I still have managed to make quite a few new pieces for my crystal and gemstone collection, but not as many as I would have liked by this time. No matter though, health is the most important thing and it’ll always come first.

Anyway, here are some pieces that I have not previously posted. They are not yet listed in my store. I am going to wait until the collection is complete and list them at that time so that I can list a full, named, collection. In the mean time, if you see something you like and wish to purchase it please contact me

This first piece is made of sterling silver and Swarovski crystal. This is special for many reasons, but for me personally because one of my best friends suffers from ovarian cancer. Teal is the awareness color for ovarian cancer and as you can see this graphic cut dangles from a sterling silver awareness ribbon bail. Although all crystal shapes are not the same, this design can be duplicated with ANY crystal color, and if there isn’t one available for your particular awareness, cubic zirconia is always available. I wear this necklace just about every day.

This next piece is one of my personal favorites. This is a “small spike” bracelet and it is available in over 20 colors. The color shown is one of the more expensive special coatings from the Swarovski crystal line. This particular bracelet was made with matching earrings.

The last piece that I’ll leave you with is a pair of crystal earrings. I love these earrings. I am not a “pink” person, but this salmon color just grabs me, and I think it’s a color that looks great on everyone regardless of skin tone. These are also made with Swarovski crystal and sterling silver. Earring post can be customized to just about anything you wish, and this particular style of crystal is available in over 20 colors.

I hope that you have enjoyed seeing some new items and as always please feel free to leave your comments. I look forward to showing you more new items in my next blog! Thanks for reading.

My goal is to list at least 3 new pieces weekly. I’ll start with these two and hopefully list more later today when I get some more free time. If you are interested in these designs prior to their listing in the store, please contact me personally and I’ll make your perfect pair of earrings!

OK. Enough about that. Almost a year ago I started a “Featured Artist” program where I featured 5-7 pieces of any guest artist who wanted to participate. I even created a special section in my store called Guest Jewelers & Merchants to display only their items. All that was required along with a Biography is that they send pictures of a specific size, a description for each item, and the price for which they wanted to sell it. I agreed to post the items in the store for a period of one year, free of charge. (Disclaimer: The price on the items has to be slightly adjusted to the nearest dollar so that the artist can receive the asking price, because all new customers on my site receive a 10% discount.) I posted this offer on LinkedIn and received a very positive response. This is not done so that I could directly profit from the sale of their items. This is beneficial to both my site and the Guest Artist as it offers the artist exposure, and me new content perhaps in areas that I do not dabble

For example, although I own a kiln and silver art clay, I have yet to post any of the pieces that I have made. Instead, I leave that to the experts. This piece made by Jennifer Dewey is one of my all-time favorites. It is a handmade sterling silver baby’s rattle. It is highly polished and features a freshwater pearl filled rosette (the pearl is symbolic of purity and innocence), musically rotating upon the sterling teething ring. You can click on the photo to see its full description in the store.

Although my Father is a talented artist, I am not (not in the drawing and painting sense of the word anyway). So, another unique artist I featured back in June is Barbara Yalof. Most of her artwork depicts people or animals rather than designs. What her artwork and jewelry do have in common is knowledge of color theory and a playfulness with color and line. What I love most about Barbara’s work is that it is affordable to just about EVERYONE, and that is difficult to find when you are dealing with quality handmade items of any kind.

This Original Art and Hand Painted Jewelry is the work of Barbara Yalof who graduated Temple U./Tyler School of Art and resides in Narberth, PA. In the past, Barbara’s jewelry has been sold by artist’s rep to boutiques and stores, including the shops of The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum. Her one-of-a-kind jewelry was awarded “Best Fashion Jewelry in Philadelphia”, and was given a solo trunk show at Macy’s Manhattan.

After 8 years in business, Barbara took a hiatus from her jewelry and took this time to concentrate on parenthood and other interests. She went back to school to study computer graphics, and took time to paint and draw again. Barbara’s paintings and prints can be seen on her website: www.barbarayalof.com .

When things quieted down at home, she realized just how much she missed creating tiny works of art. Armed with a heightened interest in colors and how they interact, Barbara is back creating the earrings, pins, bracelets, and necklaces that are once again on the market. Hours fly by, pieces are moved around and paired up with other pieces; a lot of thought goes into the production of each of these one-of-a-kind miniature works of art. Barbara currently teaches Color Theory at Harcum College in Bryn Mawr, PA.

