My new wardrobe staple

This is a new design that I’ve been wearing a lot – either for work or for dressing up an outfit a little bit. It’s a plain black heart strung with freshwater pearls and seed beads. Pretty simple, but kind of classy looking and really practical. 


And here’s the auction bracelet…

This goes with the necklace below for the Defer Auction. There’s also a pair of earrings in the light aqua color on the bracelet.

Necklace for school auction


I’m donating a jewelry set (necklace, bracelet and earrings) for the Defer School spring auction, which is this Saturday, April 5. I wanted to make something different than the usual necklace on cord or chain and have had this design in mind for a while (as you can see by the colors, this is part of my ocean-inspired collection). I have to finish up the bracelet and earrings, but here’s the necklace. It’s a 3-strand style with a handmade blue/green/teal heart that’s accented by a mix of green, blue, aqua and teal seed beads and silver plated spacers.

Florida Seashells


Well, I had my hopes set on finding beach/seaglass in Florida, but instead we found a ton of cool seashells. I guess the seaglass is more rare than I realized, or maybe we just weren’t in the right area to find any. The shells are cool though, and I have a few ideas on how I might incorporate some of them into jewelry. I have to be careful though, because shells and/or shell jewelry probably aren’t as attractive as they would be when you’re on a beach vacation. It was really fun looking for them.

Inspired by Beach Glass

It was so cold here in our pre-vacation months that I couldn’t even make beads because the studio heater wasn’t powerful enough to battle sub-freezing temps outside. But as soon as we had a 40+ degree day, I got out there. These are my sea glass inspired beads. Simple, but beautiful… soothing almost. Kinda like the ocean.   



Dreaming of the Beach

Over the past couple months, I’ve grown extremely tired of this dreary winter – this year more than years past. Maybe it’s because I knew we were going to Florida in March and so I was looking forward to that, and in the meantime, we just kept getting more and more Michigan snow. With Florida and sunshine in mind, I got inspired by images of sea glass, or beach glass, which is glass that has been discarded and has ended up in the ocean – basically as litter. Over time, the glass is broken up and tossed around by the waves and rocks and gets this really cool smooth, etched look.