Time for some craftiness.  

Madre, in all her Martha Stewart-esque glory, has been stocking up on supplies to create beaded jewelry, and she enlisted my participation in her adventure.  Last night we started creating a necklace for her and realized that we lacked significant resources.  After a quick trip to stock up this afternoon, we were much more prepared.  Tonight I started in on a three-strand necklace, using the board below to lay out my project. 

Yep, I said three strand necklace.  Classic overachieving on my part.  Here is the final project.  

I apologize for the background - while lovely for a kitchen, granite countertops don't showcase baubles and beads well.  I turned off the flash on my camera (aka phone) after this, though, so hopefully the picture quality improves.  Breaking the necklace up for you to see, here is the first/top layer. 

It's hard to see in this picture, but the five isolated white-ish beads are actually super sparkly/fancy silver beads.  They're fantastic.  

Second layer: 

Quite simple.  Black and silver textured beads.  

Third/bottom layer - this one is my favorite: 

Except for a few beads in the bottom right corner and a few links in the top left corner, this layer is made up completely of pieced together bits from old necklaces of Madre's.  I love it.  

One more peek at the final product: 

I also took a few minutes to throw together these mismatched earrings. 

I've noticed recently that I tend to always watch action-packed testosterone flicks while doing crafty things.  This summer while I made necklaces, I watched Crank, with Jason Statham.  While working on Jenny's calendar into the wee hours of the morning, I finally saw Die Hard.  Sewing the Christmas stockings, I was entertained by Eye for an Eye (Classic Sally Field, with Kiefer Sutherland in a top 5 creep moment).  I remarked to my roommate that it seems my body doesn't know what to do with the estrogen-fest of arts and crafts, so I automatically turn to "guy" movies.  It's like I can't handle too much girlie-ness.  Her response was to ask me: "So the perfect guy would be one who brings you flowers and a beer?" 

Boy did she hit the nail on the head.  Beer may not exactly be my beverage of choice, but yep.  That about sums me up.  Having seen True Grit this afternoon before my artistic endeavor began, I wanted to delve into a John Wayne marathon.  I remembered, though, that I still haven't put a dent in my Clint Eastwood netflix queue, so I decided against adding more movies to the list.  While I created these beauties, I watched Dirty Harry for the first time and marveled at how awesome Inspector Harry Calahan looked in those shades, even at night.  

I'm spending roughly 962 hours in the car in the next seven days, so please accept this warning that my posts may not be frequent.  

I hope everyone had a fabulous Boxing Day, eh?