I am so excited that Bead Simple is out in the world today! Yay!

I’m so happy that after two years of designing, writing, obsessive Excel-sheet-updating, proofreading, and waiting, it is finally out. I hope that if you buy it, borrow it, or see it at your library or local bookstore you’ll enjoy it thoroughly, and I’d absolutely love to hear what you think.

I’m really looking forward to doing some fun events, starting next month when I dip into my crazy collection of vintage beads to start hosting a few free jewelry-making parties. Here’s a sneak peek at one of my favorite beginner-friendly projects — sparkly Solo Earrings, as modeled by one of Moxie’s delightful monsters!

I’m working on the details for my Powells event (Monday, April 7 at 7:30, more info to come very soon!), and really looking forward to doing book events at Twisted, Crafty Wonderland, and Church of Craft later in the year. I’m also planning some fun out-of-town stuff in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Raleigh, and I hope a few other places too!

Last, a couple of quick things… if you make anything inspired by the book, I would really love to see it — please add it to the Bead Simple flickr group I set up!

And if you are looking for a copy, you can find it at your local bookstore, any Michaels location, or on Amazon. You can find signed copies at the Taunton website or directly from me via my Etsy shop, too. And hopefully it will be on the shelf at your library branch!

Huge thanks for the support from my family, all my lovely friends and guest designers… and to everyone who reads my blog, thank you for putting up with my shameless self-promotion in between spotlighting other people’s cool crafty stuff.

ps: a special thank-you to my in-laws, Paul and Nancy, for surprising me with these beautiful flowers to celebrate the book release, and to Andrew for bringing me breakfast in bed today!

Desperation crafting struck this morning: at eight months along, it’s finally time to admit that my wedding ring has gotten too tight to wear comfortably. But I just couldn’t stand the thought of not wearing it, since I love it so much — it was my grandmother’s from her wedding in 1943, and it’s very precious to me. So I made it into this little temporary pendant with a single pearl dangling in the center. I can’t wait to slip it right back onto my ring finger, but until then I’ll be wearing it around my neck!

If you have a similar band ring or open circle that you want to remake into a simple pendant, here’s how I made this one:

You’ll need:

Pliers (flat-nose, round-nose and wire clippers)

Ring
One center bead (I used a 6mm pearl)
4 inches of 24 gauge gold-filled wire
1 gold headpin
Chain

1. Slip the bead onto the headpin and form a wrapped loop above it to create a simple dangle. Clip the end of the wire neatly.

2. Form a medium-sized loop that will be the first (lower) half of a double-wrapped loop using the piece of wire (ie: one lower loop catching the ring/pendant, one upper loop catching the chain, as in the photo), but do not start wrapping the coil yet. Slip first the ring and then the bead dangle onto the open loop so that the bead hangs neatly inside the ring or circle. Once those are in place, complete the wrap, winding the wire into a neat coil above the loop.

3. Now form a second wrapped loop above the first one, slipping your chain into the open loop before completing the wrap. Finish your pendant by coiling the wire around two or three times, until it meets the first wrap in the middle of the coil, and clip both ends at the back. Use your flat-nose pliers to flatten any edges that poke out.

Note: you can use wirework instructions and illustrations from any beading book to learn how to make the pearl dangle and double-wrapped loop. They’re on page 21 and 23 of Bead Simple, and I’ll be posting short technique videos for both (plus a dozen others) later this week, too — I’ll come back and post links then! Until then, I hope the text instructions make sense… looking at the photo can help you see the process, too.

I’m so excited — I just got my advance copy of Bead Simple this morning! I had a B+W galley to look over before, which was great, but the glossy, colorful, real version is just so amazing to see. I’m so happy to hold it in my hands and flip through the pages… I love how it turned out.

Here are a few sneak peeks at it…

The cover has been final, and out, for awhile, but it is pretty cool to see the real thing!

