Actually I would have liked to post this on Friday because it's a real stash tackler, but I just didn't make it in time although I had started working on it weeks if not months ago. Originally this was not supposed to be an entry for the Art Elements challenge. The challenge made me pick this neglected WIP up again, though. Let's start at the beginning. I had ordered cabs, among them a carved labradorite cab. My order arrived, I had a look and noticed that the lab had a crack and the next thing was me having two pieces in my hands. Don't you just hate when things like that happen? I didn't throw it away because I thought I could try something artsy with it. I know, I know, but I'm a Swabian, so I am bound by stereotype to not throwing things away until I'm really, really, 100% sure I can't use it in some way. In ten years maybe. Also, when I held the pieces together I was reminded of a fish of the kind we used to draw as children, with that one curved line separating the face from the body. Every time I was at the cab drawer, I saw the little "fish", and finally I decided to give it a try with bead embroidery. I glued the cab, beaded the bezel and gave it a bead eye. Then I put it in my box with the bugle beads that were leftover from the beaded sneakers and the Twin Beads from when I had ripped up a bead scarf the other day. I simply didn't have an idea for hiding the crack yet. The box has a permanent spot on my bed, by the way, with my macrame board on top because a certain little cat loves to sit on it. Anything for my mistress! When I saw that this month's topic for the AE challenge was blue, I had almost finished something else and I had found a blue/green bead soup baggie in my stash drawers. It had been a gift and you could tell that someone had made this soup on purpose as the colors were really pretty together. My motivation was back! I also had an idea for the crack now, a simple beaded strip from size 15 seed beads that was stiff enough to hold the curve and hid the crack perfectly. Then I embroidered an ocean for my little fish using the bead soup and some of my leftover bugles and last but not least I gave him fins - no idea why, but he looks like a Rudy to me. Finally, to make his ocean a little more interesting I sewed on some button and potato pearls.
But now what? A brooch, a bracelet focal, a pendant? I found it was too big for a brooch and I didn't have any pins that would have been big enough, anyway. So I finished off the back as I didn't have to prepare the Ultrasuede for a pin. It looked kind of nice held against my wrist, but not nice enough to think of a solution for how to make this into a bracelet now. It needed some kind of beaded rope, but the blue beads were much too irregular for a rope. There were the Twin Beads in my box, though, and I had a lot of the clear mix (clear, silver lined, AB) that I could use for a Herringbone chain with the "ocean" seed beads at the sides.
Here's the result. I have to confess that part of me thought about adding a fringe, but that would have been over the top. What do you think?
I should add that this piece is not going into my shop of course, after all there's a broken stone in this one. It will have to stay mine :-) This is not a blog carnival anymore, but I will add links to other challenge blog posts later as they come in. So please check back at the end of the month!
The latest Art Elements challenge had the topic "summer solstice". Art Elements changed the format for the challenge, it's not an official blog hop anymore, but is in its own Facebook group now. So this is an inofficial post so-to-speak ;-) Actually I hadn't intended to participate at all this month. I was so busy with my big projects, the box, the doll outfit, and the tiara that I couldn't even work on ideas. It is mere coincidence that this ring fits. Some years ago a jewelry forum friend of mine made a pair of silver wire macrame spiral earrings and they were beautiful. I'd like to show you, but I can't find a picture of them anymore. I kept going back to the pictures to admire them. I never learned macrame when I was a kid or teenager although it was the 70s and wall hangings or pot hangers flooded the neighborhoods. I had a little macrame owl hanging from my tote because a friend of mine made them enthusiastically and very well, too. Later I had it hanging over one of my cabinet keys, but eventually the cord broke. I'm absolutely sure that the owl is still somewhere, but I couldn't find it or I would have taken a picture it. Anyway, when I saw the earrings, I told myself that one day I would try that myself.
Hey, it only took ten years! Of course I have just learned one knot so far, the square knot, and made one ring with help of this tutorial by CSL Designs. I struggled a lot with getting the knots regular and I messed up about six times having single knots that were a little bigger or smaller and that wouldn't do. I didn't give up, however, and am quite happy with this try. Joining the ends was a little difficult. That part is not as pretty as I would have liked, so I thought I'd hide them with a bead. I tried some crystals first, but then I went through my stash - yes, that's the Friday stash tackler part in this! - and found this bead with a sun on it that a friend once gave to me. That's when I thought I could make a little something for the Art Elements challenge after all. See, sometimes things come to you even if they haven't been planned at all or even inspired by a topic which is the reason why I only have to offer this short blog post. Time to show my little ring :-)
I have to admit that I went into this Art Elements challenge without a clue or inspiration once again simply because I loved the topic Niky chose - bees. Here's an old picture from our little garden in the back and one from the wonderful Cambridge University Botanic Garden.