If you or anyone you know might be interested in becoming a Featured Guest Artist on my site, please E-mail me with your request and we’ll get you set up right away! I will be posting some new items next week, and I am hoping to get the collection finished on which I started working months ago. It’s really something special and it’s unfortunate that it has taken me this long to complete. I look forward to sharing my new designs with you.

Here is one from my nephew, Christian. He wasn’t too bad either for being 10 years old!

John and I have 2 children; Isabella Rose (will be 3 yrs old on August 15), and John Peter, IV (who is 7 1/2 months old). Although they were not physically supposed to be in the wedding Isabella of course made herself part of the ceremony…

There are so many pictures that were taken. I placed camera on each table for the guests to take candid shots, and I had two of the best professional photographers to capture the most important moments of our day. Tim Dinofa, of Dinofa Photography was the lead photographer. He is one of the most talented photographers that I have seen in a long time. You can visit his site and read his blog to see everything he has to offer, and view his talent for yourself. Some of our pictures will be posted there soon! Usually his 2nd shooter is his wife, Lauren, but they are getting ready to have their 3rd child so for this event he was able to bring out someone else all the way from Orange County, CA. Christoper Becker and his talents are well known in the photography world and we were ecstatic to have him be a part of our wedding. “Becker”, as he is affectionately referred to by most, also has a blog and some of our pictures will be posted there as well. You can view Becker’s Blog here.

I made all of the jewelry for the wedding. I want to wait until I see Tim and Becker’s professional photos of my pieces before I post them, because my pictures never do the jewelry justice. In fact, it isn’t even close most times. But, that’s why I am a professional poker player who happens to make jewelry! For now, I want to thank my sisters for being beautiful Bridesmaids, my Niece for being the most beautiful Jr. Bridesmaid ever, the Groomsmen and Best Man, and of course my Niece Gabrielle for doing our lovely reading. We have another shoot scheduled with Tim as part of our “Engagement” package, and hopefully we can do that soon.

We are postponing the Honeymoon until later in the year, which is a better time to go to our selected destination, Italy. For now it’s back to making jewelry for me! Maybe on Tim’s downtime (yeah right….like he has ANY of that) I can get him to take pics of my jewelry!

I will be making these soon, and adding them to the site. I think they are essential for any beach bride, and her bridal party. Surely you can see that these can be customized any way that you can imagine! Do you like fringe or don’t you? What colors are your favorite? The possibilities with these materials are endless, as Swarovski crystals, pearls and seed beads are available in a wide variety of shapes, colors, and finishes. Also I wanted to share with you a few other items that I purchased. Naturally they are all handmade, and I purchased them from some very talented artists who sell their products on Etsy. Here is a picture of my Guest sign in book with pen. It’s perfect for my beach theme wedding and made from top quality materials. I purchased this from CreativeBridal on Etsy…

I want to share one more item with you. It is my ring pillow. I LOVE this pillow. It is also a beach themed, handmade item of silk, seashells and Swarovski Crystals. I purchased this from BellesandCrystals on Etsy. It is the most unique ring pillow I have ever seen for a beach wedding. The addition of feathers is great, because there are also feathers in my bouquet (I’m not telling what kind. You have to wait and see!) It’ll be perfect for mine!

For those of you interested in learning the above stitch for beading sandlas, I found this very simplified video for creating a vertical netting pattern.

How to create a netting stitch

I did make this bracelet and called it “Something Blue”. I thought that I might wear it on my own wedding day. I still might, I am not sure. Nevertheless the bracelet is beautiful, and I think anyone would be happy to own it. It is made of the same great quality materials that I always use; Swarovski Crystal and Freshwater pearls along with Bali and Sterling silvers. Keep in mind that this bracelet, should you want one for yourself, can be customized with any color pearl, and various colors of crystal in these graphite and butterfly shapes.

I did have some time a few weeks ago to complete some new pieces with beads that I had waiting to be used. The photographs aren’t the best, as I have procrastinated on purchasing a really good lighting system. I don’t seem to be very good at juggling being a mommy of 2, a wife-to-be, a poker player, and jewelry maker all at the same time. I’ll get it together one of these days. It’s a goal of mine! Anyway here is a piece from the “Breakfast at Bella’s” collection that I had started. In this collection I used handmade glass beads from Laurie Whitney of Mermaid Glass. Here is one of the newer pieces. It is a Cupcake and Doughnut set and it’s accented with Swarovski crystal bicone beads and sterling silver. The chain was cut and assembled by me so the length is completely customizable.