This is one of my favorite things in the book: a lush arrangement of vintage and new beads compiled by Burcu Avsar and Zach DeSart, to accompany all the front-section info about jewelry-making materials. I just want to look at that picture all day.

And here is a project spread — I liked how the earrings photos and the text are such a lovely mix. These are two of my favorite earrings projects, I am always drawn to circles and symmetry and negative space.

I’ll be updating the Bead Simple site soon — I have my first two events planned, which is exciting! I can’t wait. The book is out on March 28 but if you are interested, you can pre-order it now on Amazon. And I have asked Multnomah County Library and the Los Angeles Public Library to order it, so it will be check-out-able. If you are also a library person, and have a minute to make the request, I would love it if you asked your local branch to carry it too.

Thanks for letting me go on a little self-promotional tangent, and I’ll be back to other people’s crafts and events tomorrow. I’m heading to San Francisco in a couple of hours so I’ll catch up with my regular posting from there!

Happy 2008! I hope your New Year has been fabulous so far. Mine has involved a nice long walk, a holiday milkshake from Burgerville (Andrew and I used a 2-for-1 coupon in the Chinook Book, if you want to jump on that too) and a big pot of black-eyed peas for luck. Maybe you can take the girl out of the South, but you sure can’t take the South out of the girl — I wouldn’t think of missing them on New Year’s Day and I’m making collard greens to go along with them too.

I’ve heard that each black-eyed pea you eat on New Year’s Day is 1) an extra-lucky day in the upcoming year, 2) an extra dollar in the New Year, or 3) just general good luck all the way around. So regardless of your preferred superstition, I figure it’s well worth eating a bunch today. If you want to make some too, here is the way I like to cook them:

New Year’s Day Black-Eyed Peas

Soak a pound of dried black-eyed peas — I put them in a saucepan, cover them with water, and let them boil for five minutes, then take them off the heat, cover them tightly and let them sit for 2 hours. Drain and rinse them well and then cover them with about an inch of water again. Add one chopped onion and bring everything to a boil for 15 minutes, then simmer them for about an hour to an hour and a half, tasting them for done-ness along the way.

Now, when they’re just about done, is when you add the extras: salt, pepper, and olive oil to taste, and two cans of stewed tomatoes. Let them cook for another ten minutes and serve with greens and rice. Then get ready for your extra luck to kick in this year!

Speaking of the new year, inspired by Linda’s beautiful photo collage, I just put together a mosaic of my favorite things I made in 2007:

Last year I crafted my first two quilts (that was exciting — I was nervous about the first one especially), two sets of curtains, a jewelry box, lots of fund-raiser earrings, a monkey costume, some Gocco projects, a handful of refashions, and some baby presents. This mix doesn’t have much of my jewelry, or any of my Bead Simple projects, but you can see plenty of those in March when the book is out in the world. I can hardly believe that it’s so soon… yay!

After a grueling few days, we are happily moved into our new house, and I’m still trying to catch my breath a little bit… but we have unpacked three rooms (and counting!). Resurrecting my craft room is first thing on my list tomorrow, since it currently looks like this:

I’ll post after photos soon, I can’t wait to have it all set up. Andrew and I decided to make that beautiful wood room upstairs a guest bedroom instead of the craft room — I think things will work better that way. This room is longer, so two Expedit bookshelves fit into it side by side… luxury! Especially nice when you have as much fabric and jewelry supplies as I do.

Happy new year, and I’m wishing you a lucky, crafty 2008!

I’m so busy this week that I thought I’d do a re-post from last year’s (Dec 06) getcrafty column with the list of fun handmade holiday projects I put together then. Disclaimer: I haven’t had time to check to see if every single link is still active, so forgive me if you hit a dead end somewhere! I’ll keep adding fresh ideas to the top, starting with a few I really loved this week:

Craftapalooza compiled this fantastic tutorial list for whip-up today — dozens of ideas for festive holiday crafts!

And I just adore these deer ornaments Linda designed for the big swap. Her how-to is here on the ReproDepot blog.

