Adornments Retreat 2019

I'm sorry it's been so quiet on my blog so far this summer.  Since June1st, I've only been at home three weekends and one of those was spent with serious jet lag!  We're on the run again this coming weekend too.  Wowza.  No wonder our summers just fly by!

Anyway, I digress.  This past week and weekend was filled with travel to and tons of fun and learning at the Adornments Mixed Media Jewelry Retreat.  While it's all still fresh in my mind, I wanted to share my experiences and my projects with you all!

2019 marks the third year of Adornments and I've been lucky enough to attend every year so far.  Since it falls around my birthday (it's tomorrow!), I look at this as my birthday present to me.  Each year the schedule has worked out a bit differently.  Our instructors were Jess Lincoln from Vintaj, Heather Powers of Humblebeads fame, Erin Prais-Hintz our mad scientist, and Candie Cooper who is the queen of sparkle and special sauce!  This year participants could take four different half day classes over two days (Thursday and Friday).  We also had a round robin make and take session on Saturday where we got to a little project with each of the four instructors... so great if you didn't have a class with everyone!!

Our fabulous instructors: Candie, Jess, Heather, and Erin

My friend Alexa that I met through Heather's oh so awesome Bead Cruise flew into Minneapolis and rode with me this year.  It's always better to have a buddy to keep you company on a long drive!  Plus we'll be rooming together on the 2020 Bead Cruise so this was a great opportunity to get to know each other better before we room together for 8 nights!  We had a nice dinner in downtown Galena before settling into the Chestnut Mountain Resort for the week.

Wednesday:  Day 1 of the retreat was all about registration, housekeeping for the event, digging into our goody bags from all the generous sponsors, and the ever popular pendant exchange.  Each attendee is encouraged to make a pendant for the exchange and then it's a blind choice... you get called up one table at a time and just grab the package that speaks to you!  Here's what I made for the exchange with etched copper and the cute dragonfly that I received from Tammy N.

Another fun part of the first day is creating and dividing out a bead soup to be used for the design challenge.  How that works is each participant is asked to bring a 16 inch strand of beads (or it's equivalent).  Each table has it's own bowl and the folks sitting at that table throw their respective strands in, mix it around, and then divide it out.  On the last day of the retreat we reveal and vote on our favorite designs made from the bead soups.  More on that later!  Sadly, we were so eager to get started that we forgot to take a before picture of our table's bead soup.  Oops!!  At least you can see the palette below.  After dinner, we reconvened for a night of shopping with the instructors, beading, and socializing.  I came away with some nice goodies as always!

Thursday:  Day 2 dawned and we were all excited to get started with our first classes.  For me it was Heather's Faux Tin Charming Affair.  Yes, I know I've taken this a few times before, but it's always different images and projects... plus she and her awesome husband Jesse have tweaked and perfected the process over time, so you get the most up to date and best technique to take home!  This time we were more focused on charms and earring components... right in my happy place!  I'm often a little pokey in class but I did manage to get one pair of earrings completed and some textured copper pieces cut out.  Eventually I'll get the faux tin pieces cut out and everything filed and put together!

My afternoon class was Erin's Petri Dish Pendants.  I really enjoyed each and every one of my classes, but if I had to pick a favorite, this would totally be it!  Unlike many techniques, this one feels a bit like mad science.  You really have no idea exactly how the resin and alcohol inks will react with each other... it's just a leap of faith.  The only bad part is that you have to wait 24 hours for the resin to cure before you get to see how things turned out.  This is not a technique for those of you who want a reliable and repeatable design.  If you're willing to take a chance the results can be amazing.  Not everything turned out how I expected/hoped, but I still think that they are all attractive and fun!

On the left you can see how things looked from the back... this is the pre-cured picture.  The right is how they looked right after I peeled them off the tape.  So exciting to see the results!

Here's the glamor shot of my finished components.  One of my maple leaf pendants still needs a tiny bit of clean up, but it's way better than it was!

Thursday night after dinner we had two fun presentations and a make and take hosted by Ron Rock from Swarovski and Jess from Vintaj.  Ron brought each of us a gorgeous (and hefty!) orchid pendant that we wire wrapped with a lovely Vintaj brass piece.  Heather shared an inspiring presentation all about the elements of design.  Lots of sparkly and art bead inspiration for sure!

My finished make and take pendant!  Isn't it amazing?

