I am a huge fan of the Knittn Kitten vintage craft supply store here in Portland, and I was sad to hear that they’ve been having a tough time lately. So a group of of us are contributing free weekly craft patterns (to make everything from necklaces and beaded hairpins to iron-on patches and pincushions) to shoppers who support the store… you just need to stop by the Kitten, ask for the free pattern sheet at the counter, and buy your supplies to make the project!

Every Tuesday there will be a new project sheet up for grabs. This week (starting yesterday, September 22), Heather Mann is offering up a how-to for making the lovely Anthropologie-inspired Statement Necklace above, using all Kitten materials. And her project sheet includes a bonus pattern for this necklace, too!

And next week Teresa Sullivan will be contributing instructions for this intricate Seed Bead Hairpin project — you can make flowers or skulls with wire and seed beads. (And if you haven’t seen Teresa’s beading work before, do yourself a favor and visit her site — it’s incredible!)

Here’s the full schedule of free craft projects, a new one each week:

September 22 – Heather
September 29 – Teresa
October 6 – Diane Gilleland
October 13 – Joey Groendes
October 20 – Christine Blystone
October 27 – Me!
November 3 – Lee Meredith
November 10 – Bridget Benton

Stay tuned to the Knittn Kitten flickr group for pictures and details on the projects to come!

Last month I taught a Bead + Button Jewelry class at PNCA, which was fantastic. My seven students made such beautiful things and I was really honored to be part of the Summer of Making! I wanted to share photos of some of the Bead Simple-inspired projects from the class, which were especially fun for me to see.

Sandra made some really lovely pieces, including Duo Earrings,

a Duo Pendant,

and a Beadweaving Bracelet.

And Marty made her own exuberant version of a Sparkle Cocktail Brooch!

Here it is (in progress) with its cousins from the book.

If you make anything from Bead Simple, please add photos to the flickr pool or email me, I’d love to see your projects!

In other book news, Taunton is having a 25% off end-of summer sale — including signed copies of Bead Simple, which are now $14.96 instead of $19.95. Snap up a copy of my book or one of their other craft titles — over 600 of them are on sale, including Button It Up!

And CRAFT: is running a fantastic sale on all their craft kits in the Maker Shed, too, with at least 15% off everything in stock. Vintagesque Necklace kits are marked down to $5 (usually $12)

and Solo Earrings kits are $2.50 (usually $6). So cool!

I’m very happy to be teaching a new jewelry-making class as part of the Summer of Making next month at the wonderful PNCA here in Portland!

The Continuing Education department has put together a fantastic line-up of classes, and they’re offering a very generous giveaway this week if you help spread the word about them…

from the blog:
We have a nice package of promotional items to give away. This includes a signed copy of Susan Beal’s Button It Up, Denyse Schmidt’s Quilt-It Kit, a yard of County Fair, Patchwork Promenade Print by Denyse Schmidt and a Summer of Making Poster. To win leave a comment on the blog, become a fan of Summer of Making on Facebook or mention us on your Facebook profile or blog. You will get one entry for each of these (maximum of 4). We will randomly select the winner June 21.

I am very honored to be one of the teachers alongside some of my favorite crafters. Denyse Schmidt is coming to teach a two-day workshop, which I am so excited to take! Jess Beebe is teaching By Hand: Needlework and Macrame, Sarah Schlosser-Moon is teaching Artful Blogging, Brenda Mallory is teaching Contemporary Fiber Art, and I am teaching Bead and Button Jewelry.

I’m so excited about this class. We’ll have four days to work on jewelry, beading and embellishment techniques of all types, a luxurious amount of time to make things! Bead + Button Jewelry meets Monday through Thursday, July 20-23 from 10-3 in a nice big classroom with natural light at PNCA — all the details are here.

from the website:
In this hands-on class, students will learn and practice a range of beading, jewelry-making and embellishment techniques, including wirework, stringing, weaving, knotting, gluing, hand-sewing, and other craft methods. Bring in your own favorite pieces to design around, complementing them with vintage and new beads, buttons, findings, chain, fabric, and other materials from Susan’s collection.

Aside from the nuts and bolts of practical making, we’ll focus on color, balance, arrangements, and intuitive design – creating a collection of jewelry and other crafts that bring your treasures to life. With four days to work together, we’ll create a collection of instant favorites for gifts or for yourself, while building a strong foundation for designing future projects with your new skills.

The projects we create will reflect each student’s personal sense of style and other favorite elements – instead of a cookie-cutter approach, each designer will enjoy the flexibility to focus on what he or she prefers.

