Look, I made some jewelry!

I know it's been true lately that the only way a new reader would really know this is supposed to be a jewelry blog is from the name. Well, I guess there's some jewelry-related stuff in the sidebar, too. There just hasn't been much jewelry-related content. So that's why I'm excited to finally have some.

First of all, we have some earrings:

This is not a great picture, particularly because the two cat's-eye beads don't pick up the light equally. They look much better on my ears, or alternatively, on the 123Bead website, where I got the stuff to make them, so you might want to look at their picture instead. (They sell a kit to make one pair for $3.95, which is pretty reasonable, I thought, and is how I bought mine, or they sell the beads and findings separately.) These are just about the world's easiest earrings to make - they come with a really long headpin, and you just put the bead and the cone on the headpin, make a loop, add the earwires, and you're done.

Then today I took a class at Antiques Beads where we made watches. I got two and a half watches done in class so I thought that was pretty good. (Although actually the class was supposed to be over at 3:30 and most of us were still there at 5:00, so I guess it's not quite as amazing as it might have been!)

The two finished watches both used watch faces I already had, both of which came from Fire Mountain, I think. The blue ceramic beads came from Michael's - I had it in my head that I needed a blue watch. The great coppery beads were ones I had bought at Antiques Beads the day I signed up for the class, and they were gone today so it's good that I didn't wait! The other watch face I bought today - the store had a whole lot of watch faces that were $7.95, which seems like a good price to me. I know I've paid more than that for most of the ones I've bought in the past, anyway. (Plus you get 20% off on things you buy the day of a class, so it was actually, what, 6-something.) I also bought a bunch of round Swarovskis and some bead caps to make one more watch, because Donie, who taught the class, had brought a sample that was made like that and it was really pretty. About half the class ended up making one like it. I had another rectangular face like the one above so I used that and made it earlier tonight. I'll post a picture of that one later. It's terribly elegant. I had made watches in the past but I learned a lot of new techniques so I'm glad I took the class.