Strut Your Stuff With Our Interchangeable Boot Bracelets

With the cowboy festival coming up in Kamloops this week it has got us thinking about our boot jewelry and creating some new designs.  Boot bracelets and boot charms are a fun way to accessorize if you enjoy country western style dancing or just as an accent when going out.  Our original boot jewelry designs consist of using our faux turquoise, feathers and lizard tails. 

Faux Turquoise Boot Bracelet

Feather Boot Bracelet

Lizard Tail Boot Bracelet

Since we started our Snap Decisions collection it got me thinking about interchangeable designs.  These bracelets were made using the snap base connectors, beads and chain.  I love these as you only need one bracelet (or some people like to wear a pair) and then several decorative snaps to create different looks.

Interchangeable Snap Boot Bracelet

Boot Bracelet with Interchangeable Snap

Our latest style is a simple design combining the thicker (4.5 mm) softglass cord with a joiner charm (from Shades of Clay) and the snap base with the tube bail and several rubber o-rings to hold it in place.  I show an easy method for doing this in my mini tutorial for the snap necklace here.  The wonderful thing about this boot bracelet style is that you can also use the larger-size snaps like the ones shown here.

Softglass cord boot bracelet with interchangeable Canadian Maple Leaf Snap

Boot Bracelet with Softglass cord and Joiner Charm Clasp

Boot Bracelet with Softglass cord and Joiner Charm Clasp

Linda Kelly of Sweet Water Bronze

We met some great artists at the Cowboy Festival last weekend -- the local talent in this part of Canada is phenomenal.  One artist I want to share with you today is Linda Kelly from Kelowna, British Columbia and her art just about totally blew us away.  She creates bronze sculptures and does all her own wax chasing from her original pieces which is a very complex process.

Linda was working on her sculptures during the show and I managed to sneak in some time to talk with her.  She gave me permission to take a few photos and share them with you but if you click here you will see more of her work on the Evans Fischer Gallery website.

This piece titled "Catastrophe" really grabbed my attention and the photo below shows one side ...

And this is the opposite ....

This one is titled "size matters not"

I feel so blessed to have met Linda and have so much appreciation for her talent as well as her beautiful personality which shines through her work as well.

Howdy!

Howdy Partners!  We spent today unpacking all of our items from the weekend at the Cowboy Festival and reflecting on the fantastic time we had!  It was so much fun we are already looking forward to next year.  Me met so many interesting and fun-loving people and enjoyed visiting with the other vendors, guests and entertainers that our voices were almost hoarse by the end of the three days.

We were so busy the whole time but Dave would kick me out and make me take a break now and then so I would use the time for a few photo opportunities.

These two are from the historic town of Barkerville which was a bustling town in the gold rush days.  If you click on the link you can read more about this great place.   Don't you love their costumes?  We first heard of Barkerville when a theater group from there came to our town for a musical production which was one of the best performances we ever attended. 

There was plenty of entertainment the whole weekend and the Kamloops Cowboy Festival is a major stopping point for the Cowboy Poet circuit for North America. 

There was also plenty of good music which included a country music Rising Star showcase competition at the trade show where we were set up.  

There were also workshops to attend for cowboy poetry writing and yodeling.  

This lady is one of the can-can dancers all in costume for the dinner theater each evening.

Here is a vendor with some of his handcrafted leather saddles and western wear and accessories.

There was also an incredible artist I met there that I will tell you about tomorrow. 

Cowboy Festival & New Website

We now have two days of the Cowboy Festival under our belts with one more to go.  I planned to do a blog post yesterday but we both arrived home totally exhausted.  We are pretty tired tonight as well so I thought I would show you a photo of our booth and then share more with you about everything later.

This is the map of where our space is located.  There is a talent show running most of the time so we are entertained with some talented country western musicians.

I should also mention that we have now launched our new website in time for this big event which you can see here.  It is still in the early stages of setting up but the basics are all there.

Time now for some shut eye as we have another busy day tomorrow.

Granma's Bed

Well I spent the last few days reducing all of our feather canes and shaping them into beads for necklaces, boot jewelry and earrings.

Here are the canes that I started with.

  You will see what color recipes I used here.

We now have plenty of sanding and finishing to do over the next few days as well as working on a fresh new look for our displays at the Cowboy Festival which starts a week from today - March 11.  It is going to be an exciting event with plenty of food, fun and entertainment!

New Lizard Tail Pieces

I have some tips to share with you on my texture tube beads but I'm not quite ready yet so in the meantime I thought I would show you some of our new pieces we created for our Country Charm Collection.  These boot bracelets are made using the Lizard Tail technique Julie Picarello taught at a workshop I attended.

I was also experimenting with some matching scarf slides using the same technique.

I love the "lizard tail" look and am excited to discover more designs using it.