Now to the challenge. I don't have many yellow beads. I have some Delicas, some Czech seed beads, and I had a bracelet that had been waiting to get ripped up, with wire crochet flowers of riverstone and yellow cat eye beads. I thought the cat eye beads would make nice little bee bodies, but I could hardly paint black stripes on. So instead I decided not to make bees, but to loom something inspired by bee colors. The plan was a bead loomed base in black and yellow with cat eye embellishments. For contrast I used black seed beads and yellow thread, and because I didn't want the cat eyes to sit too high, I thought I'd leave neat little cutouts in the base for them. So I loomed and then started reweaving threads. Nine beads meant nine cutouts meant 54 more threads to weave in. The number was not the problem, I don't mind reweaving, but although I left the warp threads quite long on both sides, most of these threads were very short. After all they were no extra threads. The one row in which three cutouts "met" - not the smartest idea I ever had - resulted in having to get eight threads out of one long one. So mostly I went back along the warp thread with the needle, threaded it then, pulled through, went through one of the horizontal rows with the needle, threaded it, pulled through .... for just one of 54 threads. Repeat, repeat, repeat ... I do have shorter needles, but they are a little too thick for my taste. Finally I could sew the cat eyes in. When I was done, however, I looked at my bracelet and thought, wow, that is really, really ... BORING! Ugh.
What now? I had to come up with something to spruce this up a little. I tried this and that, and finally I gave all of the little yellow bees wings from clear AB size 15 seed beads. They are rather delicate, so I didn't want them flapping on the bracelet, and I fastened each wing tip to the loomed base. Unfortunately I still wasn't happy. It couldn't be helped, those bees needed their stripes. What if I gave each one a stripe from size 15 seed beads? Of course they wouldn't sit tightly on the bodies, but you'd get the idea of bees. Only when I had "painted" all nine cat eyes, I thought a second stripe might be even better o.O Ok then. Hm. Now I wished I had thought of that from the beginning and given the bees a green base to sit on. Not that I would have had the beads to do that. Not that I wanted to start all over again. Not that it even made sense to think about now. Night flying bees. Are there bees that fly in the night? Obviously there isn't that much known about bees and their sleep, except that they do sleep or at least take naps. Worker bees in the hive also work during the night, but bees don't fly at night. Well, mine did now and it looked rather dark. I could at least give them some flowers? So that's what I did. Believe me, there is a LOT of thread in those base beads and a lot of time in the bracelet! Now I just had to add the findings, though, in a gold tone this time which works better here than my usual silver or copper tones.
Wow. I honestly wasn't sure if I'd make it in time. I'm almost impressed by my own patience :-P This is a blog hop, so please check out the other participants' posts as well!
Cathy - Jennifer - Jenny - Marsha - Niky - Sue I'll end this post with a picture collage of bees (flying by day ;-)) sent to me by a friend. Aren't they beautiful?
It has been a while since I last participated in the Art Elements challenges, and a lot has been going on since - and still is going on. I'm not here to talk about a virus today, but about how I try to distract myself from it at least sometimes. The Art Elements March challenge seemed like a very good opportunity to me and I couldn't resist the topic that Jenny chose for it - gnomes. Even though being German, I never owned a garden gnome of my own. That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't see my share of them in other people's gardens. For some reason I remember those best that were in the very small garden behind a friend's house. There was only a rather small spot of grass with at least one lying fawn and a gnome. Classic. We had to move them over every time we wanted to play crocket. Of course I know all the stereotypes, German gardens overflowing with gnomes, but I can't remember ever having seen one of those myself. Thinking of it, the gnomes I knew must have been very lonely. Then again, maybe they enjoyed the solitude like the sleeping gnome I have shared on my blog before.
My project was inspired by several things. One of them were pictures from childhood, much like the one with the snail riding gnome in Jenny's post. Another one were my friend Star's incredible polymer clay snails some of which carried tiny pixies (the link is working now, I had changed it to go directly to the Flickr album and had mixed some extra links in, doh!). One of them is Maeve, the snail racer, and she's not even the smallest pixie rider (yes, that means you should check out all of Star's snails ... but wait, after reading this post!).
