Matching earrings and ski suit

This morning my friend told me her collegue saw her earrings and asked her which color she could order me to match her ski suit.
I'm a beach person, don't know a thing about skiing but I guess even ski suits needs to be accessorized properly, as also swimming suits do.
So here we go: fuchsia can tab earrings

made them also in purple (my favorite)

and something red and gold to revive the Bollywood feeling

Also made 2 pairs black and gold, but they're already in their new homes!
Will post more colors...soon...

I swear...

...I can do these

even while sleeping.

Want to try? Here's the tutorial!!!

New can tab earrings

You can guess how many cokes my BF drinks by the huge amount of can tabs I have.
So that's quite an encouragement to make more earrings.
Like these

and these

More to come in black and fuchsia (custom orders) and maybe some new shapes!

More earrings please!

I've been working on a Christmas order today and finished these beautiful earrings, pattern by the great Csilla Csirmaz

I also dedicated one pair to my grellow compulsion and made these:

even though I cheated and added some lilac beads.
I'm also making some triangular peyote earrings for another customer and just translated my new pattern for Santa Super Star in English and sold my first copy.

Busy day!

Misty Winter's Dawn - October challenge

Seems like everybody is looking forward for winter this year!
It's only october, and in the south of Italy it's still warm enough for the beach; but elsewhere people already dream about foggy weather and reading a book in a cozy armchair, with tea and a fluffy blanket.
The Etsy Beadweavers Team is already in "winter mode-on" with this beautiful theme:

Voting starts today and last, as usual, until October 15th.
My entry was inspired by one of the most beautiful picture I found on internet, which you can see here.
The gorgeous shades of pink and lilac made this unique dawn the perfect start for my muse.

It was relaxing, for a change, to make some freeform tubular beads with a mixture of colors, plus I've had those nice tribal beads for an eternity!

Please have a look on the other entries, some of them are stunning beyond your imagination!

Huge Lark book giveaway!

Starting the day with a giveaway is always sweet!
And this is pretty huge.
Talking about LARK'S Beadweaving Master Class Series books:

Go, run to Robyn Hawk blog while you can and leave a comment to partecipate!
All you need is living in the USA and be willing to review these amazing books.

I heart pink

October is the month of breast cancer awareness.
While I suggest everybody I know to donate their 5x1000 to cancer research, I can't anymore since I don't have a regular job right now. It's been on my mind for a while to create a pink section in my shop where I'll donate a percentage of my incomes to AIRC - the Italian Association for Cancer Research.
This piece in particular has been ready for about 2 years...

It has a double-face heart pendant if you want to support the cause in a more discreet way

This month I will donate 15% of incomes from every pink item in my shop to AIRC.
P.S.The finger you see on my t-shirt...is not a middle finger as it seems! It's actually a victory sign :D just in case...

Fight!

When things don't go the way you had hoped, sometimes you need to let go and change direction

Source: Pinterest

Some other times you have to keep on and struggle to get what you want.

So keeping in mind this and a sentence my kick boxing teacher often says (we're warriors!), I made this bracelet

This means, of course, that I was able to make this little guy a companion

It's important to have a reminder sometimes!

Why swapping is good.

We have a door keeper in this condo, he works part time so he leaves all mails behind everyone's door. This is kind of cute, so when you're not planning on going out and put something different than your sweats on, you can have your mail just opening the door a little.
This morning I checked and found out Audrey's pack for the Fall Pantone swap!
She sent some wonderful goodies:

As usual there are things I'm never able to find in shops around here, but only on internet, and mainly in american stores. So I feel lucky to swap with people from the other side of the world!
But there's more than just beads in a swap: you get to know interesting people, who sometimes use different media for their jewelry and live in different environments, you start reading their blogs and keep in touch with them on Facebook. You get to know which is their favorite color and feel excited when they use your beads for a new project.
Being a member of the Etsy Beadweavers Street team, I realized it's even more important for teams to have swaps to get to know each other and actually feel like a group, so that's why I love the spring swap we have every year.

Last week I also swapped one of my PDF tutorials with some Twin beads, which I was eager to try! I'm still deciding how to use them 'cause I'm afraid I will spoil them. They're so interesting.