A Very Productive Weekend

I first had to share a photo of mom's cat Lily in one of the bucket seats on the cat tree.  So far she is the only one mom and I have seen who sleeps in those little seats.  When I took this photo she was nicely posing for me.

This weekend was production, production, production for us - the last push to get necklaces, bracelets and earrings done for next weeks show.  I was also able to enamel mom's Tree of Life plate and a heart pendant for a necklace she made.

First off, here are the layouts of the necklaces completed or still in the works to be completed:

Mom is calling this necklace "Fireball".  I stopped counting the number of times she re-did the design for the triangle pendants.  We did get the top half of the necklace laid out with lava stones, hematite and our flame lampwork beads.  Mom is not happy with the last creation of the pendant (she even wove all the triangles together).  So, right now it is sitting to the side until she can figure out what she wants to do.

This is the tray of the lotus necklace components.  Right now you can see mom grabbing one of the Czech beads because she is weaving them onto gunmetal chain.

This is mom weaving the beads onto the chain.  I did one side of one chain and I gave up.  I like the idea of it and I asked mom to show me how but I just don't have the patience for it.  Mom is such a great person to do this for me even though it was my idea :)  Thanks mom, you the bomb!!!

The completed Lotus Necklace:

The completed necklace with one enameled copper lotus pendant, gunmetal chain with woven Czech beads and watercolor silk ribbon.

Woven beads

Lotus pendant

Our next layout is of our lampwork glass beads:

I made a set of these beads as a test for the February ABS Challenge piece but both mom and I liked the other beads I made for that project.  Though mom loved these beads so much she asked me to make more for a necklace.

We are calling this necklace "Green Gables"

The necklace is accented with freshwater green pearls and Czech beads with a Sterling Silver toggle clasp.

 
A close up of the beads.

This is the layout of another necklace we have to put together.  Not sure if we will get it completed yet or not, crossing our fingers.

Here are other completed projects we got done yesterday:

Tree of Life plate.  I need to try and get a better shot of this plate but it is giving me issues, oh well, thank goodness for digital cameras!  The powdered enamels I used were black and transparent turquoise for the tree, transparent oranges/reds for the Celtic design and greens for the leaves.

Green Viking Knit necklace with Czech beads strung on the wire.  We used 26 gauge Parawire to weave the Viking Knit and mom strung the beads through the necklace.

Close up of the weave and the beads.

The last necklace we got done.  We had the silver Viking Knit but mom wanted a heart pendant with the "peacock" colors I used for the February challenge piece for the heart.

Close up of the heart pendant.

I know we already shared this photo, but the necklace was part of our productive weekend so I thought I would finish with it.  This piece is called The North Wind and it is our challenge piece for the April ABS Challenge.  You can find out more about it here.


We still have a few necklaces to make and I have a whole tray laid out of components to make bracelets.  We will see how many get done before Thursday evening.  I hope you all had a productive weekend like we did and I hope you have an awesome week!