Saturday Shopping Day

Today is another wonderful shopping day with Sandra. And here are the things that I finished this week.

Seeds and Pods Cuff with ceramic focal and freshwater pearls for Etsy European Street Team Weekly Challenge, also hosted by Sandra. :)

Custom made Forest Goddess for Finnish jewelry artist - Mags. She sent me this beautiful ocean jasper cabochon and asked for a very special goddess, which would remind her of Finnish forests and brooks. The goddess is already with Mags and she will make a very special necklace using goddess as focal element. I can't wait to see the result! And, of course, I will share it with you, when it's ready. ;)

Inspirational pictures by Urpo A. Tarnanen and Erkki Toivanen.

I am also very proud to present the third Togethrpiece with wonderful Nancy van den Boom - Summer in Holland Cuff. It features miniature poppy oil painting lovingly created by Nancy, which I later embellished with Japanese seed beads in two shades of red, blue and tarnished silver.

The outside of the cuff is covered with light red leather and the inside is lined with soft blue ultrasuede.

Every time I work with one of Nancy's tiny paintings, the ideas start dancing in my head and my heartbeat gets faster. She is such a wonderful artist and great inspiration! I hope you love this cuff as much as I do! ;)

And the last piece of this week is an experimental Midnight Blues brooch with lace, leather, vintage rhinestone and a bit of seed beads.

I hope you enjoyed the shopping tour! Visit Sandra to see more of beautiful pieces from this week! ;)

Have a lovely weekend!

xo,

Saturday Shopping Day

Today is one more of the wonderful shopping days with Sandra of zsazsazsu. I missed the last one because of Bead Soup Blog Party, but today I have several new pieces to show you.

Tiny Warrior Goddess brooch.

Fly Me to the Moon statement necklace.

The Rose Cuff - our first Togetherpiece with Nancy. I know you've seen in already, but I love it so much that I must show it off just one more time. :)

And last, but not least, Under the Tree pendant, which is our second Togetherpiece with Nancy.

I wish you all a beautiful weekend! Enjoy the shopping! ;)

xo,

Saturday Shopping Day

It's Saturday again and it means that we again go shopping with Sandra from zsazsazsu. ;)

This week I don't have only three new pieces to show you, but each and every of them is very special.

I would like to start with Forgotten World - large bead embroidered pendant with ammonite fossil, crystal, very long and playful fringe and natural leather backing. It' definitely one of my favorite pieces. Every time I get the courage to use one of my ammonites, the jewelry piece turns out to be special. In my opinion, ammonites are very challenging materials to work with and they like to be surrounded only with the best of my supplies.

Next I'd like to show you Majestic Swan earrings. They are very simple, only two colors - white and tarnished silver. Two tiny vintage cabochons, Japanese seed beads and sterling silver findings. They are also my entry for Etsy European Street Team weekly challenge. This time the theme is wedding, you can see other beautiful entries here.

And last, but not the least is this sweet Peach Nectar set of brooch and earrings. It's cute, but practical, work with many different outfits and for variety of occasions. Ocean jasper, freshwater pearls, glass beads, Japanese seed beads and sterling silver findings.

Thank you for shopping with me and Sandra! Enjoy your Saturday! ;) See you next week!

xo,

Saturday Shopping Day

This week I have couple of new interesting items in my Etsy store to show you on Saturday Shopping Day with Sandra.

Amber Wasp pendant with brown cat's eye and natural amber beads.

Blue Night Flower brooch with sapphire and freshwater pearls.

Fun and colorful Carousel barrette with pressed turquoise and glass seed beads.

Simple Elegance brooch with mahogany obsidian.

And Coquette jewelry set - pendant, earrings and ring. Sandstone, sterling silver and plenty of freshwater pearls.

I hope you enjoyed shopping with me! ;)

Have a nice rest of the weekend!

xo,

Celebrating 100!

I've been in a great mood for over a week now, because my blog and I have the most wonderful 100 followers and friends! Actually, at the moment the number is 105, which is even better!

To celebrate this beautiful number I would like to offer all of you, my dearies, to participate in a giveaway, where you can win this elegant pendant created by me.