Of course my gnome was going to be a little bigger than those pixies, but I still intended to make him ride a snail. It started with the snail (not a kiss ;-)). I was determined to use a pair of my beloved small vintage glass eyes that I had only used once before. A little reminder or for those who don't know it, my ex and I collected Steiff animals. One of our finds was a tin full of vintage glass eyes of all kinds for plush animals plus some other stuff. We used some of them or actually the ex did as he was better in attaching them, especially with bigger heads because you really had to pull on the thread to make the eyes sit right and then tie the knot. There were those small eyes, though, that we never found a use for. The tin - and you may have been expecting this, it WAS a cookie tin! - stood around for many years as I haven't added much to my part of the collection and completely forgot about it. When I started needle felting, however, it caught my look again right away. Just look how many of them there are! I even like the waxy paper bag they came in.
The glass "sticks" reminded me of snail eyes, so I figured I'd simply felt around the sticks and use a little glue at the top part to keep the glass from sliding back out. I poked my fingers a lot even though wearing my finger guards, but it worked the way I had imagined it, yay! I went from the eyes to the body which was okay as well, but don't get me started about the shell. It took forever because I didn't just want to add a ball on top, I wanted a swirl that was noticeable, at least a little. In the end I added the contrast color - inspired by our snails, the colors are just the other way round on them - to make it clearer.
Next was the gnome. I hadn't made a figure yet, but I knew I would need something to reinforce the limbs, and the pipe cleaners I had were way too big. I ended up using some of my stainless steel. There have been better ideas in my life, but although it took me even longer than the snail shell I did not give up. Mr Gnome got some brown pants, taupe boots with black straps to go with this tall taupe hat that has a little red zigzag embellishment around the edge, and a forest green tunic that is highly fashionable thanks to his belt that I made from some satin gift ribbon and a copper jump ring. His nose and hands are huge. I'm sure he can smell his way all around the forest and if he had an axe, he'd cut down those twigs like no one else! His eyes are seed beads (shhh, I think he may be a wee bit jealous of Schneggle's eyes).
Of course there was no chance in this whole wide world that I could move Mr Gnome's limbs afterwards to make him sit on the snail by himself. Maybe you can tell that I already designed him in a slightly sitting posture. I could have made him sit right and attach him (what a terrible thought), but he had become too big. The two of them kept falling over, and while they had a good laugh doing it, I decided they'd rather walk together in the end, well, or crawl. Oh well, I'm sure Schneggle - which is Swabian for "snail" - didn't mind not having to carry Mr Gnome. After all he has two feet that (almost) work perfectly well, doesn't he?
This is not just a design challenge, it is also a blog hop, so please check out the others' posts as well! Thank you!
P.S. Hey guys. This is Mr Gnome speaking. I wanted to tell you what the lady is not saying. Schneggle and I have been trapped. Forest, my foot. Walking together? Inside a vase?? Yes, you read that right. She. Put. Us. In. A. Vase. Of course she said it was only temporary while we are still hanging in the light tent. It's too dangerous there for us without a place to hide. Because of Gundel. The huge panther who has been trying to kidnap innocent felt critters like us. The other day she stole the voodoo doll, she said. And the black cat head. Both could be saved. It's no fun being in a vase. After all we are not genies! So if you could tell her to set us free if she hasn't done so yet when you are reading this post, we'd appreciate it. A lot. Thank you!
