Treasures by Louise

Face masks - with removable nose wire To prevent spread of Covid-19 I made about 15-20 face masks for family and friends. Below is the pleated style, using quilters cotton on front and cotton t-shirt fabric on the back. Most of the quilt fabric has been in my stash for a few (or more) years.  This is not a complete tutorial. I have gathered many ideas from various internet sources. The nose wire helps get a better fit around your nose. Make a 45 degree cut to establish true bias Cut a  2-inch strip of fabric at least 6 inches long To create a casing, cut a piece of fabric on the bias that measures 6" X 2", turn under the short sides and machine stitch a hem. Fold fabric lengthwise, WRONG sides together, and stitch a 1/4" to 3/8" seam. Enclose this strip of fabric inside before sewing mask right sides together, leaving a 3-inch opening for turning. Also remember to include your elastic or ties of choice. Turn your mask right sides out, press, and ad...

One of my favorite activities is taking photos to mark the change in seasons.  I often zoom in on flowers to fill the frame. Here are some of my favorites. Early dwarf iris Daffodils Spring Wildflowers During this Covid-19 pandemic, I'm thankful for walks in the garden and sunny days.  I hope these flowers will brighten your day on a cloudy April morning.

When you learn to open and close jump rings properly, you have the skills to replace a broken clasp on your bracelet. You just need a few things: Jump rings in the metal type and color of the broken jewelry. Two pair of Chain Nose pliers. Replacement clasp. Both of these items can be found at your local big box craft store. Better yet, shop at your local bead store (LBS). When shopping for jump rings, things to pay attention to: Metal content - if you or your recipient have metal allergies, look for nickel free components Check the silver content. Uncoated silver or silver-plate will often darken (tarnish) with time. Rhodium plated findings will retain that bright white silver shine. Don't mix the two, unless you like the mixed-metal look. When shopping for Chain Nose pliers, purchase the best quality you can afford, with a smooth, no-teeth surface. If you use the pliers from the hardware store, you run the risk of marring your metal and loose the shine or even s...

Coordinating Jewelry for an outfit For a recent commission, I was asked to create a necklace and earrings inspired by a dress, to be worn for a friend's wedding in October. Inspiration for Jewelry The dress is as pictured, and I wanted to find "just that special bead" to compliment the pattern on the dress. I was fortunate that our Bead Guild's twice yearly bead show was happening in early October. I found the focal bead, accent beads and spacers at Small and Beautiful Beads, one of my favorite vendors. There's always a crowd at her booth, which is full of lovely colored beads as well as finished jewelry to inspire. The recipient received many compliments on her jewelry and enjoyed the beautiful wedding last month. Congratulations to Bride and Groom!

Lizard Earrings On our trip last summer to Arizona, we traveled north from Phoenix, and stopped at a park along the highway. I'm always carrying my camera and looking for the little details. I caught sight of a little lizard sheltering in the shade. It took a few tries, and I got a nice picture of this cutie!  This little lizard had found some meager shade under a fence rail. He looked like napping and keeping cool was his first priority.   Lizard seen at a park on the highway north of Phoenix, Az. ~110 deg. F.  I was quick enough to photograph a few more lizards during the week: Lizard with lichen, Arizona Colorful collared lizard on a nature trail, Arizona Inspired by the wildlife, I created some lizard earrings. The brass lizards and the lever back ear wires are from B'Sue Boutiques, and the Fire Agate beads are from Michaels. The bead caps are by Vintaj. I'm keeping these for my personal collection! Lizard Earrings with Fire Aga...

After a hiatus, I'm back to creating. I've been a caregiver for a little while. After Mom's illness and her passing, I tried to cope by keeping busy. I'm taking some time to regroup. Now I'm starting to create, making earrings; because I need to start somewhere. Earrings June 2017 Teardrop lightweight earrings Right: Snowflake Obsidian and silver plate hearts; Left: Teal cathedral beads and tiny compasses on silver plate mounts. I'm cleaning, sorting and organizing, too. This vintage quilt is a keeper, freshly washed: Crown of Thorns, vintage quilt in my collection. Thanks for stopping by my blog; hopefully I'll be blogging more regularly! :)

A once-in-a-lifetime trip: My Hubby and I took a wonderful trip to celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary, and I had the opportunity to photograph beautiful scenic landscapes, much different than my usual macro photograpy of beads, jewelry and flowers. I used my same familiar camera, to make life simple! Now to experiment with my basic photo-editing software. The beautiful views will be design and color inspiration for future creative projects, both jewelry and wall quilts.  I may have some prints made to hang on the wall, too. First view of the Red Rocks of Sedona Arizona Original Photograph - Cannon Power Shot A640 Photo Shop Elements editing tools applied Photoshop Elements (for Windows) allows for simple photo editing: "fixing". With the tools, you can crop, sharpen, improve contrast and 'color correct'.  Indeed the sky is more turquoise, and this probably shows the actual colors more accurately. For some reason, I prefer the dark red on the st...

Finished just in time!  I finished stitching on the binding for this quilt during the car ride to the baby shower! Machine quilting was done by a very nice local lady in an interlocking hearts pattern. Can you tell a baby girl is expected!