The pendant is made with African purple jasper and glass seed beads. It measures 72 x 40 mm (including beaded bail), it's backed with black faux leather and hangs from 48 cm long black twisted silk cord with loop and knot closure.

The giveaway is open to participants from all over the world. One winner will be randomly selected and announced here on my blog on February 8, so you have 3 weeks to enter.

There are several ways to participate. Each of you can have up to 5 entries. Please, leave a separate comment for each entry. If you don't have a blog or Etsy store I could contact you through, please, add your e-mail address to the comment.

And now the ways to enter my giveaway:

1. Visit my Etsy store and come back with the name of your favorite item.
2. Follow this blog. If you already are a follower, leave a comment about that. ;)
3. Follow Helmitarha on facebook.
4. Mention this giveaway on your blog and leave a link to it.
5. Mention this giveaway on your facebook page and leave a link to the post.

Here is a button to grab for your blog.

<a href="http://helmitarha.blogspot.com/2011/01/celebrating-100.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5243/5367596158_301935abaf_m.jpg" border="0" /></a>

Last day to enter is February 7!

Good luck!!!

xo,

Someone is watching you...

I would like to show you my latest bead embroidered pendant. Yes, it again has rubber figurine on it. :)

My man called it Schnappi pendant, but I think The Watch sounds more sophisticated.

Tiny rubber crocodile crawling on a beach stone from the Baltic sea. Also plenty of Japanese seed beads in various colors, natural turquoise beads and red glass beads from India. Faux leather backing, silk rope and small piece of driftwood collected in Finland. That's one crazy mix of materials! :)

Doesn't Schnappi have a mysterious look in his eye? :))

More details in my Etsy store.

xo,

The Dive Pendant and EST Challenge

Let me start from far away... One of my favorite seed bead artists is Heidi Kummli. She creates amazing beadwork pieces inspired by nature and Native American culture. In one of recent Bead and Button magazines there was Heidi's tutorial on bead embroidered bracelet with rubber animals. I've always wanted to create something with same feel and charm.

And then when I saw this week's theme for European Street Team challenge I couldn't resist trying to create something fun and a bit different.
So, here is the pendant I made for the Animal challenge hosted by wonderful Star of the East.


I called this piece The Dive. It has large fan shaped bamboo stone cabochon, small oval carnelian cabochon, variety of Japanese seed beads and rubber turtle from my nephew's toy box. ;) He was very generous and sacrificed the turtle for artistic purpose. :)
The pendant is backed with artificial leather and it hangs from brown twisted silk rope. First I thought to add some fringe to it, but the pendant turned out to be quite large and fringe would just make it too heavy.

I'm quite satisfied with the result, and I have more rubber and ceramic animals in my stash to put in the beadwork. :)

You can check all entries of European Street Team weekly challenge here.
Good luck to all the participants! ;)

xo,

Daughter of Wind

I've had this pendant lying on my table for last couple of weeks. And finally yesterday I finished rope to put it on. It's tubular Ndebele beaded rope made of size 11 seed beads in two different colors. If you look closer, you might see the light purple mixing together with hematite.

Daughter of Wind is wild, she has own character and sparkle in the eyes.

You can see more pictures of her in my Etsy store. Just click on the picture! ;)

Have a great Friday!

xo,

My Creative Space

As some of you might know, a week ago I started my small destash store on Etsy. And since then I've been very busy with sorting my stash, taking pictures, writing descriptions... Oh my, I knew it's gonna take some time, but I didn't expect that it's such a long process! All these small items...

That's how my workroom table looks at the moment. I think I forgot what color it is. :))

So, my another work has been really slow because of space and time issues. But I still wanna show you a very passionate pendant that I started couple of weeks ago.

I called it Flamenco as this playful fringe was inspired by the skirt of flamenco dancers. More pictures you can see in my Etsy store.

I really hope I'm gonna clean my table over the weekend and start some another bead embroidery project.
If you want to see another interesting workspaces, go to Kirsty's blog!

Have a very creative Thursday!

xo,

Trip to the Past - Pendant

Simple pendant with beautiful fossil coral cabochon. I love fossil coral! I have whole collection of these cabochons and they inspire me so much.

xo,