A couple of pages from one of the Swarovski inspiration books that they come out with twice a year when they announce new products.  These pages are hand crafted and just GORGEOUS!

Friday:  My morning class was Adding Images to EVERYTHING with Candie and it was super fun!  We did a quick project with an image under a glass dome and then got down to business with some fun translucent image transfer material.  Unfortunately it's not on the market anymore but I did buy a few sheets for future play!  I have some fun new pendants to create with plus more images to use when I get a chance to experiment some more.

For the afternoon I was back in Erin's classroom for her Quick Cure Clay Components class and more mad science!  Quick Cure Clay is a super new product on the scene from Ranger and the class was all about exploration and experimentation.  It's a really interesting material that cures quickly with just a heat gun as the catalyst.  It's strong and the cured product feels more like a ceramic than anything else that I can compare it to.  Even though Erin had a ton of different options for adding color to our creations, I chose to focus on making pieces since I had access to lots of textures and molds that I don't have at home.  I still have more clay in my package so after I do some more with this first batch color-wise I can expand on my experiments!

On the left, I'm set up and ready to start.  The right are my cured pieces.  The four flowers along the bottom have jump rings embedded in the back side so that I can use them as button clasps.

The last official night of the retreat is a crowd favorite... the Pajama Beading Party!  We get to be silly and wear fun pj's while we continue to work on projects and chat.  Pretty much eat, drink, bead, and be merry!  Another fun tradition is the Facebook Live beading challenge where Erin and Heather give each other a bead soup mix based on that year's palette and one of the other instructors provides a mystery component that must be included in both designs.  It's fast paced and good, silly fun that always results in some lovely new jewelry designs.  You can watch the replay, hosted by Candie Cooper HERE.

Heather and Erin working under the pressure for the Facebook Live Beading Challenge!

Saturday:  The last day of Adornments is always bittersweet.  I feel sad to be finishing things up and saying good bye to beady friends, yet by that time I'm also ready to be back home with my Sweetie and the kitties.  Similar to last year, the instructors planned a fun progressive make and take where we all got to do one charm project with each of the four instructors.  They divided us into groups and we rotated through all four stations.

Make & take charms:  Clockwise from top left the projects were by Candie Cooper, Heather Powers, Jess Lincoln, and Erin Prais-Hintz.  The pewter piece is from Vintaj and can be shaped in fun ways if you wish.  I haven't decided what I want to do yet so it's in its natural state!

After we did our round robin of charms it was time to vote on your favorite creation for the Bead Soup Design Challenge.  You could have knocked me over with a feather... I won second place and with it a $50 gift certificate to Rustic River Finds.  Jess's sweet mom Trish Italia owns this fabulous bead store right in downtown Galena.  I always find some really unique things that just have to come home with me there.  Trish also stocks a great selection of gifts and home decor items.  So fun to shop there every year!  Here's my winning entry:

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entry was actually two necklaces that can be worn together or separately.  Both focals are polymer clay... the heart is by Erin (and I bought it the first night of the retreat) and the rounded square is by Heather and was in my goody bag.   

After lots of hugs and good byes to the folks hitting the road on Saturday afternoon most of us headed into downtown for lunch and shopping.  Monica, Alexa, and I enjoyed yummy white sangria and frozen fruit with our pizza lunch.

With our bellies now happy, we wandered down to Rustic River Finds to spend my gift certificate and more!!  Trish always provides a little make and take project for all the Adorners.  This year it was a sweet necklace.

Every night Monica and I opened our room for late night shenanigans and socializing.  Just hanging out and catching up with old friends and meeting new ones is one of the best parts of any retreats.  We always have some fun and silly times after hours in the "party room" but what happens in Galena stays in Galena!  ;)  Saturday night was our last hurrah and we probably stayed up a little past our bedtimes, but it was all worth it!  

I've come home with my creative batteries recharged and my heart full of gratitude and love for my beady tribe.  I don't get to see most of these awesome folks nearly often enough but I enjoy every moment when I do get to spend time in their company.  Until next year, Adornments!!

Art Bead Scene Challenge: January 2019

After a few months hiatus, the Art Bead Scene Studio blog and monthly challenge is back in action!  I was so excited to see the announcement from my friend, and queen of the ABS, Heather Powers and then totally over the moon when I realized that she's chosen to use on of her gorgeous pieces of artwork to start off the year.  (If you love this piece as much as I do, you're in luck!  Heather sells prints of her original art over on her Humblebeads website HERE.)