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I keep seeing all these great handmade tutorials all over the place for making everything from cards and holiday decorations to presents for everyone on your list… so I’ve put together links to a bunch of free online how-to projects for you to check out, if you haven’t already spotted them. Happy DIYing!

*now updated with new projects at the top of the sections, with more to come!

Decorations and Embellishments

elf stitchette by Hillary Lang, mirror garland by Kathy Cano Murillo, dreidel by Star Wars Kids Crafts, and soft tree by Stephanie Barnes

The CRAFT blog has cool new tutorials for making paper stars, a video for stylishly wrapping presents with fabric, DIY gift tags, and fun-fur mini tabletop trees. And One Hour Craft is offering a gold star for the top of your Christmas tree how-to.

Crafty Chica created a new collage wrapping paper project that’s super-customizable! Kiddley has a ton of cool kid-friendly decorations to make: a gumdrop wreath, paper garlands, Christmas pinatas, a pom-pom garland, and a paper doll/ornament.

Natalie has posted some amazing new projects over at the CRAFT blog — a Santa peanut ornament, stenciled holiday cards, crocheted snowflakes, photo ornaments, Star Wars holiday collage cards, and a MAKE magazine podcast on making woodcut cards… wow!

Alicia of Posie Gets Cozy wrote up a beautifully photographed tutorial on making your own Santa Lucia dolls this week. And Cake + Pie has a very cute stockings how-to, including the finishing touches.

Here’s a big list of all the CRAFT magazine how-to project podcasts to date, including a pom-pom tree and garland, and a MAKE podcast on making woodcut cards.

I also added a how-to for a quick and easy flower ornament this week. And One Hour Craft has a new yo-yo ornament project up as well!

Sarah sent in a great tutorial on making a button tree by embellishing a styrofoam cone with pearls, beads, buttons, and broken jewelry from your stash. Cute photos are here.

Hillary Lang has posted a Wee Wonderfuls Stitchette elf pattern on her site… so adorable. She’s also shown how to make adorable ornaments and decorations using cotton balls, of all things!

Kathy Cano Murillo, AKA Crafty Chica, has a gorgeous round-up of past holiday projects on her blog — everything from mini mirror garlands to glittered cards, ornaments, and boxes to make your holidays sparkle!

Anh-Minh posted an amazing Plexiglass photo display that could look incredible with your favorite photos or vintage holiday cards.

CRAFT magazine’s site has a projects page with free downloadable how-tos and patterns — the bird stencils would look great on cards or windows! You can even get their new patterns automatically delivered podcast-style via iTunes. Plus, the holiday projects section of their amazing blog has all kinds of ornament how-tos — I love the Star Wars dreidel and ornament especially!

Stephanie Barnes of Little Birds Handmade has published her pattern for making simple, beautiful soft trees — download it and make a forest in all different sizes and fabrics.

And Sunset magazine has put together a lovely mix of articles on making wreaths and garlands, easy ornaments (I love the photo ones in particular), mod paper ornaments, centerpieces and table toppers, creating your own gift wrap, and making a modern menorah and advent calendar. Sunset is one of my favorite magazines — it’s very crafty!

Gifts

boyfriend hat by Bleu Arts, bath salts by Susan Beal, kanzashi by Maria Binns, and silhouette necklace by Abigail Percy

A new round of amazing projects are up on the CRAFT blog: tutorials for making stuffed animals, solid perfume, v-stitch scarves, and coin cufflinks.

One Hour Craft has a tutorial for making a quick, adjustable bracelet, and Vickie Howell added a new holiday-themed knitting needles roll to her site this week. And Christina Loff wrote up a great snow globes how-to using miniature figurines and baby-food jars.

The CRAFT blog recently posted a tutorial for twisted-wire tree branch earrings.

Cutting Edge is offering a pattern for a fleece pocket scarf, appliqued with snowflakes. And Laural of thimble.ca has an inspiring project index, offering tutorials on some of her cutest projects, from a zippered pouch to a super-simple belt. Check out her recipes, too!