The first thought when Niky announced "fossils" for the new Art Elements design challenge in November was obviously to look into the mirror. I have been calling myself a fossil for a long time as I sometimes have the feeling I don't fit into this modern world very well ;-) Now that I'm sitting here I think I should have tried to do something with the idea, just for the heck of it, but the days have been slipping through my fingers in a most unproductive way, so it was much too late for it. In fact I was late, anyway. Somehow I thought the month was much longer and that the reveal wouldn't be before the end of the month. When I was reminded of the actual reveal date, I almost panicked. It meant I HAD to make something on the weekend before because there was no chance for a last night action this time. I did have several ideas, but a problem with the execution. Do you know those days when you feel time is running out and you just keep messing things up? Believe it or not, I started three pendants and cut all of them up again because I didn't like the asymmetry here and the setting there and why didn't that ammonite want to stay in there the way I wanted it to? I think I was just pushing it too hard, so I put both wires and the fossils away - ammonites in different sizes and a beautiful fossilized coral cab. When the reveal date started hanging over me like a Damocles sword, I gave up on the wire. Instead I took out a bottle and my Delicas. I have been making quite a few of those little beaded bottles lately, but the pattern I had in mind needed a bottle that was a little bigger. I have been fascinated by dinosaurs forever. Which kid hasn't been? One of my favorite books was "Mamal" by Niels Meyn, a Swedish children's book from the 40s about one of the first mammals on Earth. I can't say how often I checked this book out and I was devastated when the library took it out of their stock. Thanks to the internet I own it myself now and can take a look at my favorite illustration, the fight between the T. Rex and the Triceratops. Sorry, Triceratops, children can be cruel and I know I didn't show enough grief for you having your belly ripped out by the T. Rex in the end. Then there was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World from 1912. I read it back and forth and all over again. I don't remember the title of the book with the girl and the German Shepherd that I think I got for Christmas. I do remember that the dog was supposed to be taken away, but wasn't in the end because he helped the girl finding some kind of fossil, not the crocodile she had hoped for, though. You see, dinos and fossils everywhere! I live only 10 miles from the Urweltmuseum Hauff, and my area has a lot of fossils to offer. One of the most amazing exhibits at the museum is the world's largest colony of sea lilies, but of course there is more. Even a crocodile! ;-)
So instead of using a fossil for a design, I decided to bead a fossil, inspired by my dino fascination and by the Jurassic Park logo showing a T. Rex skeleton. Unfortunately I didn't stand a chance to finish it in time, so all I have to show today is a WIP. I'm still happy I got that far considering that I only had Sunday evening and a little time after work on Monday and Tuesday. I chose a black background for the contrast as I used a mix of two slightly different beige colors for the fossil itself. I liked the look better than the idea of bleached white bones. With more time on my hands I might even have tried a Triceratops fossil on the back to honor the fight from Mamal! ;-)
This is a blog hop, so please hop with me to all the other participants' blogs, so we can check out their posts and "fossil creations" together.
When Laney announced the topic for the October design challenge at Art Elements - Eyes - I didn't even think about not entering although I had no idea what to make (as usual ;-)). I have always been fascinated by eyes. If I were a better photographer, I would annoy my cats day and night taking pictures of their eyes. Ever since I was a child, I have been drawing eyes, I still do sometimes if I'm in a meeting, but I don't think they are any good, so none of those doodles has survived. I have created eyes in wire and beads. Eyes are important in many of my HeatherCat pieces and I can't begin to tell you how often I ripped out the eyes in my fan wall portraits, even after the whole portrait had been loomed, sometimes just to change out one bead for a better look. It is amazing how a tiny "light reflex" can brighten up an eye or make it incredibly creepy.
This pair of earrings started out as a basket that became too big because I miscounted my stitches. Sometimes I just stare at a piece of shaped wire, no matter if it's crocheted, knitted or woven, and manipulate it to become something else. In this case it became an eye shape. Do you remember Gozer from Ghostbusters? Gozer had those glowing red eyes that let you hardly see the white. They inspired these earrings. I wanted them dark and creepy and staring, adding white would have made them too human. I wish I had had red lampwork beads that big, but these blue and green ones work nicely, too. The lashes are supposed to add to the out of this world look.
My second idea was very different. Cat eyes. I could get lost in them. Not that I don't love other animals' eyes in all their varieties, but cat eyes are the best, and I wanted to bead some. Not elaborate ones with a lot of shades because I simply didn't have the time to design a pattern for those with the bead colors I had on hand. Instead I took my inspiration from some Studio Ghibli anime movies I had watched recently. I wanted the eyes to be big and impressive. This was my first attempt.
That ring was quite wide and I thought that the top rows weren't really necessary. What if I lost two of them and added something else instead that said "cat" more than just the eyes? My first prototype was a little wonky. I had tried to add a nose as well as ears, and the nose didn't work at all. Unfortunately I had already woven in all the threads and had a hard time to find them again at first! Now I had to try different color combinations of course, and the eyes are not all completely the same, either. This could become quite obsessive ......