I actually have a gorgeous faux tin piece from Heather that I'd planned to use for this challenge (and still may go back to for a round two) but I couldn't find one of the supplies that I wanted for it easily and got frustrated.  (If you saw my mess of a workspace you'd totally understand!)  Anyways... I had the bits and bobs handy for a couple of earring ideas, so I started there instead.

First up I grabbed some fun purple and white ceramic tube beads from Golem Design Studio that fit nicely with the colors in Heather's artwork.  I added a couple of different Czech glass flower shades in various shades of purple to match that lovely moth on the right side.  I thought the cute Arte Metal butterfly charms from Vintaj could also work as moths!

Clearly in an earring making mood... I whipped up another pair with some super fun Ghost Moth wing pieces from Twinkiedinky!  These are pretty long, but oh so lightweight!  I paired them with some Mercury finish Czech glass and plated hematite.

Hopefully I'll find my missing supplies as I continue to try to get my studio somewhat under control.  If I'm really lucky it will be before the end of the month and I can make my necklace design with one of Heather's lovely faux tin pieces.  Fingers crossed!  Until then, I'm going to flutter off and try to make a dent in my to-do list.

Bead Cruise 2018

I'm just back from a wonderful week of jewelry making classes, seeing old friends, meeting new people, fun in the sun, fabulous prizes, yummy food & drinks, and much more.  Where was I that all this happened?  On board Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas for the seven night Bead Cruise, of course!!  This is my fourth time setting sail with Heather Powers of Humblebeads and a group of other wonderful instructors and participants for the Bead Cruise and it's a blast each and every time!

Our ship, the Allure of the Seas, at our first port, Labadee.

This year we left out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and headed for Labadee, Haiti; Jamaica, and Cozumel, Mexico... more about that in a bit.  Most of us fly down at least a day before the departure date... some folks went on a bead store field trip on Saturday, but I got in that day and just headed to the group hotel.

Getting to and on the ship is always a bit of an adventure starting with our shuttle to the port with tons of bags and supplies in tow... but eventually we always manage to get everything on board and settled into our staterooms and classrooms.  After grabbing a light lunch, I found my roommate for the week, grabbed cocktails, and toasted to the wonderful times ahead!

Waiting for the port shuttle with my friend Erin Prais-Hintz... Can you feel the excitement of going on her first Bead Cruise?

Met up with my wonderful roommate (and fabulous instructor!) Tracy Stanley to kick off the trip right!

After dinner on the first night of the cruise, there is a little welcome event where everyone gets to meet up, get the week's schedule, receive our goody bags full of wonderful items donated by the cruise's sponsors, and participate in a pendant exchange.  I ran out of time to play along with the exchange last year so I made sure to get back into the swing of things this time!

Pendant Exchange:  L) The pendant I made with a design and components from Vintaj.  R) The lovely and delicate pendant I received from SandyWetzstein.

If you aren't familiar with the way the Bead Cruise works, there are classes scheduled during the day on the at sea days.  You get one full day class and one half day class included with your registration and have the option of adding up to two additional half day classes.  This year, I decided to break out of my rut and try something new... bead embroidery!  My all day class was "It's A Hippy Thing" with the sweet, patient, and fun Kinga Nichols.  I'm a long way from having this bracelet completed (as you can see from my in progress pics below) but I'm getting there for sure!  I'm super excited to learn how to make a peyote bezel around a cabochon.  Now I won't be sad when I see a lovely bead only to notice that it's actually a cab!  I loved the way Kinga set up our class supplies buffet style so that we could pick our favorite one of a kind cab, the silk color, the leather, and the button individually.  I picked the orange color way for the cab and beads but decided to use the teal silk. 

The next day we were back ashore on Royal Caribbean's private piece of Haiti... Labadee.  I wasn't off the ship for too long, but did enjoy taking the little boat ride to the far side of the island and checking out the artisan market.  (I didn't get there the last time we were there for the 10th Anniversary cruise.)  It was super hot and humid so Heather, Erin, and I headed back to enjoy the pool while most people were off the ship.

Myself, Heather, and Erin on Labadee.  Lovely water of the Caribbean!

The next day was spent exploring Jamaica with a group of my fellow Bead Cruisers and our local guide "Mama" Maxine and guide-in-training Bobby.  We spent the first part of the way driving across the island to Dunn's River Falls.  None of us were interested in trying to climb the falls (it actually looked like a nightmare to do that to me!) but we enjoyed their beauty and many of us did at least get our feet wet!  After a yummy lunch of jerk chicken, fried plantains, and Red Stripe beer (for me, anyways) we headed for a quick tour of the lovely Coyaba Gardens.

