And the winner is......

{drum roll here!}

Ta Da ==== Heather from Jeweled Elegance!

Send along your snail mail address to me and I'll ship your package!!

Thank you so much to all 90 (WOW -- 90!!) of you that entered. I look forward to continuing to visit all of your many wonderful blogs and keeping in touch until the next One World, One Heart give away.

Its a Valentine's Day Give Away!!

What with Valentine's Day coming up and all, The Big Black Dog will be giving away this piece as a "sweet heart" of a gift to some lucky reader!

This pin measures 2 inches by 2 inches and is made up entirely of size 15 seed beads in two shades of blue.

The beads are all hand stitched to a backing (no glue here!). The embellishing flowers and leaves are also glass beads.

The back of the pin is a dark blue velour and it has a safety catch on the pin.

To be eligible to win, just leave a comment on this post no later than midnight MST on Wednesday, Feb 13.

The Big Black Dog will make her selection from the comments on Valentine's Day morning and the notification will be posted here.




This give away is part of a world wide web One World, One Heart event. To see a complete list of all of the participating artists, use this link and check them all out!

New Heart Pin in Etsy Shop

Freshly listed in my Etsy Shop.

This is a great little pin -- even better than the picture shows here.

All bead embroidered (no glue here!) with a lovely soft velour backing.

Order it now and you'll have it to wear on Feb 14th!

Use the Etsy link on the top right of the blog.

Contributions to The Pink Artist

Over at Girl Gone Thread Wild, there is a further explaination of The Pink Artist if you want the full story.

The short story is that I have created two 2 inch square blocks which will be included in a larger project which will later be auctioned for charity.



This is the block I created as a memorial to my Aunt Janie. She had been a piano teacher (listed in the Who's Who of American Music back in the 1970's), and music is always one of the things I think of when I think about her.

So, here the music lives on with angel's wing.



And this is the one I designed for my son-in-law's mother, who is doing well in her fight with breast cancer.

Both of these have been mailed off (well before the March 1 deadline, I might add!).

When there are updates on the project, I'll post a notice so you can check it out!

New Stuff from the Studio! (at long last!!)

Ok, I hadn't realized just how long it had been since I posted anything here -- lots of pre-Christmas shows, then Christmas doings, then the post-Christmas "blahs" sort of ate up a couple of months here.

It's not that I haven't been working, however, I've just been doing other stuff!!

So, here are the newest pieces from the studio.

At a show before Christmas, a customer asked me to make her a cord to hang her eye glasses from because she was tired of loosing them, and she liked my work.

So I made her one.

Then I made my sister one for Christmas. Then she ordered another one.

Ok, I get the point, these things might be something someone else wants too!



This one has mother of pearl bears at the ends -- nice color combo too -- goes great with pinks, aquas, lavendars -- those of you that are "spring" should do well with this one.

Its available for sale in my Etsy Store, here's the link.




And knowing that one size fits none, I figured there might be an "autumn" out there loosing the glasses too, so I whipped up this one in browns/rusts/golds.

Its got sort of golden stone bear beads at each end. Nice

Its also avialable for sale in my Etsy Store, look here.

See, I'm not gone, just slow getting things put here!

More soon, I promise

The Sunflowers have returned.....

Now a while back I had done several sunflower themed pieces, and there were some bead embroidered centers (both browns and greens) left over that I have just not done anything with until now.

These little gems are post earrings that are 1.75 inches in diameter. I wasn't sure that I would like the look of the rectangular bugle beads as the petals, but I'm real pleased with the effect.





In this close up of the edge, its easier to see the details of the work.

Along with these brown centers, I had a pair of green ones that are the same size. I have started working on those as well, and we'll see where that goes -- the main problem is that I don't have enough of those rectangular bugle beads left for another pair, so I'm using regular bugle beads and I'm not sure I like the look as well.

More on that later!

Another complete piece!

This one is all black and silver.

Two pieces of jasper with peyote stitched bezels backed with grey suede.

The "chain" is all beads too, worked in right angle weave, and the fringing took a lot of hours to complete.

Finished just in time for me to tag it for next weekend's show....YEAH!