Bad Girls Take Anchorage!

You've heard me ramble on about my Bad Girls business and the craft shows we produce. Well, we just celebrated out 12th show in Anchorage. We were at a new venue this year, the Millennium Hotel. Carol & I took an informal poll of the vendors and the consensus is that this venue WORKED! What a relief. Moving in and out was a bit of a hassle, but not any worse than our last venue.

I know I promised photos, but to be quite honest, I was too busy to take many and the ones I did take, turned out pretty bad. Here's one of my booth that will give you a general idea of how I did my set up. I prefer this type of walk-up-to booth, as I don't like the barrier of a table between me and my customer. I like to hold a mirror for them and help them try on necklaces and bracelets. That is not easily accomplished from behind a table.




Luckily, my friend Cindy has some photos on her blog, so check them out here.

On a personal note, this show was my most successful show in my 12 years of doing craft shows :)

New Stichtite Necklace

What is stichtite, you ask? Well, it's a stone of dark pink or purple color and is sometimes found in serpentine, which can be all shades of green.

The stone featured in this necklace is the type of stichtite found in serpentine. The contrast of the greens and purple is one that is very striking to me.

I added a little dangle of faceted amethyst to help highlight the purple of the stichtite inclusions.

The chain and all the wire is sterling and has been oxidized for a bit of a vintage look.

This brand new necklace is for sale in my etsy shop.

I will not be updating my blog for a few days while I'm at the Bad Girls of the North craft show in Anchorage. We will be at a new location this year, the Millennium Hotel. If you're a local, please stop by! Hopefully, I will have time to take some pictures and share some of our new vendors with you here.

Two New Dragonfly Necklaces

I recently listed these two dragonfly necklaces. The first two I had listed sold pretty quickly and it's taken me a couple of months (!?!) to get around to making some more. The buttons which provide the base for the brass dragonflies are large, at about 2" in diameter. The each hang on hand dyed silk ribbons.

The first one features an abalone shell button and the silk ribbon is a delicious blend of green and mauve.


This second necklace features a glossy pink conch shell button and a brown and black silk ribbon.



Both are for sale in my etsy shop. These will be the last two I can list until I find more of these beautiful buttons at a reasonable price!

Xena on Halloween

Xena (the cutest Bouvier in the world) has a hat she wears every Halloween. It's a witch hat that her Auntie Carol gave her. Id rather not think about why Auntie Carol thought Xena needed a witch hat.

Here, Rick helps Xena don her cute hat. It has a button that you can push to make the lights flash on and off randomly. Very festive.


Now, Xena looks up at Rick and says "what the #*%@ is this thing on my head????"



Lastly, she hangs her head in utter shame ... sigh




Here's this year's jack-o-lantern



All in all, we had a great night and even saw a few trick-or-treaters!

Labradorite . Lemon Quartz . Earrings

You are all very aware of my labradorite love. I found these 8 mm faceted labradorite beads while down in Homer this past summer at Gig's Beads. Not only are they a really nice size, but they have a generous amount of blue flash.

I added a bright vermeil gold spacer followed by a faceted bead of pale yellow lemon quartz.

The gold filled earwires finish the look.

These lovely earrings are for sale in my etsy shop. Click on the photo to go directly to the listing.

Color :: Saturation

Once again, I visited the pages of the book Color Works by Deb Menz to gather some information on color saturation. Don't let my postings here prevent you from purchasing this book. There is much more that Deb Menz covers that I can't even begin to understand!

Color saturation is the relative brightness or dullness of a color. It is probably easiest to determine the level of color saturation when looking a several samples of color from the same hue family. Colors that are more saturated will stand out more than those that are less saturated.

This crocheted wristband from Meri Greenleaf is a great example to illustrate color saturation. The deep purple colored flower petals are far more saturated than the lighter, almost periwinkle colored petals. Both colors are from the violet hue family.


In this pair of earrings from Sue of Signature Sterling, it's easy to see the saturation difference between the deep green lampwork beads at the bottom of the stack as compared the pale green aventurine beads above.


The saturation level of the colors that Brenda of The Jewelry Box chose for these earrings is in a much narrower range. This demonstrates the different looks you can achieve by either keeping your color choices within a narrow range of saturation versus using colors at opposite ends of the saturation scale, as in Sue & Meri's examples above.