Vistas from the drive, and a peek at Dunn's River Falls.

Some cool plants from Coyaba Gardens.  The top right is called Cat's Whiskers!

Later that evening, we had our Neverland themed costume party.  I was too busy dancing and checking out everyone's costumes and jewelry to get many pictures but I did snap a shot of a cute Peter Pan and Tinker Bell!  My costume was a super lazy pirate outfit not worthy of pictures!

After two days in a row on the islands it was back to class!  My half day class was my roommate Tracy Stanley's "Let's Color It" class.  She taught us a fun method for adding color to metal with Prismacolor colored pencils.  I have to admit that I spent a lot of my class time picking out some of the fun shaped metal blanks that Tracy brought and getting them prepped so that I could easily play with the color at home.  I did get one pendant mostly done, though.  I still need to seal it and I'm also thinking that I will add some sort of riveted element to it... just have to decide what that will be first!  This was a super fun technique and I'm already thinking about ways to incorporate it into future designs.

My main piece in progress... I love how even though my rubber stamp work was a little sloppy, the process was pretty forgiving.

Our last port was Cozumel, Mexico.  We stopped there last year and I did a cooking at the beach class at Playa Mia.  I had so much fun last time that I signed up for an excursion that included the same fabulous cooking class but added on some tequila time and a chocolate tour and tasting as well.  I didn't take many pictures (too busy cooking!) but snapped the shots below at the Mayan Cacao Company tour.  A fun, if a bit rushed time was had.  I even grabbed a nice bottle of sipping tequila to bring home to my hubby!

I ended up signing up for two bonus classes this year... one with our lovely hostess Heather and another with Kinga.  I was more than a little nervous about trying Heather's "Welcome to the Jungle" polymer class because it involved making canes.  I was pleasantly surprised by the relative ease of the process and think my beads turned out pretty darn well for it being a first attempt and working with a bit of a time crunch.  I had some ends of the cane that I had lopped off (it gets more distorted on the ends) but they still looked ok.  I decided to try making some little leaf charms since I had some larger sized canes.  Check back on Friday to see a couple of pairs of earrings featuring some of these newly made beads and charms for the We're All Ears challenge. 

It's hard to believe the polymer clay magic that creates the leaf canes that then get applied to your beads!  

Kinga's bonus class "Zeno, the Tiniest Fishie Bracelet" was a great way to end my set of classes.  Much more straightforward and beginner friendly, since it didn't involve bezeling a cab.  I had fun sitting and working on the backstitch outlines in class.  I got more of it finished while waiting for my flight home at the airport, but still have a ways to go.  I'll have to share when I get hime all done.  I was pleased to discover through Kinga's two classes that I enjoy bead embroidery... and it's one more tool in my beading tool kit!

So, eventually my fishy will look like Kinga's samples... I hope!

The last night of the cruise is always bittersweet for me... I'm sad to say goodbye to all of my beady friends but ready to be back home to my husband and kitties.  After dinner, Heather always hosts a Farewell Party before we all have to go back to our rooms to finish packing.  This year, a fun addition to the party was a little photo booth action with lots of amusing props.  Here are a couple of pics of me with Tracy and then Erin and Heather.  Heather also gave out a few more prizes game show style... I won a lovely bunch of sari silk from Design Talented One and a butterfly pendant from Gardanne.

Before I say goodbye to all of you, here's a little collage of some of my favorite things around the ship.  A couple of shots of my favorite area... Central Park, an outside area with real plants and lots of seating tucked throughout; my first chocolate martini... dessert for me on several nights; part of a cool art installation showing the progression of creating a carousel horse; and my favorite towel animal by our stateroom attendant Bob!  Not pictured, but the Oceanaria show at the amazing AquaTheater was super cool.  It was mix of diving, acrobatics, aerial daring, dance, and more with a "stage" that was sometimes covered with only an inch of water and sometimes was deep enough to dive into from 60 feet!

Thanks for sticking with me through this long post... assuming that you're still reading!  LOL.  I write these posts as much for myself as a diary of sorts, so I want to do my best to capture the highlights of all my adventures.

