Winnah! Winnah! Winnah!

First off, thank you all so much for playing in my little contest. I LOVED getting all the comments (no, really, and from now on, I EXPECT to get 46 comments on each and every post!) and reading about how and why everyone got into blogging in the first place. I tried to respond to as many of the comments as I could if they came through my e-mail.

This morning, I put all the names in a bowl and then I made the kid close his eyes, spin around three times and pick out a name. And here's the one he picked:

Sandra Lee James of Do Be Do Bead Do! You are the winner!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!

Just e-mail your address to me and I'll get your prize out the door directly.

In car news...there's NO news. The mechanic didn't even LOOK at it yesterday.

Fab, right?

In my next life, I'm going to make enough money to hire someone else to deal with this kinda crap. And while she's at it, she can run all my stupid errands, get someone competent to fix my oven that's been broken for 2 years, get all my 401k's from all my previous jobs moved to one location so they can be managed properly, tell my healthcare insurance to PAY the bills that are sent to them OR ELSE, and get me a pina colada on demand, dammit!

But, until that happens, here's some new resin beads:

Because EVERYTHING sounds better in French.

And because I wish I was in Paris right now.

Eating chocolate crepes at my favorite cafe on the Rue St. Germain.

Or looking out over the city from the balcony of my apartment on the Rue du Lourmel.

This one sold before I even got it listed on Etsy! It's headed to Canada.

As is this one.

More butterfly wings. This one is blurry because it tried to fly away while I was taking the picture.

No, really.

I love the colors in this one - totally calls for turquoise and carnelian or fire agate to go with it.

Delicately pale lavender, pink and blue with gold and green in this butterfly wing.

Pale blue and bright lime green with dots of black for accents. I keep seeing these with wood slices and/or seed or nut beads and some pretty, glossy ceramic beads with either leather or cotton cording - perfect summery beach necklaces.

These are supposed to be herbs of some sort, but I just liked the colors and how the design has the look of "pressed" leaves.

I made several bird designs in this last pour, but I'm keeping the others to use in some necklaces I have planned. This little bluebird, though, will be going up on Etsy later this week.

Such a pretty gold leaf on a background of green, aqua and blue.

More retro 70's surfer girl artwork.

Just add puka shells!

Pretty, glittery and girly little flower set.

A sweet set of butterflies and coordinating scrapbook paper cut outs.

And, because it's not enough to have JUST a unicorn or JUST a fairy on one bead, I did a design with BOTH!

BAM!

I've been wanting to do something with seashells for a long time and when I found this gorgeous artwork, I couldn't resist. This is an abalone shell.

I had (actually still have it - at my mom's house) a huge shell collection when I was growing up. Not just the typical stuff that you can find on any beach in So Cal, but I had a lot of large, more exotic shells from all over the world. At some point during elementary school, I ended up doing a science project where I identified all of the proper and scientific names for the shells and wrote up little notes about their habitat, diet, etc. The stars of my project were my two full-size nautilus shells - one complete one about the size of a salad plate and the other that has been sliced in half so you can see all of the chambers built inside it as the animal grew over time.

Love the pretty pastel colors on this scallop shell.

And the more fiery, sunset colors on this one.

I'm not sure this is a color combo that actually occurs in scallops in nature, but if it is, I need to get one for my collection. In the meantime, I have this beautiful bead version to look at.

I'll start listing these tonight and throughout the rest of the week on my BeResinable site.

KJ