Simple Joys: Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I hope everyone is enjoying their Easter and hopefully time together with friends or family on this long weekend. This year for some reason, the girls got Monday off too, which turned it into a 4 day weekend - whoo hoo!

I've been a very, very, bad blogger. Let's see . . . what have I been doing in the past 3 weeks besides blogging? Hmm . . . the girls were off on Spring break - T for one week and J for two weeks. We cleaned, had a birthday sleepover, went to the movies, and basically enjoyed the time off from school. Since the girls have been back at school, I've tackled my beads. I haven't really organized them all properly in about 12 years!! Yikes!! I thought it would take me a couple of days, but . . . it's now been over a week! I'm almost done, but am waiting on some acrylic box organizers that I ordered from the mainland to finish them up. Hmm . . . I also finished our taxes - yay! This is the latest I've done them in . . . ? ? how many years? . . . well, since I was eighteen and filed my first tax returns. Yup, I'm one of those that gets them done early (usually in the beginning of February) so I don't know what happened this year. I'm just glad they are done! I hate doing the taxes!!!

I've also been creating and purchasing. I'm going to overload this post with all the pics of the past three weeks in one long post. Sorry, but it's the easiest way to catch up. Plus, we have to get going to our Easter activites - bowling with volleyball and dinner at the in-laws. So without further ado . . . here are the pics:

First of all, I am still in my "cuff craze phase" and had to make a couple these from this mag:

Here are the bracelets:

Here's a tip about making these bracelets. When I did the fringe on the first one (the blue one) I pulled too tight and the bracelet got a little wavy. You can't really tell when you wear it, but if you lay it flat you can tell. Instead of doing the second one looser, I added another 11/0 bead on each of the curves outlining the bracelet before the fringe step. If you plan on making this bracelet from the magazine, this may help. The second bracelet lays flat and doesn't look any different with the added beads.

I am also into circles and discs right now. While cleaning, I found some of my girl's scrap felt and went into this obsession to cut circles. I didn't use a template. I just cut. It was weird. I could actually "see" the circles I wanted to cut on the felt without drawing it. My daughter J thought it was so weird. I didn't realize it was pretty weird until she brought it to my attention. Oh well, so I'm weird. Here are the circles and a few other shapes. All done in one evening.

I also purchased some circular beads from Creations By You in Hawaii. It had been a long time since I purchased vintage glass and I kind of went a little crazy:

I also made some jewelry purchases:

I absolutely LOVE this piece from Jane Wynn:

These are from Global Village in Kailua Hawaii

I made an orange bracelet with a kit from Creations By You in Hawaii. Then of course, I had to make earrings that would match. I found some glass faceted rectangles at Bella Beads that inspired me to make the earrings. I found the vintage square glass beads in my stash and added a couple crystals and gold filled 2mm balls.

I also made these earrings with rose quartz faceted rectangles (I'm really starting to like these rectangles!), fresh water pearls, and pink crystals. I copied a pair that Karen made at Bella Beads.

And finally, I crocheted an Easter basket for Val and put in a couple of goodies:

crocheted basket with pink tulle:

added some Dove chocolate eggs and ME inspired earrings:

and tied it up with cellophane, pink tulle and a precious Easter tag from Flea Market Studio!

Oh, I want to show you the ME inspired beads up close. They were made by Karen from Bella Beads.

These cute beads were the inspiration for the whole basket. I wanted it to be all handmade items (except for the chocolate which I bought). First I made the earrings. I found a set of avian stamps that I purchased a little while ago and made the earring card. Then I thought about purchasing a wicker basket since it would be like a nest. I started looking for one, but couldn't find one I liked. I was browsing through a crochet book and - lightbulb moment - thought of crocheting one! The purchased handmade tag from Flea Market Studio with the vintage image was the finishing touch. It was a basket full of handmade things from several different artists. Cool. Wait, did I just call myself an artist? Ha! Ha!

Have a Happy Easter!