wrapped wired orange leaf print around the outside edge, added small Halloween ornaments, a bow, and some little plastic spider rings with the backs cut off here and there. The ornaments and spiders came from Michaels, the ribbon from my hoard. I used black craft wire, hot glue, and needle and thread. It’s lightyears away from professional, but it’s the best I could do and I’m pretty pleased with it.

comments

Afghan Dress Post 1

2025-10-16T03:38:22Z

Today I cut out all the pieces. Below are the final selection of batiks. The blue-green on the upper left is the skirt and one sleeve section, the dark with vines is the bodice and cuffs, the beige is linings, one sleeve section and the sash, the green is the waistband and side gussets and the cuff linings. Basically I’m using each fabric in two places where it shows. I haven’t done anything about trims yet, but the batiks are pretty fancy already. I may just put a ribbon on the cuffs to match the neck binding, maybe something on the skirt and stop there. I’ll decide once I have the bodice and sleeves assembled.

I’ll probably look like a blimp, but at least I’ll be a colorful blimp.

comments

Asymmetric Earrings Again

2025-10-10T01:00:15Z

This pendant and earring were Aged Mum’s. She got them at the So Cal Ren Faire, maybe 50 years ago from Bindu, so they’re old. Somewhere in there, she lost one of the earrings. I brought them home when we cleaned out her house. I’ve played off and on with ideas for a second earring, not matching, but coordinating. So this week I had an idea, and today I put it together. I think it works.

Bindu bronze and silver pendant and earring. The earring is set with a small garnet. For the mate, I put Czech firepolished beads, two clear with a/b silver plating and one larger garnet colored, and two gold spacers onto a gold hoop. Also I replaced the wire on the Bindu earring because it was all bent out of shape. Yes, all from my hoard.

comments

Oops I did it again

2025-10-03T03:30:56Z

Instead of doing housework, I made one more pair of crotalia-style earrings today. I remembered having an old 3-strand necklace clasp in my hoard and I was able to locate it. After that it was a matter of choosing the rest of the bits. I decided to do something more like the originals, so I used white freshwater pearls, brass wire, and some gold coils meant to go on custom earwires. Those have got to be 45-50 years old, from when Aged Mum and I were learning jewelry making from booklets we bought at Grieger’s. I guess being a packrat comes in handy sometimes, but I sure feel ancient.

comments

Earrings!

2025-10-01T04:34:28Z

So today I made a pair of earrings to wear with my Medusa necklace (and without it, of course). They were sorta kinda inspired by a style of Roman earrings called “crotalia”, meaning “rattle” because the pearls rattle together when worn. Materials: Sterling wire, peacock blue freshwater pearls, assorted silver metal beads and findings. I didn’t have headpins in a fine enough gauge to go through the holes in the pearls, and I didn’t want to bother drilling the holes larger. But I did have some 24 gauge half-hard* sterling wire in my hoard. I made a tiny loop at the end of the wire and hammered it to make my own headpins.

* Leftover from my attempts to learn wirewrapping over 40 years ago. Half-hard means it’s not as easy to work as dead soft. On the other hand, I didn’t need to do wrapped loops because the wire is stiff enough to stay put when it’s bent.

comments

Medusa Pendant Necklace

2025-09-30T01:52:08Z

I finished stringing the necklace for my Green Girl Studios Medusa coin pendant. Materials: Pewter Medusa coin pendant and snake clasp by Green Girl Studios, 6mm black lava beads, 6mm 2-hole square tile beads with spirals, size 13 black seed beads, 7-strand beading wire, crimp beads. Going from one-hole beads to 2-hole tile beads was an interesting challenge, to say the least. I used two strands of lightweight beading wire, with tiny black seed beads between them to cover the wire.

I thought that the textured black lava beads feel like, I dunno, ancient Pompeii, and made a nice contrast to the square tiles, and the spirals give me the vibes of, among other things, snakes and mysteries. It’s all vibes around my art.

Front view

Pendant flipped to show the circled snake on the back

comments

Not New But Improved Earrings

2025-09-28T01:22:00Z

I don’t think I ever shared these earrings I made some years ago - I had put glow-in-the-dark skull beads on top originally. When I looked at them again last week, I decided to try something else. I went through the tin of Czech glass moon faces and the bronze plated ones just looked right. Of course then the plain silver earwires didn’t work, so I changed them too.

