A Salute to Friends

Friends are awesome. They come in so many different forms and provide many different types of friendship. I have friends that I met 22 years ago, friends that I met one year ago, friends that only come in book form, friends that are covered in fur, and even friends that I happen to be related to (there are probably more types, I just can't think of them right now).
I honestly do not know how I could handle much of what life has thrown at me without friends. I am eternally grateful to my friends who are always there, whether I need them or not, but boy do the times I needed them stand out. I don't know how many times I have spent hours with friends crying over break-ups, and they sit, listen, offer 'He's scum' comments when appropriate, and buy me stuffed animals to help. My two best friends are excellent at this. One of my best friends even stood next to me in the examining room at the vet's while I had my beloved cat of 12 years put down.
These same friends are the first to be down for random lunches and dinners, are fine with sitting around and hanging out, and are great shopping buddies.
I try my best to be a good friend too. I take the crying phone calls, drop what I'm doing when someone needs to get away for a bit, and am always down for celebrating the good things in my friend's lives.
I was honored to officiate the wedding of my longest running best friend two weekends ago. I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon (sans guardrail) and helped my best friend join her life to the man she loves.

So, along with stopping to smell the flowers, stop and appreciate your friends.

Earrings!

I love earrings (and basically all other jewelry for that matter), but I especially love making earrings. I guess it is because something so small can make such a statement. Anyway, I have been experimenting with various beads and buttons to make small dangle earrings. 

For this first pair I used vintage buttons.

This pair teams a vintage bead with a modern glass bead. I named them "Polka Dot?" after an Animaniacs episode.

This pair just looks like a party to me; purple glass beads combined with green glass beads. And they're good dancers.

Here I paired vintage buttons and vintage beads to create "Spacy Earrings": I think the beads look galaxy-ish and the buttons look like moons.  

Fused Glass Necklace

I found this fused glass bead and fell in love. The dichroic elements make this subtly beautiful and I think the black beads provide a good contrast to the pureness of the glass.

Shawna's Wedding Jewelry

My very good friend Shawna got married this past July and I was lucky enough to make the jewelry for her bridal party (and she had a big bridal party!). I have done wedding jewelry in the past and it is always fun to see where each bride decides to go with the jewelry. Shawna decided on pearls and crystals in various shades of blue and white. The over-all color for the wedding was Wedgwood-Blue, so we tried to stay close to that. After a fun day shopping at the Gem-Faire I had all I needed to tackle Shawna's jewelry. In the end there were six pendants, four necklaces, and somewhere around 7 bracelets.