Thankful for: Family and friends, fall colors, farmer's markets and beads! Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

First, thanks to Linda Anderson for hosting this #BeadPeepsSwapNHop. Great job done by Linda, and thanks for the angels who worked behind the scenes to help her.  Life happens! My family needs me! It's been a busy few weeks. We've had a few trips to urgent care and one to the ER. Beading helps relive the stress! Thus the reveal is of works in progress . (Please visit again for future updates! ) I recieved a wonderful group of beads from Heather Richter of Desert Jewelry Designs . She sent me some fun and challenging beads and findings. I started out trying some wire wrapping, and stringing. I made a charmy, wirey bracelet that I'm pretty happy with: I love the soft greens and tan, contrasts of stone, glass and pearl. I embellished one of the brass leaves with beads: to be attached to a chain... This will be part of a focal pendant. I have more leaves to play with, and more ideas.  I strung some of the colorful freshwater pearls together. It needs fi...

My package from my swap partner Heather arrived yesterday, and I dropped everything to open up those beads! The beads are awesome and will challenge me. Heather sent some favorites, like some gorgeous turquoise!  There are pieces that will challenge my skills; three really cool cabochons, calling for peyote bezels and bead embroidery. There are some beautiful spring green beads, both glass and serpentine-new jade, and some bright tropical shell beads. Not to mention strands of pearls and natural pearls in a rainbow of colors. These are the makings for several pieces, I will have fun and hope to do them justice. Since now, Heather has recieved her swap beads from me, I will also share a pic of what I sent her: There are two focals, a  porcelain one from Linda Landig on Etsy, and a Dog's Tooth Amethyst cab, with some 6 mm amethyst beads. Super Duo's in a lavendar luster, and two types of stripey seed beads. Fibers from my quilt fabric stash; a strip of purple om...

I just won a blog giveaway of a Journal and Freezer Paper! Now if you are a beader and not a quilter, that second item will not make much sense! But freezer paper is a handy tool for creating applique and stenciling, and perhaps other things you do to make marks on cloth. Printing or dyeing your own cloth is a wonderful way to make your quilts ART and beyond what you can purchase. I have some wonderful marbled and dyed fabric in my stash... but that is another story for another post. If you can, check out the blog of Julie B Booth,  http://www.threadbornblog before February 14th. She's the author of a new book entitled: Fabric Printing at Home.!!! This book will have you pulling the whole produce drawer from the fridge and starting to print on fabric. Be sure to follow the links on the book tour for about 15 chances to win this book. You'll be inspired and intrigued. I know I want to find out what else I can do with my freezer paper! 

"Welcome to my Blog" to new visitors. Here is my introduction for the purposes of joining the Swap 'N' Hop. I started by stringing beads after several of my store-bought costume jewelry pieces broke.  I looked at the methods of construction and the stringing materials. I was already a quilter, and had tried many other crafts, so stringing beads was the next step. Here are some early pieces, still some of my favorites:   The style of jewelry I make has changed over the years, from stringing to more mixed media, as I became a Michaels Jewelry instructor and started following blogs of jewelry makers such as Lorelei Eurto. I soon became aware of artisan beads and have started to incorporate more hand crafted beads and to move beyond store-bought findings to working with wire to create my own eyepins and connectors. Technique-wise, I joined a bead guild a couple of years ago, which has expanded my interests, so I am trying out bead-weaving and bead embro...

October's Halcraft Pretty Palettes inspiration was full of color. I joined in the monthly challenge issued by Erin Prais-Hintz on the Halcraft Blog. I was attracted to the paintings by Erin Fitzhugh Gregory, as our palette inspiration to use Halcraft's Bead Gallery beads from Michaels.    I had some of the beads pictured, & similar beads from Bead Gallery in my stash. I also pulled out a porcelain pendant that I had picked up a year ago. I love finding beads in my stash that I purchased "just in case". Edit: This fun pendant is designed by Jennifer Heynen and was purchased at Michaels. (Thanks Erin for info.)  The bright colors called for a color-blocked arrangement, and I started with the earrings,  stringing dog-bone coral beads with turquoise (howlite) rondelles, adding a dark blue ceramic round on a headpin dangle.   Earrings: Coral, turquoise, and dark blue ceramic Pretty Palettes October Color-block Necklace Detail: Birdhouse Fo...

My necklace from Jeannie K. Dukic was a chain of beautiful semi-precious jade and faceted czech glass crystals. A long wire wrapped chain by Jeannie Dukic, jade and Czech crystals Coordinating Bracelet   Earrings to match I had a moment of hesitation as I cut into the beautiful chain of wire wrapped jade and crystals. The delicacy of the chain was not to be matched...at least by me. But I had a vision, so I went ahead. At first I planned to remove the crystals and go all "natural", I wanted to add a complementary color and some variety of shapes to the chain. The lovely chain became a lariat, as I decided to keep the ring part of the toggle, and I spliced in wire wrapped sections of red agate and sections of rust-tone Czech disc beads with the crystals. The crystals became a contrasting texture to the stones and disc beads. The decision on the focal came later, after auditioning a number of artisan beads I recently ordered. Auditioning some porcelain foca...