Adornments Retreat

Once again, I'm a little late to the party as far as sharing my recent creative adventures... but I'll stick with the better late than never theme!  For the Adornments Retreat, the creative forces behind Vintaj, the Art Bead Scene, and Now That's a Jig came together for an event not to be missed!  Three days of mixed media jewelry fun with Heather Powers, Jess Italia Lincoln, Erin Prias-Hintz, and Brenda Schweder at the Chestnut Mountain Resort in Galena, Illinois made for the perfect birthday weekend for me.  The only bad thing about the retreat is that I had to choose just two of the eight classes and I wish that I could have done them all!!  

Galena is about a five and a half to six hour drive for me (depending on the traffic and construction), so I decided to head out a day early so as not to be stressed out about my arrival time on Thursday.  Luckily, my wonderful roommate Monica decided to join me earlier than she had originally planned.  We had dinner that first night with one of Monica's coworkers, got to watch an amazing rain storm roll through from the floor to ceiling windows at the restaurant, and had our GPS route us down a series of increasingly creepily named dirt roads to get home (Devil's Ladder, Irish Hollow, Cemetery)... Adventure!!  The nighttime rain cleared out and gave us a super muggy morning to explore the shops and restaurants of Main Street Galena before the retreat got going that afternoon.  (Galena is a seriously cute town if you ever get a chance to visit!)

Thursday afternoon kicked off the fun of the retreat proper.  We all gathered in our main meeting space to get our registration materials, name tags, and goodie bags.  This is always an exciting time at any retreat when you get to see old friends and meet new people... everyone is buzzing with anticipation of the fun to come!  After some introductory remarks from Heather and the other instructors, the group had the fun task of making and dividing out some bead soup!  

Before the retreat, we were given the following inspiration and asked to bring 16 inches of beads to go with the color palette.  We were also supposed to bring some sort of focal/pendant and any other beads and findings we might want to add to our personal bead soup portions.  The idea behind all of this is that each person was encouraged to make something made up of at least 60% of the bead soup and enter into a fun design contest to be held at the end of the retreat.  Each table made their own soup and it was fascinating to see the different mixes of beads we had around the room.  

My portion of our table's "soup" with the pendant I chose to use.

We broke for dinner on our own at the resort and then regrouped for a fun evening session afterwards.  Heather and Erin did a presentation about the Art Bead Scene blog and their monthly challenges as well as using art beads in your jewelry designs.  Fun and inspiring stuff!  One of the highlights of the evening was Heather and Erin doing a Chopped style competition where they gave each other a bead soup mix and a focal based on the July ABS challenge and then they had 20 minutes on the clock to make a design.  Nail biting jewelry making excitement!  To add to the challenge, Brenda gave them each a mystery component that they had to work into their designs.... and it was a plastic monkey with a sparkly crystal collar!!  Here are our lovely contestants and their designs at the end of the competition.  

While all those hi-jinx were going on, the rest of us looked on, mingled, and worked on our own beading projects.  I managed to get my Bead Soup competition piece completed that first night (probably a sign of the impending apocalypse!!).  Here's what I made:

This sweet pendant from Erin's Simple Truths Sampler Club was the perfect fit with my mix of pastel beads.  It is beautiful and had a lovely message on the back side that the wearer will keep close to her heart.

For day one, I chose Erin's INKsplorations class where we got to play with different alcohol inks and surfaces to put them on.  I probably didn't experiment enough but I think my brain just isn't great when it comes to really being freeform and just messing around.  I also stuck mostly to the Ranger alcohol inks since those are the ones readily available to me locally.  Before lunch we had time to experiment with the inks and substrates and Erin worked through lunch (naughty monkey!) to get all of our little masterpieces sealed for us so we could move onto the next step when we got back.  We spent the rest of the day cutting down small portions of our inked artworks and gluing them into bezels and adding in UV resin.  Now, resin is a tricky thing (at least for me!) and this class was no different.  I had some bubbling and what I think is the resin pulling away from the material underneath but I believe with some creative problem solving that I may be able to salvage these two.  While I had fun playing with the inks (and got some fun results along the way) I think this may be a little too freeform for me to want to pursue it too much... although I'm thinking about trying two part resin with it instead of the UV and see if it's any less frustrating for me.  Time will tell!

