A Beautiful White Christmas.

Well the gifts have been given and all went well. Some need to be resized, which I have to work on today. The others fit great and everyone seemed to love the designs I picked out for them. After making all the bracelets, I finally started to make my own. All the other ones were done with size 11 sead beads. The one I am making for myself is size 8. The larger the number, the smaller the bead. I am also contemplating doing only another bracelet with the top half done in seed beads and the bottom done in chain and maybe some beads linked in between.

My cousin Becky is down visiting and she has a masters in art. She makes the most wonderful jewelry, things I would never imagine doing. I love her style and it is such an inspiration to me. We have been taking walks in the woods here in Southern Oregon and there are so many beautiful colors to be seen. It definitely helps stir the creative juices and helps me think of colors that would look great together. I recently misplaced my camera and my cousin has been nice enough to let me borrow hers. We took some great pictures of the mushrooms around the 7 acres as well the natural alter of Mardrona trees that swell up between the pines. My cousin gave me the most wonderful gift. She lives in the San Juan Islands and Mardrona trees grow in number there. She found some of their berries and stung them on a cotton thread. She then let them dry naturally, and now they are beautiful red and gold beads. They even have a gold undertone to them, which makes them sparkle. I love the idea of making beads and using natural materials. I picked up a leaf from the Mardrona tree while we were out and I am going to use it as a pendant. I will leave pictures later.

Love from The Family!

Christmas Gifts, Square Stitch, and Pain OH MY!!!

Ok, so even though I have yet to give them as gifts, here is a picture of the presents I have completed. Some of the designes are my own and some have been picked up off of free pattern pages or seen on the internet and changed. If you want any pattens please feel free to email me and I can send them to you or let you know where I got them. None of the patterns were paid for, so I am not breaking any copyright laws. I hope you enjoy them. Send me pics of your own and I can post them. Happy Holidays Everyone.

Love,

Jess

P.S. The Puzzle has orange and red, but for some reason they show up as the same color in the picture.

3 Drop Peyote Stitch

Here is a copy of 3 drop peyote stitch graph paper. I made it myself after having trouble finding it free on the Internet. Just click on the photo above to see it larger then copy and paste or save it to your computer. (For future info. for all you fellow beaders out there, beadandbutton.com has great resources and has free graph paper and more.)

I am on gift 3 of some god awful amount of home made gifts I am making for the holidays. I will post them later, on the off chance that one of the receivers happens across my blog. How is everyone doing out there? Anyone have some great home made gift ideas? Anyone doing something different and creative for the holidays?

Well I hope you are doing great out there in the real world. Feel free to email me or leave a comment. Your fellow bead junkie. Jess

Happy Holidays!!

It has been a while!

Well like any new blogger...or maybe not...I have forgotten about my blog and let it fall by the wayside. The holidays are fast approaching and it is time to make jewelry for friends and family. I just started square stitching...with seed beads. It is a lot of fun. It is much easier than peyote stitch. The first one I started on was a puzzle pattern for my mom. I can not wait to give it to her. I also am working on one for my friend Liza. I have made so much jewelry, but have never made something for her. I have been enjoying it a lot, and it keeps me busy when Bill is incessantly playing WOW. I feel sorry for all you fellow non-WOWers. I am not into the game at all and I have seemed to loose Billy to it. Well back to jewelry. I have yet to get comments and have not sold anything on line. I am running low on supplies, due to creating so many pieces but not selling any. This economy is not helping much. I need to find a new job to help me with my bead buying habits. For now I just sit and bead...and wait for the moment when someone comes across my work and decides it is worth having. Well I will try to blog more often, but we will see with the new upcoming holidays. If not then I hope all 3 readers :) enjoy your holidays. :) !!

Welcome to the Blog

Hello and welcome to my first blogging experience. I decided to start this blog in hopes of getting people to come and look at my jewelry on etsy. I have never blogged before and I am looking forward to seeing how it works out.

So lets get down to the point. I am 27 years old and live in Salem, OR with my husband Billy Wasson Jr. My name is Jessica Wasson. I am a current student and am going for a BA in Elementary Education. I currently work (on call) at a local bead store. I had some customers, co-workers and friends tell me that I should look at selling some of my stuff. From there a co-worker told me how successful she was on etsy.com. I tried it out, but I have yet to sell anything. I wear my jewelry to get it some attention, I gave out business cards and I emailed everyone I knew, yet no luck.

Of course I want to sell my stuff, but not for money, more for recognition. I work hard on my pieces and I love to see people wearing them. I give jewelry to friends and family for holidays and love it when they open it and smile.

One thing I do do is make my jewelry cheap in price. I like having things that people in any income can afford. This means silver plated metal instead of sterling silver, but it means more people can have it. Not to mention I am a starving student and I love to wear jewelry, but I can't afford to buy it at department stores,

The other reason I have this blog is because I need more feedback on my work. I don't mind if it is negative. I just want to know what the general public thinks. What can I improve on? What would you like to see? I appreciate everyone who stops by here to read the words of one woman in a sea of people. I hope you all have a wonderful day. Thanks for dropping by.

Check my out on etsy.com under seller id: JessicaWasson. Feel free to email me as well at Jessica_red_sun@yahoo.com.

Jessica Wasson