Gifts and classes

I've been meaning to talk about the Christmas gifts I made for my family last year. Everything was sort of crazy and last minute and I didn't get pictures of a lot of them, but here is the necklace I made for my mother-in-law:

Just 8mm matte AB Czech beads in several shades of blue and green - I think those matte beads make up really pretty with just the beads and no spacers at all.

And here are a couple of things I made my sister (and she took these pictures):

 

As you can see, it's all pretty simple stuff, but everybody seemed happy with it. The top one is just Swarovski bicones on a headpin, which in my experience almost always makes a really cute earring. I made one of my cousins a pair using that "fire opal" color that were adorable. (It bugs me when I let stuff go without taking pictures; I need to make sure I take pictures of everything I make this year.) The other pair is just a 12mm Czech glass bead and some spacers, which is another simple idea I've used a lot.


I was thinking about registering some classes before Christmas last year, but the bead shop I had been going to (Bead Connection, in League City) didn't have any classes available, and I guess that should have been a hint, because after the holidays they were suddenly closed. So I had to find a new place, but driving up and down 518 in Pearland, I found one amazingly close to my house: Antiques, Beads, and Crafty People. They were very nice, when I went in. It's a small store - it actually was a convenience store, originally, I think! - but they have a lot of beads packed in there. I signed up for a class where we made this bracelet:

You have to remember that I took one basic beading class, where they taught you to make a simple loop and do a plain, flat crimp, and anything and everything I did in the two years after that I mostly just came up with on my own. So doing something like this that uses two wires was exotic to me. (I think this is a variation on right angle weave, isn't it?)

There's a journal entry in LJ in February where I note in passing that I signed up for more classes, and also that on the way home from my aunt's house in Bryan I was going by a bead store I hadn't been to before. That was Beadoholique, on the north side of Houston (which is not the same as the online beadaholique - note the difference in spelling). Beadoholique-with-an-O is a really nice store, maybe not quite as friendly as Antiques Beads - nobody is! - but they sure have some beautiful beads. And a really large variety of classes, some of which I'd love to take if it was a bit more convenient to me. Houston is a big place, though, and it's on the faaaaar side from me. It'd have to be a class I really, really wanted to take.

This is getting longish, and I need to go study, so I'll talk about those classes the next time.