That's it from me for today, but this is a blog hop, and I'd like to ask you to have a look at all the other entries, too. Have fun! Guests
"Foliage? I can do that!" When I read the September topic for the Art Elements Design Challenge that Caroline gave us, I was completely confident that I would rock this. I have made leaves and leaf patterns both in wire and beads before, and I even thought that this time I would be able to make more than one piece.
BAM! Unfortunately this is not a "I did it" BAM, but a "life gets in the way" one. So this is the part where I'm getting to the cheap excuses, in this case work and health or rather a combination of both which tends to kill off not my creativity, but the ability to transfer my ideas into actual pieces. For example I saw some wire crochet leaves in fall colors before my eyes, but after ripping one up twice I didn't feel like another attempt.
I even forgot that I had started making something that I put on my manikin head to decide about a clasp and embellishments. Just a few days ago I happened to see it again (and I walk by that head all the time!) and had planned to work on it some more yesterday after coming home from work, but due to a stranded train it took me three hours to get home, and all I wanted there was something to eat and sleep. This morning now I wasn't even sure if I liked it at all anymore without some major changes. Now I'm afraid it's going to move to the Drawer of Eternal WIPs which is not a good place to be, I've heard ;-) I'm glad that I'm not standing - well, actually sitting - here without having anything to show. I love making these kind of leaves, they are great to use in earrings, pendants or necklaces, and it's always fun embellishing them with what I can find at the moment. Here I used chocolate brown freshwater pearls and matte carnelian beads for that perfect fall feeling. After all fall is my favorite season!
Now here's the good stuff, a list of all the other participants in the challenge, and I'm sure they'll be showing a lot more. I'm already looking forward to going through all the posts and pictures! Please have a look, I know you won't be disappointed!
First of all ... you are free to think of these as octopi or octopodes, should you so prefer, but while I used to say octopi and loved my octopi t-shirt, I now like how fun it sounds to say octopuses, and it's not wrong (thank you, Merriam-Webster). Second, when Claire announced the topic for the Art Elements August theme challenge - Octopus - I did a little chair dance. Not only do I love octopuses, but I may also be slightly obsessed with making them. I first got inspired by the polymer clay octopus my friend Star made and which is looking at me at this very moment.
It took me quite a few hours to crochet my octopus from wire. The man came later and was not meant to end up in the tentacles, but you know how those things happen. They are still in their deadly (?) embrace sitting in the ocean department of my Steiff collection.
Then there was Hank, the little lampwork thief, also crocheted from wire.
After a long break from making octopuses (but never not loving them) I started wire weaving, and that really got me going. Instead of telling you each single story I made a little collage (minus one of which it seems I didn't take a picture). There's tiny Barney at the top, and now you can tell how I more and more became obsessed by twisting those tentacles. Gosh, they are fun to make!!
So I decided on a big piece for this challenge, and maybe a small one. The small one hasn't happened yet, and I honestly didn't think I'd finish the big one in time although I started really early this time. My first step was to order small cabs.
Why? This is why. I wanted octopus babies of my own, but instead of making them all one color, I decided on a multitude of colors. I chose agate, sodalite, zoisite, jasper, aventurine, amethyst, rose quartz, and more. Each cab got its own kind of weave, and voilà - an army of octopus babies, ready to take over the world, mwahahaaaaaa!
Actually this was the easy part. How to put them together now? I could dangle them from a chain, but a tentacle army is not quite as effective if those tentacles keep tangling. I kept laying them out like this and like that, I think they got rather tired of me. Just two days ago I suddenly knew what I wanted to do. The video should have given me the idea much earlier. Those babies needed a mom! One of my easiest exercises - well, not really because by now I began getting nervous about finishing this in time. AND I still didn't know how to put it all together in the end.
A little deep breathing, a lot of cursing and some dramatic yelling "I can't do this, I'm useless!" later I had done it - almost. Hard to believe and still true, you can run out of exactly that one kind of chain that you need while still having all others. I just found enough to connect my babies in the back, though. Phew. I rarely make big, over the top necklaces, but this is one of them, and I love each little tentacle. Taking a picture, however, wasn't easy, it was a little crowded in that light tent and a little too early in the morning to take a picture in the garden, and on top of that I only had four hours of sleep.
I'll try to come up with something better later, so please bear with me.
