Necessity is the Mother of Invention

First I'd like to thank all those who commented, and those who contacted me directly, for all the support in my 2011 challenge! These days I am surely feeling caught up in the excitement and all the possibilities for a new year.

On New Year's Day, I started out with a wicked cold, but after a bit of sleep, the weekend turned out okay and was able to organize some of my seed beads with this fun little jewelry organizer:

I also worked on this bracelet for a swap:

Also, I've been meaning to share but haven't yet, some new packaging I made. It was a few days before Christmas. I went to box up some jewelry for my mom and stepdaughters when I discovered I'd run out of boxes! I had already made a personal declaration to myself that I was NOT going to go into any more stores until after Christmas. I had some very large boxes, but I wasn't happy with that....so I reached for some card stock, rubber stamps, embossing powder and glitter....and made these fun little folders (and have made several more since!):

The glittered ones were fairly labor intensive, but the simpler, embossed dragonfly, could be new signature packaging for me!

And finally I will leave you with this picture that makes me smile every time I see it (proudly hailing from Massachusetts). The caption on this picture was "You know you're in Mass when you see a sign like this":