When Fabric gets in the mix...

Lately I have been a bit obsessed with textiles. First I have been a little more vicious in incorporating fabric in my jewelry, as seen in this week's new products:

Golden Bohemian Wooden and Fabric necklace, $17

White crystal with blue ribbon and silver broach necklace, $19

Green Gemstone, Wooden Beads, and Purple Ribbon necklace, $23

Party in Pink Faux Pearl and Pink Ribbon necklace, $12

Disco brown ball and lime green necklace, $17

Wooden Beads and Purple Ribbon necklace, $20

And my favorite, this little tulle necklace inspired by some random socialite I saw online

(more on that later this month):

Gold netting and purple pearls necklace, $19

In fact, you can count on more fabric jewelry coming your way - I just signed up for a FABRIC BEAD-MAKING class at the Art Institute here in town and can't wait! (In fact, can I just start my life over and be a professional art student - man all the classes that are offered are SO tempting!). 
Meanwhile, I have been working with the fabric I bought in the garment district in LA, starting with some much-needed curtains for my craft room. I didn't really go into the project with a plan, but one day I was rummaging through my random fabric collection and was reminded of a very random piece of long remnant fabric I bought at a $1/pound store:

Amy Butler "Woodfern Kakhi," though I found it for a ridiculously cheap $.75, you can also find it here on Etsy :)

The fabric was basically being asked to be transformed into curtains - it was literally 5" long and about a 2" wide! I simply folded the fabric long ways, cut it in half, and skipped the sewing machine all together and just pinned the top over on itself to make a little loop for the curtain rod. Voila!

But I had this little lowly piece left:

Which I of course didn't want to go to waste. I had just the solution - a wrist pincushion! Thing was, I had no clue how to make such a thing. Here goes nothing...!

I knew I needed a base so as to prevent the pins from hitting my wrist when worn. The base would also function as the shape for the thing. So I started glue-sticking the fabric on the cardboard...

Then sewed it on to double reinforce it...

And then crammed some stuffing that was left over from my previous pillow project and sewed it shut...

Next was the wrist strap... I used some trim from some other Amy Butler fabric that will be used in a future pillow project (as seen here). First I turned it inside out and sewed it down the side...

Turning it back inside out was the hardest part since it was so thin, and once I figured it out, sewing the fabric together with a stretched elastic piece inside was even harder. Man, I have a WHOLE new respect for those scrunchies that were OH SO popular in the 80's! 

Next I sewed the wrist band to the stuffed topper thing...

And had me a brand new pincushion wristlet!

On that note, if you dig fabric crafts, do check out my friend Linsday's new Etsy shop and her GIVEAWAY with Etsy It Up! Let's wish her well, y'all!

New Year = New Stuff!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a restful Christmas and joyous New Year celebration! The Bead Up house went from crazy busy to crazy relaxed and back to crazy busy over the last week and a half! Between filling in lots of Bead Up orders for Christmas (both custom and from the shop) and even saying "yes" to a crazy call at 12:30p.m. on Christmas Eve to make a custom necklace for a co-worker who, at the last minute, needed a Christmas gift for his wife (...?!), the days leading up to Christmas were both rushed and quite profitable ;) The hubs and I then flew to my parent's in Kentucky at 4am on Christmas morning and spent the week celebrating the birth of Jesus and my own birthday! In addition to sleeping in, eating whatever was in my path of destruction, playing lots of board games and watching lots of movies, I also did quite a bit of shopping and stocked up on what I think is the beginning of my Spring Collection of supplies - all I am going to say is that it will involve lots of word charms :) Since my return to LA a few days ago, I already have quite a few custom orders on the queue, many of which I can't wait to blog about in the near future! That said, I managed to score quite a few free, cheap, or totally expensive items over Christmas, all of which will be very helpful to Bead Up in this new year! Back in November I entered several giveaways hosted by my new blog friend Celeste (with whom I did a giveaway earlier in the fall). I guess good karma gets returned to you, because I won a super awesome tote bag compliments of Memento! After a few e-mails back and forth with the creator of the tote, which included debating over colors and fonts, I got this beauty:

This tote is not only super cute and useful, but it's also collapsible! Perfect for jewelry parties and shows, in addition to storing my stuff around the craft room!

Lime, pink, and brown - Bead Up's favorites!

Thanks again, Celeste and Memento, for sharing your time and talents!

Next on my list was more items from Vistaprint. I have blogged before about how much I love their website and deals, which include crazy free e-mail promotions with no strings attached! I splurged a little before Christmas and ordered a (free!) Bead Up note book (with a slight typo - can you find it?!)...

And some Bead Up letterhead and Gift Certificates (which can be purchased for $25, or any other denomination, here)! If you found the typo in the notebook, maybe your eagle eyes are also noticing a slightly different quality in my pictures. My last, but not least, Christmas splurge was...

A Nikon D3000!!!

I have been planning on buying a new, slightly more "professional" camera for awhile (the camera I have been using, a Fuji Finepix S5200, has been a great companion in my travels to Asia, Europe, and around the US in the last 3 years, though I was ready for the next step!). The hubs, my parents, and I are planning a trip to the Holy Land the year (and not the amusement park in Florida!), and I plan to bring a camera that's worthy of such a trip. And with such a successful Bead Up year, I figured it's not only a reward for all my hard work, but also a great investment for Bead Up's product photos! I have yet to read the owners manual (I kind of like figuring it out organically!), but plan on getting to know this thing like the back of my hand in the new year! So, thank YOU, Bead Up friend, for helping me reach this goal and buying this camera!

Prayers to you for a happy and healthy new year! Here's to another decade!