Crash and Dewey

My kitties...aren't they cute? ;)

Peacock Invasion!

We had visitors the other day! I knew there were peacocks roaming the other side of our little upcountry suburb..and I've been hearing them more lately. I walked past the dinning room and there they were out my sliding window! So I ran and got my camera and went around the back side. You'll have to excuse the yard..it really needs to be mowed. But the birdies are so pretty!

I saw a woman at this last craft fair I was in that was wearing a necklce with a peacock feather pendant..and she had taken little sections of it and beaded and glued little peacock colored sead beads on it. It was so striking!






Speaking of peacocks...here's one of my latest creations...a black silk cord necklace with black peacock petal keshi and semi round pearls and peacock coin pearls with a black lip shell mother of pearl hibiscuss carved pendant. I still haven't put it up on the website yet...still working on that..price for this one is $69

Pile O' Gems

So this was the pile of beads I had to wade through. Not that it wasn't fun..just a lot of work! While I was working on my big corporate gifts order..and buying beads for it...(I made about 12 different bracelet styles so had to search out whatever I could find to make these big batches of each style of bracelet..not the easiest task as bead strands often vary and aren't available in large quantities) I would toss in bead strands for myself on the order that I would need for next years line of jewelry. Usually I keep up with this as the beads come in..but I was too busy..so the pile grew and grew and grew lol! I really liked this pile though..they aren't nearly as fun all put away in thier plastic compartments.

Learning my new camera

so I got a new camera...a Canon Rebel XT....it also says EOS on the camera..not sure what that all means. My sister the photography buff at Aihara Visuals said it was a good deal...a special on amazon because they were coming out with the new one. This is an 8 megapixel..my old one being a 5 and just a point and shoot. This one is also an SLR..which I'm told is what professionals use. I'm not a professional photographer..so I've been getting a bit frustrated with it..but I'm learning little by little. I must say though, I do enjoy the little sound it makes when taking the pic lol!

I have some lenses of my sisters that she doesn't use anymore, one is a macro one and one is telephoto with macro on it. I thought I put the macro on and couldn't for the life of me figure out why everything was blurry through the lense when I was trying to take up close pics. I stood up from these flowers I was testing it on, called my sis to get some help and then tried to take a test snap pic of them from across the yard and walla...they came out so clear. Duhhh I had on the telephoto lense and not the macro on.



pretty cool! so I took another from far away of some roses in my yard:





and then later on I put on the actual macro lense and went outside to take jewerly pics..but this bumble bee came along so I took pics of it..I was afraid to get too close..I guess the telephoto lense would have been better for this one.

I am here...I promise!

Man..time sure did get away from me! Last post was December 2006...and I see that I already listed all the family stuff that kept me from blogging. Thankfully I had a huge corporate gifts order to keep me busy from thinking about my mom and dad moving away. I had to make 225 bracelets for Volvo Trucks. That was one crazy deal to put together..but I seriously enjoyed every second of it. I've done a corporate order before...but not quite as large.

Heres some work in progress:







I'm telling you...it was perfect timing. I've always said beading was theraputic...and this proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt for me. This large order kept me busy for about 3 months with not much time to create other then a few special orders I accepted. With it being right in the middle of busy shopping season, Jonara Blu Maui got stripped Clean! We went from 6 pages of inventory to about 2. So now I'm busy trying to stock the shop again and having fun creating new things with all the news beads I've purchased.

Okay..so what else has happened? My mom came out in February...that was fun! Heres some pics:


We went on a sunset cruise whale watching trip...it was my mom, my sister, my aunt and myself. Here you see me, my aunt Jackie, and my mom Judy. Mom has chocolate on her lip cuz we were eating chocolate cookies. It's okay to have chocolate on your lips, teeth, face...it's chocolate! Enjoy!








It was a fun trip...but not the greatest close encounters with the whales like we've had in the past. Still who doesn't LOVE a boat ride...it's so invigorating :)



This is as we are leaving Maalea Harbor..facing Haleakala ...thats the volcano I live up on. Oh and these are all snapshots my sister took...her camera is much better then mine..so I just let her do all the picture taking ;-)



and now for some eye candy... Black and White is in for spring..I've been having a lot of fun working with it.







Okay...thats enough catch up for today..I'm sleepy...night!