Creations by Karenator and Her Friends

Creations by Karenator and Her Friends Karenator's Place for Creations!

This is called the Crystal Bridge Bracelet. I learned to make it at Beads Plus in Las Vegas in May 2007. It's a lot simpler than it looks!

This is called the Lazy Spiral Bracelet. I took this class at San Gabriel Bead Company in Feb. 2007. I've made a couple of variations, including with a separate "spine" piece so I could use crimps and a clasp instead of the loop and ball clasp. I also made a necklace.

I call these my Grapes Earrings. They are Christmas 2006 and birthday 2007 gifts for my girlfriends.

This piece was also designed by Leslee Frumin. I took her "Putting On The Ritz" class at the Bead and Art Glass Festival in Orlando, FL in November 2006. I've since made several in different colors. I made the earrings based on the necklace design.

This piece was designed by Leslee Frumin. It's actually the first class I took from her, at San Gabriel Bead Company.

I saw a design similar to this in a magazine, and this is my version. I call it Crystal Steps Earrings.

I took this class at Bead Plus in Las Vegas in October 2006. It took a while to get the bracelet base done, but putting on the fringy stuff was pretty easy. It's a really cute bracelet, and lots of fun to wear.

This is a bracelet made of crystals and seed beads. It's a kind of a modified right angle weave. I figured out how to make it from a bracelet that a friend made for my birthday.

I'm making one in a different color for a fundraising auction, and will post it here when it's ready.

This is a bracelet that I made out of 4mm Swarovski crystals in light rose and violet. It's made with wrapped loops of 26ga silver wire with a lobster claw.

This pin I made for the Cassini Virtual Singers upon the occasion of the Cassini Spacecraft's Saturn Orbit Insertion. The big bead is a 10mm Sardonyx bead with 26ga wire as the rings. The little gold bead on the rings represents Cassini. The smaller bead is a 6mm Sardonyx bead. The music note charm is from the San Gabriel Bead company. The silver beads in between are cheapy beads from Michael's. I had to "unroll" the safety pins to get the silver pins on, and then "roll" it back up. It was surprisingly easy, actually, to work the safety pin -- easier than I thought it would be!

For people who asked, I made the same pin, but without the music note charm.

Cloisonne bead necklace, bracelet, and earrings.

The necklace started as a class project in a Basic Bead Stringing class at the Pasadena Bead Company. The bracelet and earrings were made from the leftovers. The necklace uses 12mm, 10mm, 8mm and 6mm Cobalt colored cloisonne beads, dark green and royal blue seed beads, and 2mm, 3mm and 4mm gold spacer beads. The necklace and bracelet were strung on Softflex, and the earrings were strung on nylon beading string.

The lace card:

This was made for a wedding, intended to be a pretty container for a gift certificate. It's made in the style of an accordion book, with lacy heart gift wrap on the outside and gold paper inside, and a lace bow (center tied with thread), and the charm and pearls attached. Pearls are glued to the card so they don't flop around.

A matching envelope was made out of the gift wrap paper using a Kreat-a lope template. I made a label area on the front using plain paper with the corners punched, and outlined with gold foil. It was sealed with a gold sticker

Pins made with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel: UTEE pins These are done on pieces of plain ol' cardboard with two or three layers of either platinum or bronze UTEE, and small "silver lined glass beads" dropped into the hot UTEE. The beads stick pretty well, but I sometimes do another layer of UTEE around them to make sure they stick. They were first made for Rubber Stamp Roundup in Las Vegas, April 1998.

Christmas bells for 1997: Believe it or not, these bells started their lives as communion cups! First, I used a hot nail to melt a hole in the top. Then, spray painted them inside and out with their base color, "flicked" the colored speckles with a fan brush, and then gave them a shot of spray glitter. Finally, I threaded a loop of ribbon through a bell, stuffed the ribbon through the hole, and that was that. Everyone got at least one on their Christmas presents, and the rest went on the Christmas tree. One of my aunts liked them so much she raided the tree for them after the family Christmas party!

Dad's birthday card (1998): Dad's Bda6 1998 The base card is two pieces of cardboard covered with (yes, I cheated) the flowered contact paper. The circle frame is circle-cut chipboard covered with bronze UTEE. The flowers are the large and medium 3-D flowers done in pink tones and peach tones. The hearts are woodsies covered in magenta or scarlet pigment ink, and a couple layers of clear UTEE. The inside is lined with gold giftwrap, and a birthday word stamp stamped on plain white cs and edged with ripple scissors.

Cheery Cherry Card for DottyMary's swap:

Covers are two pieces of cardstock, stab-bound in the center. Plain piece of paper in the middle (if copying this card, middle piece should be decorated _before_ binding card). I don't really remember where exactly each of the stamps is from, except the cherries are from the Hero Arts Tiny Shapes set. Background piece (cherries and "hello") is one piece, bear is a separate piece (lightly stamped, colored, re-stamped with black using a stamp positioner, and then cut out), and sign the bear is holding is a separate piece. All layers were Rollotaqued together, except the sign which is held on by foam mounting tape.

Click here to see cards I received from DottyMary's swap.

Lacy Proposition

Mae, Karen (North), Natalie, and Francine took me up on my Lacy Proposition.
These are the samples. Let's see what they come up with!

Here they are! Francine Shivas uses a cupid and a Love stamp with two of the pieces on the same card Natalie Butler creates a Valentine's card with the red lace Natalie and Mae Cormier makes a shirt card Mae shirt and an angel card Mae angel

These are two of the three books I made in my Whimsical Books class at Art Continuum in Cleveland in October. The first is called the Wacky Book. I've included shots of it closed

and open.

This is called "Wire Bound with Curlicues".

The book is really neat, but the wire got to be a pain (literally!) to work with after a while.

These are luggage tags I made out of shrink plastic. The unshrunk size was about 2x4 inches, and shrank down to about 3/4 x 1 1/2 inches. Because I used only a 1/2-inch split ring, I attached the ring to the pieces before I shrank them, and also punched the holes on both ends (one end for the ring, and the other to thread ribbon through to keep the address covered). They're colored with Sharpie (permanent ink) pens.

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