a look back at december {or the post with all the collages}

 december arrived and so did the snow! {our camera battery was temporarily lost in the move so lots of these are phone pics- sorry!} this picture was taken between snows on our back porch. it might be cold, but it really is beautiful! i love having seasons & if we're going to have a cold season i'm so glad there's snow.

 i decorated for Christmas the first weekend in december and we made the sad choice not to cut down a real tree. up here in the woods we're surrounded by potential Christmas trees. we could go outside, walk 100 yards and cut down a tree. we were planning on going out to HoneyRock to cut one down, but the more i thought about it, the more i realized that we should just put up our little fake one from my childhood {it was the tree my mom gave me for all the ornaments i made once there were too many to fit on our big tree!}. we were only going to be home for 2 1/2 weeks in december and then we'd be gone for 2 weeks. i was afraid we'd come home to a burned down house or a giant pile of needles and neither of those sounded very appealing. so up went the little tree, which turned out to be perfect! 

{maybe a little too perfect...it's still up}

one of my favorite things to decorate this year has been ornaments. since we just used our little tree i had lots of ornaments left over so i put them everywhere! every glass container i own was filled with colorful glass and i loved it!

 

i made another wreath. actually i made 3 more wreaths in december. but i made another yarn wreath! {check out a great tutorial here by danielle} i figured this one would be able to stay up all winter. it just feels so cozy! right now it's hanging on our bedroom door but will probably move to the entry to replace the crazy ornament wreath that's there now {told you...Christmas is still up in our house!}

i also made a few new headband & clip designs that were meant for the shop for the Christmas season but they all ended up being sold to people here or being given as gifts before i could ever photograph or list them! a few will be remade and might show up as winter {subtract the red} or valentines {subtract the green} designs soon!

also new in the shop have been these lovely cabochon earrings. i recently found a new supplier that i love and have been buying these little flowers by the dozens. i made myself a bunch of earrings/bobby pins/rings first to see what i liked best and they will slowly start showing up in the shop! 

a few are already listed, including my favorite the mustard & teal dahlia ring. i wear one all the time! 

the snow makes me either want to play outside or cuddle up inside with a good project. i've been crocheting a TON but i don't have many pictures of the final products. something i did complete and photograph {but failed to mail! sorry to the mamas who are getting these if they don't fit your babies when they finally arrive!} were these appliqued onesies. didn't they turn out cute?! 

i didn't take process photos since it was near midnight when i made these but it wasn't difficult! i just picked a font i loved and printed out giant letters (backwards. print them backwards). i traced the letters onto some wonder under which i then fused to the fabric. once it was fused i cut out the designs, peeled off the backing and iron the fabric to the onesie. easy peasy until this point. 

the next step is to stitch down the edges to insure the letters won't come off after being washed many times. my sewing machine and the onesies got in a fight and the sewing machine won. next time i will conquer this little problem, but in the mean time i hand stitched a running stitch around the edges. done and done.

that's a wrap on december. except, of course, for Christmas and MAUI which will get their own posts. then we're caught up to real life here in january!coming up tomorrow will be my it's in the bag post as part of ashley's blog crawl. head over and check out today's blogger in my group, alycia at the curious pug and then come back tomorrow to find out what's in my bag! {or purse. i still call it a purse. weird?}

until then i leave you with this...

needed something to go with my sweater...

So I was headed to Bible study the other night and wasn't impressed with my accessories. I was wearing a simple brown cable knit sweater and it needed some serious dressing up! I borrowed a necklace from my ready to sell stash and then was stumped as far as earrings. So I made a few pairs...  

I hardly ever wear gold so I didn't have any gold or bronze ear wires. I improvised and just made hooks out of the wire I was using for the earrings. They look great but after a few hours they hurt! So I love all three...I'm wearing the big brown hoops now but that night I chose the wire wrapped shells. 

I love that I can make jewelry to match my mood or my outfit! So fun!

Buy Handmade for Haiti!

Through the amazing women at Craft Hope money is being raised for Haiti. They have set up an etsy shop where all the items for sale are donated and all the proceeds (including shipping costs) go to Doctors Without Borders. I donated a pair of earrings and I'm waiting to see where to ship them because they were sold within a few hours of being posted! It's a fun way to feel like I've done my small part.

The shop itself has done great!! Itopened on January 15th and by yesterday over 1000 items had been sold for over $20,000!!

They are no longer accepting donated items but PLEASE head on over to the shop and buy handmade for Haiti!

what to do?

i just made these new earrings...well they've been a process over the last month. i love them, but i also want to sell them. do i keep them for myself or sell them? or make more and keep these for myself? they were a lot of work so i don't know that i want to part with them, but i don't know that i want to do the work all over again anytime soon. thoughts?

just starting out

in the past few months i have had numerous people tell me i should sell the jewelry i make. that sounds pretty simple doesn't it? turns out it's not! i decided a few weeks ago to set up an etsy shop and so the process began. first i had to choose a good name, then set up shop policies, choose shipping and prices, and that was all before I even added any jewelry to the shop!
so i took some pictures, named the earrings and then sent them off into cyberspace hopeful that someone would find them as wonderful as i do. it's intimidating to put them out there, to ask to be judged by others. up until now i've made jewelry for myself or for gifts, but the idea of selling it was exciting enough to take the step forward. the shop has been open for two weeks, but still no sale. i'm trying to remind myself that i'm just starting out...