The coffins are little cardboard kits from Retro Cafe Art Gallery https://www.retrocafeart.com/catalog.htm . They come flat ready to be punched out and assembled. I painted them black and poured in Diamond Glaze, with acrylic bats and pumpkins and holographic star confetti set in, and glued a flat star charm on the back of each one as a bail.

comments

It’s Quoth, the Raven

2025-09-21T04:54:19Z

I got an idea yesterday. It kept poking at me, and I had everything I needed already, and this afternoon, I perpetrated another pair of earrings.

Silverplated findings, glass beads, ceramic raven beads, and a pair of charms. The skull beads glow in the dark. I’d originally envisioned them with carved bone skulls, but when I got out the box of skulls and skeletons and found these, I had to use them. All from my hoard, some of it more than 40 years old.

comments

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider Moon

2025-09-11T00:48:28Z

It hangs around outside Dr Emily’s kitchen window. She took this photo of it against the full moon. ( Hidden for non-arachnid fans )

comments

Finished!

2025-09-01T01:31:43Z

Here we go again, another shiny thing. I took the necklace apart and played with it, trying different combinations of beads until it felt right.

I bought the little bronze and peridot pendant at the So Cal Ren Faire many years ago. I’d strung it originally with the peridot beads, tiny gold beads, and freshwater rice pearls, and made the hook and eye clasp from gold-filled wire. I never really liked the rice pearls; they didn’t quite work with the round beads. But that was what I had at the time. I made the earrings a few years later. The tumbled peridots were a yard sale find, a short chain of tumbled chunks with little embedded wire loops, linked together with jumprings. I made the earwires. I used to do a lot of wirework. I should get back into it; I doubt I could do the really fine stuff anymore, but I could probably still make hammered wire clasps. Earwires, on the other hand, especially the classic shepherds hook, are not worth the hassle.

comments

Asymmetric Earrings Updated

2025-08-29T02:13:43Z

So I’ve been cleaning a lot of my earrings. I use an Ott-light daylight desk lamp so I can really see what I’m doing. I realized that this pair I made many years ago just doesn’t work anymore. The old version is below the reworked earrings, and you can kind of see that the bead on the one isn’t quite right for the red enamel on the other. At the time I did my best with the beads I had and was happy. Now I have more beads, and, I dare say, more skill. So I decided it was time for a redo. I like the way they came together.

Reworked earrings: The sterling and red enamel pendant that inspired me originally, sterling findings, a small Czech Picasso glass bead and a heart of similar color, and a Thai silver spiral charm.

The original version made with a red and gold bead.

comments

Progress! Done!

2025-08-15T17:17:36Z

I finished the necklace while I was doing laundry this morning.

Materials: dried mini gourd, top cut off and inside cleaned. The gourd got spritzed with Butterscotch Ranger Adirondack Color Spray and sealed with Liquitex Satin Varnish. The netting is natural color 2-ply Irish waxed linen. The embellishments are vintage red white heart trade beads and African metal heishi, a hummingbird fetish (which I think is reconstituted azurite/turquoise), a turquoise bear fetish, and turquoise, coral, shell, bone, and glass beads. I tried something new; I added a bear fetish and some red white heart beads at the back knot.

Previous Progress Posts are under the Knotless Netting tag.

comments

Progress The Third!

2025-08-15T03:09:37Z

The gourd pendant has its beads on. All that’s left is the necklace part.

Hummingbird fetish (azurite/turquoise composite), assorted beads: Vintage red white heart trade beads, vintage African metal heishi, shell heishi and beads, glass, bone, turquoise, and coral beads.

comments

Progress! The Sequel!

2025-08-13T01:48:24Z

Next, I rummage through the bead drawers and pull out all the likely-looking beads. There’s turquoise, coral, shell, bone, onyx and obsidian, little glass trade beads, and fetish bears and birds. I also got out one of my earlier gourd pendants so I can see how I spaced the beads on the necklace cords. Next, I try to cut down my selections and start stringing beads onto the hanging threads. That’s the really fun bit.

comments