Day two for me was a polymer clay and metal play day with Heather in her Wings & Dreams class.  I really can't overstate how much fun I had in this class!  I never would have dreamed that I would enjoy polymer clay until I took my first class in that medium with Heather last fall.  I'm never going to be the genius artist that she is, but I really enjoy playing with it and learning new polymer techniques.  I was so busy making cute butterflies and flowers that I really didn't do a great job of documenting the day, but here are some pictures I took during and afterwards of my completed projects as well as some that are still works in progress.  I didn't realize this when I signed up for the class, but alcohol inks were a part of the coloring process for these cuties so I had all the supplies I needed to continue painting and playing when I got home!

Right after our day two classes, the entire group came back together for our Wrap Party where we got to see and vote on everyone's Bead Soup creations and officially say goodbye to the wonderful Adornments Retreat and our fabulous instructors.  The fun didn't really end there as many of us were staying over Saturday night.  After dinner Jess's mom, Trish Italia, opened up her lovely bead store Rustic River Finds in downtown Galena for us to do some more shopping.  (I forgot to mention that Friday night we had a private shopping event with our instructors and Trish at the retreat!)  Not that I needed anything, I found some treasures to treat myself with as a little birthday gift.    

Top: Our lovely instructors Brenda, Jess, Heather, & Erin; Bottom: Me with my two teachers and fellow participant Lin.

My birthday goodies!

If you're looking for a fun and inspirational jewelry making retreat, I highly recommend checking out the Adornments Retreat.  They're already starting to plan next year's event.  A huge THANK YOU to Heather, Jess, Erin, and Brenda for a wonderful weekend of jewelry adventures with a great group of folks.  Any time I can come together to share, learn, and laugh with my beady tribe is a blessing and a treasure I'll cherish.  

2017 Muffin Tin Challenge!

In the spirit of getting her followers pumped up and creating in the new year, Heather Powers of Humblebeads fame has once again thrown down the beady gauntlet and challenged us to participate in her Muffin Tin Challenge!  Heather set the reveal date for January 16th but I'm traveling that day, so I'm posting a little early.  The good news is, you may still have time to join in if you wish!!

The idea is pretty simple... grab a muffin tin (or similar container with multiple compartments) and fill each well up with all you need to make one jewelry design.  Then sit down and power through some jewelry making with a goal of finishing at least 6 pieces.  You can read all the details on Heather's blog HERE.  Full disclosure:  I'm not always the best about making sure I've gotten absolutely everything needed in my little muffin cups.  I tend to go with just grabbing the core items and adding to them as I go... that's just how my brain tends to work.  My muffin tin projects include some VERY late Christmas presents for my sister and niece, an even more belated project for my extremely patient friend Kathleen, earrings that have been waiting to be made for varying lengths of time, projects for this month's Honey Do List challenge, and more!

My "muffins" ready to bake!

I started with the lowest hanging fruit... necklaces for my sister and niece that should have been done ages ago!  I found a broken strand of fun orange sodalite pieces at the last Dakota Stones showroom sale and snatched them up immediately.  Most of my family (including these two ladies) went to Auburn University whose colors happen to be orange and blue, so this was a very lucky find!

Next up, a pair of earrings meant to go with the necklace I made for the December Art Bead Scene challenge.  You can see that necklace HERE.  The earrings are the same as the flower dangle off the bottom of the pendant.  Sweet and fairly simple!

Next up, a couple of pairs of earrings that have been UFOs (UnFinished Objects) for quite some time.  I have more earrings that are partially thought out, but at least I've knocked out a couple of them!

Next, in a fit of art bead madness, I made two more long necklaces with Heather's seriously amazing new "Gilded Bramble" bird beads as the main event!  (She has a few of these in her Etsy shop HERE if you are now drooling for one of your own!)  For the coppery one I used a ceramic branch by Diane Hawkey and a ceramic leaf by Tracee Dock of The Classic Bead.  The blue one features a pendant by Gaea and enameled bead cap by C-Koop Beads.  I really couldn't be happier with how these necklaces turned out!

And finally, my 7th "muffin" and 8th project from this challenge: I finally made a bracelet with the beads I picked out to work on during Heather's Inspired by Nature Retreat.  I learned a lesson... I did NOT need to bring extra projects.  I kept plenty busy working on the fun things that Heather had planned for us!

Stop by Heather's blog HERE (starting January 16th) to see what everyone else "baked up" for this year's Muffin Tin Challenge!  Even if you missed out on the official challenge, I recommend this as a great way to get some concentrated creating done!  I didn't finish making everything in my tin yet, but I'm going to keep on trucking with these projects... at least some of them!