Of embroidery and shellfish...

Like I said in my last post I've been making embroidered pendant necklaces lately. I listed one on Etsy today, it has a dragonfly on one side and a butterfly on the other. 

http://www.etsy.com/listing/74822091/embroidered-pendant-necklace-butterfly 

I made a pendant for my aunt since she responded to a meme I did on Facebook that said the first 5 people who responded to my post would get a handmade present from me. It has easily been a year since I promised that, I posted it with the stipulation that it would likely be a while before anyone would recieve their present since I was going to leave for a six week study abroad in London in about a week and still had a lot of things to prepare and some finals to take. I didn't forget but it did take me a lot longer to come through than I'd originally intended. Only two people responded and I figure since there were only two and they've had to wait so long I'd make them something particularly special. My aunt got an embroidered pendant with a crab on one side and a sand dollar on the other since some of my funnest memories with her are going out to the Oregon coast to crab and fish as well as look for seashells. That and she likes nautical things.  I really like how it turned out, I took a few pictures before I sent it (usually I forget to take pictures of things I make and gift, it's made me kick myself on more than one occasion):

The side by side pictures are brought to you by several hours of hair pulling and computer illiteracy in photoshop. I think I have the process down now, it was making me regret doing double sided pendants instead of just a regular pendant for a while there, though. 

I still have one more item to make for that meme, this one will be going to a facebook friend of mine that I met in an acting class. I told her since she has had to wait so long I'd make her a mask since they're kind of my specialty. I didn't know at the time that she collects them, which, makes it kind of perfect. I haven't had any flashes of brilliance as to what to make her yet. For some reason I have this vague thought that it's going to be fiery in color and have some shinies. I have some feathers coming in the mail that I intend to use for it, eventually I'll be ordering some swarovski rhinestones too. It will be a somewhat traditional masquerade mask. I hope she likes it, I don't know her that well so it makes it trickier to make her something I think she'll like and still have it be a surprise. Part of the reason it's taking me so long is because I need buy some materials from a place only open on weekdays when my family is needing to use my car. Well, that and I'm broke. Still, it will eventually get done. If she forgets about it before then it'll really be a surprise!