Breaking the Follower Barrier!

I did it! I broke the 200 follower barrier! Thank you and congratulations to Janet of SingingWoods for becoming my 200th follower! E-mail me with your address as you have won a special prize!!

In other news...it appears that I have managed to survive The Black Death or whatever plague it was that I had last week and I am about 95 % recovered. Thanks everyone for the well wishes and the, ummm, interesting cures and remedies that were suggested.

I'm also glad everyone seemed to enjoy Friday's bead porn selection. I was kinda delirious when I posted so I had to go back and look to see what everyone was commenting on. If I can manage to stay well the rest of this week, I'm off to the big Pasadena bead show on Saturday so next week's porn post oughta be REALLY good.

Also, don't forget to check back on Wednesday to see who will win the big beady giveaway in honor of my blog-o-versary! Y'know, the one that I still haven't taken the pictures for? Yeah, that one. Tonight....I SWEAR!

**Edited 7/26 to add: New pics are up on the giveaway post. Check it!**

But I do have SOME pics to share today:

Who won 2nd place at the Cub Scout Raingutter Regatta on Saturday?

Yep. MY KID! With a boat he built and painted himself.

The Regatta was held at the Boy Scout Seabase at Newport Harbor and the boys got to ride on several other kinds of boats including canoes, rowboats and the sherriff's boat (seen in the background).

I had to post this - y'know, just to show that he DOES do other stuff besides ruin furniture and cause floods. Way to go, Ryan!

Plus...couldn't resist the extreme cuteness.

And here's some of the jewelry I created a couple of weeks ago before the plague hit:

Pink and green - one of my favorite color combos.

The focal is one of my resin word pendants on a big square of tiger ebony wood. Accents are some of the carved stone flower beads that I've been collecting.

Brown waxed linen cord knotted with pink and green jade and white shell beads.

I used another large pink stone flower for the clasp and made a loop of the cording to fit over it. The loose cord ends are decorated with pink, green and white seed beads and knots.

Kinda different for me...and somehow it ended up having a bit a of a tropical vibe...which was not my intent, but I ended up liking it anyway.

Then I tried to get all artsy-fartsy with the picture-taking. I like it except that the pale pink beads look white in the pic. Dunno what that's about.

I had some flower beads left over and another word pendant so I tried to come up with another design:

It's kinda funky, I know. I'm not even sure I'm 100% in love with it, but it IS different.

One of my resin word pendants again...

And a lampwork glass unicorn head pendant that I've been hoarding for like, 8 years or something. Actually, this was part of a pair and I'm still having a bit of heartache over splitting up the pair, but I do have a plan for the other one that's COMPLETELY different than this design.

Another closeup of the unicorn and showing some of the other accent beads. Since I used such a bright green in the first necklace, I wanted to see how the pink would look with these darker teal shell disks.

Actually, now that I look at it again, I think I do like it. Not for everyone, though, I'm sure. Only those of us that want to believe in unicorns... ;-)

Happy Monday, everyone!

KJ