Last but not least I want to thank Claire for this fantastic topic. I have a feeling she and I share the same love of octopuses .... P.S. Oops, almost forgot my own polymer clay octopus. That won't do, he's grumpy enough as it is! ;-)
It has been a few months since I last participated in the Art Elements Design Challenge. While my muse is still on an extended vacation at a place unknown to me, I responded to this month's topic right away. Flowers, that's easy enough even for me, I thought. The bonus was that I had already planned a flower piece for the Jewelry Artisans Community challenge! Now I had just to pull it through of which I wasn't sure yet. Stick with me for my story, will you? Shortly before my birthday in June my pal gave me a wonderful gift. We would go to see Jane Goodall, one of my heroines since childhood, in Munich. On the way back home the next day we didn't take the direct route, but went along the little towns and villages (where we discovered for example that there's something called soccer golf, but that is not part of this story). Summertime, flowers in the fields, a/c in the car to protect us from the heat outside ;-) it was very relaxed. At one point I wanted to get out of the car and take a picture, though. This was the field with the most poppies along the way and it brought back memories big time. As a kid and teenager I had a friend with a dachshund. Near the house where we would take Finni for a walk there was a big field with poppies and cornflowers. It was beautiful, and I don't know why, but on my friend's birthday - we've lost touch since - this field is always what I think of first. I guess it's one of those romanticized childhood memories of lighthearted fun. So we got out and I took a picture of the field on the other side of the road and one of the single poppy on our side of the road. Probably ran away from home to see the world, that one.
Can't you just see Dorothy and her three companions falling asleep in the field of poppies that the Wicked Witch prepared to keep them from making it to Oz? On with the story. These pictures became the inspiration for my flower/summer piece. I had a plan. I would do something that I had only done successfully once before. I would bead crochet a rope with a pattern of stylized poppies. That sounds easy enough again, doesn't it? It wasn't. You have to know that I had tried bead crocheting several times before and I didn't get the hang of it, so I always stopped after a few rows. I hadn't even bothered making a pattern then. Finally I tried it again when I ripped up a piece I had made with size 8 seed beads, a good size for practicing.
Now I was determined. I went to my neglected bead crochet program, ready to go - and it didn't work. I couldn't even download it again, but I wouldn't let such small things get in my way, naaaah, not this time! I downloaded the old version and made a very simple poppy pattern using the colors of size 11 seed beads that I had in my stash. I didn't have any yarn except what was left over from my bead knitting course, yellow or white. Obviously yellow was not the right choice. A lighter blue would have been better than the white, but it would work. The pattern was not simple enough for me, it seemed. It's amazing how often you can count wrong while stringing beads or get confused in the middle of an easy bead sequence, so you for example repeat something that shouldn't have been repeated. There was one moment when I was very ready to throw that beaded yarn against the wall. Once again there was cursing, but in the end I had done it. It was the first miracle.
So I started crocheting and while the tension in some spots is less than perfect - after all I was only used to crocheting with wire - I managed to finish the rope. That was the second miracle.
Next stop, glue trauma. There is no way to explain how much I hate glue and glue hates me. In this case you can tell by the clasp. My glue hadn't been used for a while and I first had to dig out some gunk to get the glue to flow right at all. Which it then did in a most generous and unplanned way. You would have been so proud of me. I cursed just a little and did my best to clean up the clasp (and my shirt, thank you very much). There's still some on the beads next to the clasp, but this piece obviously isn't for sale anyway, so I took a deep breath and kept going. Next I filed down the clasp. I had only got a gold tone clasp in the right size, and I'm not really into gold and even less into shiny gold, so I wanted it to have at least a matte finish. Originally I had planned to add something to the rope, a 3D effect, a beaded poppy maybe, not necessarily a big one, just as a little extra. After I had mde three attempts at beaded poppies, I gave up. I just didn't like the look, and even though this is a simple rope now, it had been quite the achievement for me to finish it at all. So here you go - a very long story and a very simple result.
I could have made more flowers. I have bead loomed flower patterns, I have crocheted and knitted flowers with wire. I had made them from polymer clay. My only tutorial ever is a small flower. This simple rope necklace, however, had deserved to be the star this time. Not only a design challenge, but also a blog hop - please have a look at what the other participants have to show you. It will be like walking through a beautiful garden! :-) Guests Alysen - Cat (that's me ;-)) - Divya - Evie and Beth - Hope - Jill - Kathy - Linda - Martha - Melissa - Michelle - Rozantia - Sarah - Sarajo - Tammy AE team members
