LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

While I was waiting for TNP to give me the big “YES!” answer, I kept busy by making jewelry.

For these, I felt like experimenting with hoops and drops instead of the usual “tight” earrings I come up with.

And then I realized that all of the super-cool jewelry designers on Etsy slap their pieces on an old book for photos. Luckily I live with a guy who has filled up our shelves with old books. Unfortunately, these pages feature an apparent peasant riot in France. MOVING ON…

These earrings have a 70′s color vibe to them.

I had these teal ceramic beads for 2 years. I finally figured out something to do with them. I’m also REALLY starting to like copper findings.





A while back I was into bead crochet. Over the course of two nights, I crocheted a large string of my unmatched beads (bought by the scoop at some bead show) onto wire and twisted it up. I finally put it on a chain and wore it out. I got 3 compliments that day. I might make a bracelet or maybe some dangle earrings to match.

I have a lot of beading supplies these days. Enough to fill a plastic four drawer unit that sits next to my desk. But that’s not always practical when I’m working on one or two projects. I’m too lazy to put everything away and pull it all back out.

So what I’ve been doing is saving Tazo tea tins and using them to hold all of the beads, wire, and findings I need for each project.

The tins are even big enough to hold my wire cutters and pliers if I decide to take my projects with me. To keep them organized as I collect more tins, I just tape the name of the project on the outside.

Here is a sampling of my craftiness. It’s neat to see the evolution through the years. Now all I need to do is bring some to work with me and open the darn Etsy shop already!!!

A while back I bought a bag of beads. I love bags of random beads. When I was a kid, I collected stickers and I’d always, always get the mystery $1.00 brown bag of stickers from Heroes’ World – the weird store at the mall that sold weird things to collectors. This bead thing? Same thing.

I mean, isn’t that glorious? (shudder)

I spent a good hour separating out beads that were similar, and I pulled out a bunch of orange beads.

And thus, the Orange Creamsicle necklace was born. It’s made with silver-plated wire and all of those delicious orange beads. I made the clasp, too.

This’ll go to Mom, who was kind enough to remind me that she didn’t have an orange necklace yet.

(Any tips on photographing jewelry? This is my worst yet. The towel is in great focus. The beads are not. Even if I manually focused the camera, the front bead would be in focus but the back beads are blurry. Photography isn’t my strong suit. )