The next piece is something I just love, although the picture surely own reflect it’s beauty. This I call the “Grand Slam”. It is a very solid sterling silver rolo bracelet with toggle clasp, and on it several delicious charms accented in sterling silver and Hill Tribes silver dangle delicately, and just tempt your taste buds! You’ll find a complete breakfast of bacon and eggs along with a short stack of syrup smothered pancakes.

Once again we thank everyone who has registered their E-mail address with us and registered to win a free gift. Isabella’s Beads would like to congratulate this month’s winner of our FREE GIFT drawing, Susan Duval. Susan will receive a pair of custom made freshwater pearl drop earrings similar to those pictured below, for FREE. These earrings have a retail value of $15.00!

For those who are interested, these earrings are also available for sale in our store. If you are interested in purchasing these earrings please click the photo to be directly connected to that item in our store. Be sure to register your E-mail address with us for your chance to win a FREE GIFT! Congratualtions, Susan!

It’s been a while since I put out a blog. I am in the middle of so many things right now you couldn’t imagine. I have some beautiful new jewelry to list, but I need to take better photos.  I have new guest artists to introduce to you and items of theirs to list in the store, but I am going to wait until June, and here is the reason why.

I am continuing the Search Engine Optimization for my website so I can be listed higher in the search engines, AND to improve my page rankings. I recently had my site optimized, but it wasn’t done completely and in some cases it was done improperly. So, when I thought I was hiring a new company for SEO Maintenance, I was very surprised to learn that before I purchased a maintenance plan I needed to have the site further optimized “on-page” to correct some things that were done wrong before, and to complete other things that were never done in the first place!

So, please be patient with me while I wait until June to list new products and feature new artists. I want to have the best site that I can and that is going to take both time and money. The good news is that in the mean time I can make a lot of new things so that in June I will have a TON of new items to post in the store and introduce to you!

In the midst of all of this I am still planning our wedding, which will take place on August 1st. It’s very exciting, but it has been a lot of work because we already have 2 small children and we live a “Married Life” every day (that means we don’t get much of a break for leisure activity! I know…we’re ass backwards). I am sure that things will turn out perfectly, as I have a wedding planner doing all of the research to alleviate some of the stress. I just need to make the selections

Thank you all for your continued patience and support. In the mean time I will post another blog with the FREE GIFT winner for this month, and a picture of their prize tomorrow. Stay tuned….

It’s been a while since I have put out a blog. I have new items from my “Breakfast at Bella’s” collection that still need to be added, but I am finding that time is scarce since I had my second child. Once I photograph and re-size these items I will add them to the store for all to see (and buy!) Also I have been collaborating with Laurie from Mermaid Glass and our ideas are complete and the beads are being made for my next collection. I promise to have the breakfast pieces up first though.

I am obviously still trying to find myself as a jewelry designer among other things. There are so many beautiful mediums to use within a creation, I want to experiment with all of them before settling down into one specific area, which I swear to the almighty poker gods I will do one day.

To keep with my new tradition I would like to introduce you to my featured Guest Jeweler this month. She is award winning artist, Ann Marie Hodrick

Ann Marie Hodrick has been artistic from birth, developing her creativity in one medium or another all her life.

Ann Marie crafted as a young child, developing a keen sense of color and fine motor skills.  In high school she pursued the fine arts of painting, printmaking, ceramics and silversmithing.   She continued her exploration of these mediums while at Loyola University in New Orleans pursuing a degree in Liberal Arts. After earning her BA degree she went to work as a video editor choosing to voice her creativity on television while earning a regular income to help support her growing family, all the while never losing her artistic desire.  Her current foray into jewelry design is simply a part of her life-long dedication to artistic expression. She has won multiple national awards for her jewelry designs.

Ann Marie currently lives in Oakland, Ca. with her husband and two teenage sons. As for her philosophy, Ann Marie uses skills from all areas of her past art studies. She has synthesized a unique style, blending her romantic nature and experience in the arts with a fascination for the art of personal adornment. Nature and architectural design inspire much of Ann Marie’s work. It is because of this influence that she does not confine herself to one specific jewelry technique, allowing the materials and stones to inspire her final design.

This design is one of my favorites from Ann Marie because of its simplicity and richness. Please click on the photo to view the item in our store.

If any of you are interested in being a featured artist on my site, or you know anyone who might be interested, please contact me for details on how to get started!