If you want to know more about any of the classes, you can download a syllabus for each one on its page at the Summer of Making site. And if you have any questions about mine in particular, please ask away over here!

One last thing: if you are interested in taking Bead + Button Jewelry, I would be thrilled to have some crafty friends in the class. If anyone who registers mentions that they read my blog or either of my book sites (or have checked out my flickr, or know me through Portland stuff) I will put together a special package of vintage beads and buttons as a thank-you! You can leave a comment here or just let me know the first day of class, and I’ll put something fun together with some of your favorite colors and styles and bring it for you to craft with the second day and beyond.

p.s. I’m cross-posting this announcement on West Coast Crafty and Button It Up, so sorry for the exact repetition if you see it more than once, but since the class ties together techniques from both of my books, I’d like to spread the word in all directions!

Hey, it’s been a little while! I just posted a new jewelry project at CraftStylish — taking an old costume jewelry necklace apart and turning it into a necklace-and-earrings set with new chain and embellishments here and there.

So if you’d like to check that out, it’s over here!

Another project I did there recently that I really like is this re-sparkled flower-embellished handbag.

It’s quite a bit like the Blossom Book project color-wise (down to using the same favorite amber rhinestone on a black background for the flower centers!) but expands the idea into a more intricate design over a bigger palette.

I have some more news to share later this week: I’m teaching a jewelry-making class later this summer that I’m very excited about! More on all that soon…

I don’t know about you, but I am constantly battling to keep my zillions of tiny jewelry-making and beading bits and pieces from taking over my whole craft room. I never had a good system until the crazy snowstorm we got in December kept me homebound for a week, and I finally had a chance to reorganize everything and get it whipped into shape!

I have always used simple plastic boxes with compartments inside to store most of my beads and charms, sorted by color. So when I got the chance to overhaul everything, I pared down what I wasn’t using and passed it along, and then made beaded labels to show what color or type was inside each organizer at a glance…

and then I stacked them all on an open bookshelf so I could see them all at once.

The photo above has notes all over on flickr, if you’re interested in even more of my nerdy craft room organizing details…

So if you’re looking for an easy way to get your stash straight, and want to try making simple embellished labels like these, I wrote up a tutorial over at CraftStylish.

All you need is cardstock, a hot glue gun, double-stick tape, and a handful of beads or rhinestones (that you have tons of so you won’t miss four or five), and you’re good to go! As a craft-room clean-up bonus, I started using a simple little plastic paint palette (89¢ from the art supply store) to round up all my loose bits and pieces in one handy spot — that way I can put them all away at once instead of one by one by one.

I’d love to hear your favorite tips for keeping your beads and jewelry-making stuff organized, if you have any to share…

Just wanted to check back in after a break of much longer than I’d planned (as usual) to say hello! I’ve always wanted to make this more of a cool-beading-stuff blog that’s more than just occasional announcements about the book, but it’s been a super busy year. So, starting now I’m going to post over here much more often, with project extras, spotlighting other jewelry-related things I like, answers to your questions about the book, and whatever else sounds fun. So please comment and let me know if there’s anything you’re wondering about and I’ll try to cover that, too.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some free beading and jewelry-making tutorials I’ve posted weekly over the last few months at CraftStylish. Here’s the one that went up today, a set of felt fortune cookies + rings just in time for Valentine’s Day. I really like this project — it is super fun to do and the teeny-tiny fortune-cookie ring is very cute on.

I’ve been contributing over there for the last year (mostly about jewelry-making and beading, with some general crafts and other stuff in the mix) along with some of my favorite crafters like Diane, Kayte, Linda, Lee, and Jennifer. CraftStylish has tons of great how-tos organized by type — crochet, embroidery, sewing, paper crafts, and a bunch of others — and you can search for what you’re especially interested in to narrow it down. It’s such a nice mix of stuff and I really recommend stopping by to check it all out!

Here are a good handful of my favorite jewelry and embellishment projects I’ve done for the site, if you liked Bead Simple and you’re looking for more projects to try. I would love to hear what you think of them! If you click the photo collage, it will lead you to direct links to each project tutorial, or you can see my whole archive of projects and other crafty posts here.

I’ll be back this week with another book-related post and I am looking forward to hanging out here more often! By the way, if you are interested in more crafty stuff, I write a lot more frequently at my West Coast Crafty blog, just for fun, and you might like that too.

If you’re looking for some easy, crafty holiday gifts to make this year, some of my favorites are beaded drop Solo Earrings and the star of my book cover, the Vintagesque Necklace! Both projects are very beginner-friendly and a lot of fun to make.

