Art Bead Scene Ornament Hop!

There is a sense of excitement in the air once the calendar flips to December. My head knows that it is really Advent, a period of waiting and watching. Preparing the way of the Lord. A time to be still and let all the madness pass me by.

But my heart always wants to give in to the decorating and the cookie baking and the festive merrymaking.

The cold {usually}sets in. {Today it was like 50 degrees. Crazy!). There will be flurries forecast {eventually}. When we have our first snow I will make a blizzard of paper snowflakes.

Twinkling lights adorn all the houses up and down our street. Our front porch, with its mini-forest of white light trees is by far the prettiest, of course. ;-)

I created a brand new mantel scape this year that is getting rave reviews from family, friends, neighbors and even a few random service providers. My 14 year old son Rocket even took a look at it, nodded his head approvingly and said, " 's cool." Now THAT is high praise!

I promise that I will share my new creative endeavors soon when the living room gets unearthed and I can get a few pretty pictures. You see, we are having a gift to ourselves put in on Wednesday - a whole wall of cabinetry including two 24" locker cubbies in the laundry room to make it more of a mudroom.

I. CAN. NOT. WAIT!

Once I have claimed my living room, from the pile of shoes, the tangle of backpacks and the leaning tower of school notices, I promise that I will show you.

But for today, we have the annual Art Bead Scene Ornament Hop. Back a few months ago, Miss Heather put a call out to designers on the Art Bead Scene to join us. There are 23 participants spreading their holiday cheer.

I look forward to making a new ornament each year. In fact, that is how I started making jewelry. One year instead of making my usual ornament for all the ladies of the family, I made them all custom mother's bracelets. I thought I was pretty clever using Swarovski crystals and spelling out the names of the children with silver letter beads. Cutting edge stuff, I tell you!

Well, jewelry making stuck. But I still manage to make a new ornament or two each year. And once I started my Simple Truths line it seemed logical that the pendants could be converted to an ornament with nothing more than a ribbon for a hanger. But I quite like to embellish things.So I took two of my popular limited edition Simple Truths Holiday designs and made them into ornaments with a few picks, some wire, a little cursing, a bit of tangled wire, some wire cutters, more wire, and some ribbon.

I started with one of my new Holiday Botanical Birds in the Poinsettia motif.

This is quite like the coloring of my favorite bird (and high school mascot!), the Cardinal.

I wired together some faux pine boughs and some glittery green and red berries, then just wrapped the wire through the branch at the bird's feet. Gently. So as not to bend and snap the bird feet which has happened (then you just have a footless bird ;-)

The result is a bird, sitting on a branch, nestled in your tree providing the perfect camouflage.

Next, I pulled out one of my new reindeer ornaments called 'Won't You Guide My Sleigh Tonight?'

Mine had only a ring at the top as I had a defective bezel with a cracked bail at the top. But nothing goes wasted in my studio! I just turned it around before I baked it!

 

I didn't get as fancy-schmantzy as I did with the bird. I just wanted his bright shiny nose to catch the light and glow. So all I added was a single shiny green leaf along with a faux pine bough and a cluster of red berries. I topped it off with a pretty red ribbon.

I am sure that I might keep these for my own tree, but it is more likely that I will gift them away to someone special to spread a little love and good cheer during this season of light.

Please join the rest of the hoppers to see what holiday cheer they have cooked up for you!

Art Bead Scene
Humblebeads
Treasures Found - You are here!
Song Beads
Viki O'Dell
Sue Beads
Modern Nature Studio
Diane Hawkey
Suburban Girl Studio
Jen Judd Rocks
Ellie's Bijoux
Island Girl's Insights
Life By The Seat Of My Pants
Too Aquarius 
Shelley Graham Turner
Artfully Ornamental
Charis Designs Jewelry
Harrison Hollow Designs
Silver Nik Nats
Bead Soup Mix
Toodles and Binks
Bead Recipes
Play Sculpt Live
BeeTree by M.E.
Billi RS Rothe
A Half-Baked Notion
Kimis Jewelry and Gifts