Sunset also has recipes up for cocoa in a jar — classic, Mexican, peppermint and mocha. Don’t miss their Gifts from the Kitchen section — spices, liqueurs, and delicious things to bake. And then there’s a fun soaps projects to make, too.

Leah Kramer of craftster posted a round-up of fabulous gift ideas from the site, all using basic techniques — decoupage, soaps, marble magnets, and etched glass.

Check out the Craftster winter holidays forum for lots of ideas, too. And of course there are inspiring how-tos all over the boards — check out this row-counter bracelet tutorial by skutterat — the perfect gift for all the hard-core knitters in your life!

Speaking of knitting, why not try making Aunt Purl’s Easy Knitted Felted Bracelet Bag? It takes less than two hours, start to finish! Ansley of Bleu Arts has posted a Rolled Brim Boyfriend Hat pattern too, as well as a great lip balm tutorial. If you want to whip up some bath salts or salt scrub to go with it for a whole bath and beauty package, I just posted an easy tutorial for making two kinds — coffee-cinnamon and green tea-ginger.

One of my favorite sites for inspiration, CraftyPod, has amazing podcasts and projects, including plenty sorted by type: check out all the Holiday Crafts, Bead Crafts, and Paper Crafts Sister Diane has put together.

The wonderfully redesigned not martha site has a great things to make section, including projects like wineglass charms and party crackers. And for the sewers on your list, how about a darling little wrist pincushion from My Little Mochi?

Whip-up has a fabulous collection of tutorials up, including a customizable silhouette necklace by Abigail Percy and beaded bracelet by Linques Design.

Maria Binns’s One Hour Craft has an incredible array of quick projects to make — look through the categories (like the All Time Favourites and Great as Presents sections) for projects like Kanzashi cloth flowers and customized stamps.

One Hour Craft has a great list of kids’ craft projects too, and don’t miss the fun Arts and Crafts projects over at Kiddley, collected by Claire of Loobylu.

Finishing Touches

I just added a few gift wrapping 101 ideas for recycled present packaging.

Adorn has some pretty handmade projects up from their print issues, too — crochet some little flowers or make some paper-covered boxes… perfect to add to your handmade gifts. Also, be sure to take a spin around Nice Package on flickr for tons of inventive ideas on wrapping and packaging all your presents this year.

I would love to update with more ideas so please e-mail me (susanstars at yahoo dot com) or comment and I’ll add your suggestions… happy handmade holidays!

I made a pretty gigantic batch of vegetable soup last week and just finished the last bowl today. It was such a nice color — a crazy vivid beet pink! Two quarts went out to friends, and Andrew and I polished off the rest handily.

If you want to make yourself some too, this is my very easy, very flexible recipe:

Pink Soup

You’ll need:

1 cup barley + water for cooking it
3 containers of vegetable or chicken broth
1 onion, chopped
1 bunch of carrots, chopped
1 bunch of beets, chopped
1 can of corn
1 can of Italian tomatoes, coarsely chopped
olive oil

Bring water to a boil and cook the barley for 40 minutes until it is nearly done. Drain the excess water away and add 1/2 container of broth and the onion, carrots, and beets. Bring it back to a boil and simmer it for 10 or 15 minutes. Add the tomatoes and corn and stir in the rest of the broth, bringing it back to a lively simmer. Let it cook until the vegetables are a nice consistency, and serve with Parmesan.

Makes about 10 servings and freezes well. Like most soups, it’s even better the next day…

ps: don’t forget, if you want to enter to win the Adorn craft book contest, tomorrow (Tuesday 12/11, by 5 pm EST) is the deadline!

ps 2: a warm welcome to beautiful baby Wren, who came along this morning! I have never been so happy to edit a post!