You can find the video tutorials for each of them right here on my site, and I’m excited to announce that I have just added some new kits for making them to my Etsy shop, too… they come with vintage beads, wire, findings and complete instructions all in one little package. The necklace kit ($10) comes with smoky blue vintage Lucite beads, and you can choose from wine red, lavender or hot pink for the earrings ($5).

To celebrate the kits arriving in the world, I’m offering free shipping on any kit for the next week, and a free Solo Earrings kit if you order a signed copy of Bead Simple, too — both offers are good through December 2. You can also find my earrings and necklace kits in blue, brown and orange over in the Maker Shed, thanks to CRAFT: magazine. And I’ll be adding new colors of both kits to my Etsy shop for the holidays next month — I’m thinking black, silver, gold and sparkly!

A huge thank-you to Ivy Manning and Sunset magazine for featuring me and Bead Simple this month, and spotlighting some of my favorite craft classes, shops, and resources, too! I got to talk about some of my favorite local-and-everywhere resources for holiday crafting ideas, including DIY Lounge, Cool Cottons, Crafty Wonderland, and CRAFT: magazine. I’m on page 30 of the Northwest edition, and the interview is also right here on their site. Hooray!

And an extra thank-you to their fantastic photographer, John Clark, who was kind enough to include some of my favorite things in the picture with me and my Solo Earrings: our prized Justin “Scrappers” Morrison painting, my modern heirloom quilt, and my Cathy of California flower brooch and pincushion.

Hey, just wanted to mention that I’m going to be on the AM Northwest show again tomorrow (Friday, 8/15), making earrings from Bead Simple — a pair of sparkly Solo Earrings and a dangly pair of Low and Swingy Earrings, too. They made a special request for me to bring Pearl along so she might co-star again… we’ll see!

The show is on from 9 to 10 am on KATU, and my segment will probably be at either 9:20 or 9:35. I should get a DVD of it next week (along with the earlier one I did, making a Pink Floral Ribbon Choker) and I will definitely post them online if you would like to make yourself some jewelry, too!

I’ll post more about it closer to the time, but I’ll be teaching a free Solo Earrings workshop at the September Crafty Wonderland here in Portland, which I’m really excited about! Please mark your calendar for September 14 and stop by the DIY table to pick out your favorite vintage beads to make a pair of earrings, and shop for crafty delights from more than 40 vendors.

Hi, just wanted to check back in after a few weeks… I had my adorable baby girl, Pearl, on May 6 and have had such a great time getting to hang out with her! So I’ve been a bit distracted lately, but wanted to mention a few cool things going on in the jewelry-making realm:

I was recently interviewed about beading for Seventeen magazine and the article (with lots of tips and resources) is up on their site if you want to check it out. I started making jewelry in high school so I was really pleased to pass on some ideas for getting started beading and re-styling your own stuff. Thank you to Neha Gandhi for the great piece!

I’m doing a short segment on AM Northwest this morning (on KATU 2) showing how to make jewelry from Bead Simple! If you are in Portland or anywhere nearby and want to tune in, I’ll be on at 9:40 am making the Pink Floral Ribbon Choker and showing some other projects and techniques from the book, too. Hope to have a video segment to share soon — I’ll keep you posted!

photo by Burcu Avsar and Zach DeSart

And I’m also looking forward to the CRAFT: magazine release party Diane and I are hosting this upcoming Sunday, June 1 for my official re-entry into the crafty world! If you are in Portland, I hope you can make it by to say hello and make a jewelry project with us. It is at the marvelous Twisted again (like last time), and we’ll have some fun door prizes, a fully stocked project table, discounted magazine subscriptions, snacks, and free crafty giveaways, too.

The project we’re teaching this time will be my Cute as a Button Bracelet from Bead Simple, which CRAFT: was kind enough to excerpt in this issue! We’ll have all the supplies for you to make your own bracelet to wear home, and Diane and I will be handing out prizes every hour on the hour, too. More on those later — but we’ll be giving away books from Chronicle and Taunton (including Bead Simple) and some of my new jewelry kits plus some fun surprises.

photo by Burcu Avsar and Zach DeSart

Hope to see you!

Just wanted to mention that my first two technique videos from Bead Simple are up if you’d like to check them out! I filmed one for making Solo Earrings (or any other simple bead embellishment like a pendant or bracelet dangle) and one for wire looping the Vintagesque Necklace (on the book cover). Thanks for posting about them, Diane and Jenny!

solo earrings:

vintagesque necklace:

They’re both posted on the on the technique videos + patterns page, and I’ll have another bunch of videos joining them there in the next little while after a short personal break — kind of a mini-maternity leave! See you in a few days…