A Few New Listings

I wanted to show off a few new listings in my Etsy shop. The necklace is one made by my husband. He made the Celtic Star pendant using stainless steel jump rings and turned it into a necklace by adding red glass beads and metal spacer beads to a cord. I really like this one. He's made a few others using different beads and I've listed most of those too.

The other two are new pairs of earrings I made last night. One pair is made with blue cat's eye, white cat's eye, blue and white swirl glass cube beads and silver-plated spacer beads. The other are made using blue aventurine (looks purple), blue goldstone (looks black and sparkly), opal swarovski crystal and silver-plated spacer beads. The blue aventurine looks like it's different colors in the picture. While there are subtle differences in the coloring of each bead, it's not nearly as dramatic as it looks in the picture. It's not really noticeable at all unless you're looking closely. I think both pairs of earrings look very elegant!

In other news, related to my post about the violin, I took the plunge and trimmed my fingernails on my left hand really short so it'll be easier to play. I don't particularly keep my fingernails well-manicured anyway, but now I'll (hopefully) be trimming them regularly instead of letting them grow til they break (which is quite frequently, actually). Now, to actually play more regularly!

Violin

I played violin from when I was in 3rd grade until my sophomore year in high school. After that, I may have picked it up once or twice briefly, but never seriously. Twenty years later, I decided I wanted to learn how to play again.

My old violin was still in my parents' basement and, while the violin had survived the time being stored down there, the bow hadn't. The strings on the violin also needed to be replaced, so I took the violin into the music shop where my parents had bought it and had them fix it up. When I picked up the violin a few days later, it had been cleaned, the pegs lubricated, and new strings put on it. I chose the cheap student strings because I wasn't sure if I'd stick with playing it and didn't want to get the higher quality strings if they were going to end up sitting unused on the violin for another 20 years.

The bow had to be sent to another shop out of town to be re-haired. I just got it back yesterday. I played yesterday evening and it definitely felt good to play again. I wish I could say it also sounded good, but I'd be a liar if I did. ;) At the same time, considering I hadn't touched a violin in 20 years, I didn't sound too shabby. My husband could recognize almost all the familiar tunes I played, after all, hehe.

I have no idea if I will ever get to the point where I could do a performance and not embarrass myself, but even if I don't, it'll be fun playing for myself.

Orange!

A while back, I bought some orange beads to challenge myself to use a color I don't normally work with. However, I let them sit for quite some time because I wasn't sure what to do with them. Last night, I decided that I was going to finally use those beads. This bracelet is the result.

Something else is new about this listing...I'm using music as a background instead of plain white paper. I wanted to use a more interesting background, but wasn't sure what to use. Looking around my desk, I decided the best options were either a magazine or music. I settled on music because I've always liked seeing sheet music as a background and have used a sheet music background stamp I have for that purpose in many stamping projects I've done in the past.

The music is from a beginning violin lesson book. I had it close at hand because I've recently decided to re-learn how to play violin. I took lessons from when I was in 3rd grade til I was a freshman in high school. Not too long ago I took my violin from when I was in high school into a local music shop to have it looked at and have all the strings replaced. Now I'm just waiting for my bow to be repaired and I'll be ready to go!

Back to the bracelet for a moment, if you want to see more pictures and get more information on it, you can look at the listing on Etsy here:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=27117446

I'm always interested in feedback on my new listings, but I'd especially like to hear opinions on this one since I was working with a color I don't normally use, so please comment if you want to share your opinion!