Okay, unlike most (many?) 33-year-olds who celebrate Christmas, I’ve never put up a tree before. Andrew and I have always gone to visit our families on the East Coast for the whole holiday stretch, so we never bothered. But this year we are staying in Oregon so we went to Michaels this morning and got a 4-foot silver tree* (inspired by Mariko’s gorgeous pink one) and decorated it this afternoon, while it was snowing even! It felt like a movie, I can’t believe it actually snowed.

Then I went to Church of Craft this afternoon and made four pretty paper strip ornaments (thanks, Diane!) and added them to the mix. I just love seeing all the ornaments together. Most of them are handmade or vintage, but I got a pack of $1.99 mini silver rounds at Fred Meyer to fill in the gaps here and there, too.

And I just love that when I came home I could see it sparkling in the window!

*If you are also looking for a sparkly tree, Michaels has four-foot pre-lit pink, silver, and green-gold ones on sale for $19.99 this week. We got the last silver one that was out at the Clackamas/82nd Michaels but they had tons of the pink and green-gold left, and I bet the other Michaels have all three.

I went to a fabulous cookie exchange party at Mariko’s last night and brought two batches of spelt chocolate chip cookies, one with peanut butter and one with almond butter. It was so nice to hang out with the ladies, the babies, and the dog!

I hadn’t been feeling that holiday-ish yet and now I have this gorgeous selection of cookies to enjoy, since we all brought home a mix of them. Here’s just one half of the table of cookies:

Amy, Melissa F., Melissa L. put their recipes up this week, if you’re looking for some new delicacies to try, and I am just writing mine up now…

Here is my plate (with a bowl of vanilla ice cream alongside, of course!).

and here is my recipe:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 - 3/4 cup peanut butter or almond butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups white spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°. Cream the butter, peanut/almond butter and sugars. Add the egg and mix well. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and then mix in the chocolate chips.

Drop cookie dough by spoonfuls onto lightly greased baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 375°. (Don’t overbake even if they don’t look ready after 12 minutes!)

Mariko’s Christmas tree was so pretty, I can’t wait to get ours and decorate it too. She gave me the hot tip to go to Michaels and use the 40% off coupon, so I’ll definitely be heading out there this week — I’d already scoured Fred Meyer and a bunch of vintage stores in search of a festive pink or silver tabletop tree with no luck.

Speaking of holiday cheer, I posted about some of my favorite ornaments to make over at the Adorn blog today, if you’re interested — all free online tutorials, which is nice for instant crafting. I love ornaments!

Okay, I’ve eaten three cookies while writing this so I think I better hit post before things get any crazier around here.

I just got back from LA yesterday and I’m so glad to be home! I had a great but super exhausting weekend and it is nice to catch my breath for a minute and be done with flying and packing suitcases for a while… more on Felt Club and the ReForm School party tomorrow.

I can finally post pictures of what I sent and received in Linda’s patchwork swap! Yes, the one that happened last month. Lucky for me, I was assigned to send to my friend Wendy, so when October vanished in a whirlwind of monkey costume-making and article deadlines, I threw myself on her mercy and asked if I could hand-deliver her package to her at Felt Club a few weeks late. It was really fun to give her everything in person!

But first, here is what Jenny sent to me — it’s so fantastic. A stack of all kinds of fabric, including fake fur galore, and this amazing creature she sewed up just for me!

Thank you so much, Jenny!

Here’s what I put together for Wendy: a stack of prints, mostly cotton, with some bigger pieces in the mix (like the strawberries and sunglasses patterns).

For the patchwork piece to send along, I peeked at her blog and saw that she just made a bunch of pillows for her new couch so it seemed like one more could be a fun surprise, and I know she likes pink:

I loosely based it on Lisa Congdon’s lovely how-to in a recent issue of ReadyMade — I cut eight fabrics into 2.5-inch strips and then randomly paired them at different lengths (or added three in a few cases) to create each row, then stitched the rows together to form a 12-inch pillow top. I quilted it horizontally, stitching an inch apart, and then added a pink corduroy back of the same size. I like all the pink!