Just wanted to check back in after a break of much longer than I’d planned (as usual) to say hello! I’ve always wanted to make this more of a cool-beading-stuff blog that’s more than just occasional announcements about the book, but it’s been a super busy year. So, starting now I’m going to post over here much more often, with project extras, spotlighting other jewelry-related things I like, answers to your questions about the book, and whatever else sounds fun. So please comment and let me know if there’s anything you’re wondering about and I’ll try to cover that, too.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some free beading and jewelry-making tutorials I’ve posted weekly over the last few months at CraftStylish. Here’s the one that went up today, a set of felt fortune cookies + rings just in time for Valentine’s Day. I really like this project — it is super fun to do and the teeny-tiny fortune-cookie ring is very cute on.

I’ve been contributing over there for the last year (mostly about jewelry-making and beading, with some general crafts and other stuff in the mix) along with some of my favorite crafters like Diane, Kayte, Linda, Lee, and Jennifer. CraftStylish has tons of great how-tos organized by type — crochet, embroidery, sewing, paper crafts, and a bunch of others — and you can search for what you’re especially interested in to narrow it down. It’s such a nice mix of stuff and I really recommend stopping by to check it all out!

Here are a good handful of my favorite jewelry and embellishment projects I’ve done for the site, if you liked Bead Simple and you’re looking for more projects to try. I would love to hear what you think of them! If you click the photo collage, it will lead you to direct links to each project tutorial, or you can see my whole archive of projects and other crafty posts here.

I’ll be back this week with another book-related post and I am looking forward to hanging out here more often! By the way, if you are interested in more crafty stuff, I write a lot more frequently at my West Coast Crafty blog, just for fun, and you might like that too.