I heart St. Patty's Day!

Okay, so this has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, really. I had wanted to make a few things for the day, but didn't think ahead enough.

I am, however, trying to make some Easter stuff, and discovered a very humbling thing: I can't make eggs. For the life of me, I can't seem to make a decent egg shape out of polymer clay. I was trying last night to make egg beads for some earrings, and they all came out looking pretty not good. I used the last of my faux marble mixture and made a couple of egg-esque beads, and those look kinda nice, but they're not quite what I wanted. But after sanding and buffing, they'll do. I'll take some pictures when they're baked. I'm going to keep trying, though. When my mica powder gets here, I'm going to go crazy with the balinese silver, and I want to do some nice silver eggs. Not to mention traditional decorated easter eggs.

So instead of showing you what I'm not doing very well, I'm posting a picture of something that came out very nice. There is a wonderful tutorial by Eni Oken that teaches how to make these delightful woven double heart pendants. I wanted to try it out since I first saw it on her web site, and Valentine's Day was the perfect excuse.

Since I didn't have any fine wire at the time, I decided to go with colored art wire. I like colored art wire, and my girlfriend likes pink, so it works out. The bead in the bail was originally going to be the focal bead, but it's too thick. You need a flat bead to fit between the hearts - although with a little creative design you can use any shape bead. I just hadn't thought that far ahead since I was following a tutorial. It was given to me (along with the two silver beads) by her aunt and I thought she would really like that I put it in the pendant. The actual focal bead I made myself out of clay to match the bead in the pendant.

I want to make more like this for the store, although various other shapes. Not necessarily hearts, and not necessarily pink hearts at that. I have a lot of nice flat beads now that have no project to attach to. I have a lot of other nice beads I'd like to do something with, for that matter. When I get done with the second marble pendant, I'm going to try another double shape pendant. I enjoy weaving and I like the look of woven wire.

I also took the plunge and ordered some sterling silver wire. We'll see what comes out of that.