Beads to Bangles- first attempt

The shiny, little beads are starting to accumulate and asking to be made into beautiful bangles.  Unfortunately, I do not have any beautiful bangle making skills (yet).  

So, off I went today to the local bead store in the Nut tree. The hapless husband manning the cash register was far more helpful than the shop owner and got me set up with a few basic items to do some wire jewelry.  A short walk to the bookstore to get some expert advice (a book on making wire jewelry) and at least 6 hours later, voila!

OK, not bad for a first attempt, however lacking any "ladies in waiting" I found that I cannot actually connect the clasp with one hand (required for putting on one's own bracelet).  It's pretty but also pretty useless.  Back to the drawing board and maybe some of the wire work can be rescued with an easier "one handed" type clasp.

I also got some leather cord and will see what can be done with this bead.  The Chinese character on it means benevolent, in this case kindhearted.

Beady eyed

I've been practicing making beads with soft glass.  It's quite challenging and good practice to make evenly round, centered beads.

I still need plenty more practice with this, but I got a little bored with monochromatic beads and played with dots and lines a little bit today. 

I messed the lines up on this one and then purposely swirled everything for a more abstract look.

this one was a little bit better from the perspective of laying down lines and dots (still a bit wonky shaped)

and my favorite of the day, it reminds me of a zebra

Homage to the Great Pumpkin, Linus

We revived the annual pumpkin carving this year. It was a pretty small turnout, but as usual the finished product was so better lit up with candles than I expected during the carving.

We tried something different this year, POWER TOOLS!!  Craig and I got these neat, warty pumpkins which turned out to be quite thick skinned and really hard.  I was planning on using the Dremel drill anyway, which was a good thing as this pumpkin was way too hard for hand carving.

 Mary and Jack were purists and did theirs the old-fashioned way and were still done in half the time it took Craig and I. 

 From left to right, Mary's, mine, Jack's (Chilean mineshaft) and Craig's