Design This - Fashionable Beaded Lanyard Holder

So many businesses require badges today and a popular way to keep up with one's badge is to wear it on a standard, flat fabric lanyard holder. During this past holiday season I had a customer, who while looking at my jewelry, asked if I had any beaded lanyard holders. I did not but told her I would consider doing a custom one if she was interested. From her purse, she pulled out a beaded black one to show me what she had in mind.

She was looking for an additional option to be able to wear to work. I took a measurement and her contact information so I could send her some ideas from the materials I had to work with.

I took a picture of two options I came up with from looking through my supplies. One option would use wood and howlite beads and the other would use kiwi jasper and white cat's eye beads. My customer chose the option with the jasper beads. I mocked up the design and sent a photo to get feedback. She liked the design and wanted a continuous strand of beads, without a clasp. I was able to achieve this by using a couple of

crimp beads and covers on either side of the back center bead. I used a large lobster claw clasp strung with the beads to hold the split ring that a badge would attach to. After finishing the lanyard holder I decided to experiment with making a pendant that could be interchanged with the split ring or even worn with it so that the beads could be worn as a necklace or as an even fancier lanyard holder. I gave this pendant to my customer as a freebie to try it out. Let me know what you think of the concept in the comments.

The second photo is a composite of two of images of the completed lanyard holder and the third photo shows the pendant added to it. Photos enlarge when clicked.

Yellow-rumped Warblers Have Returned

While yellow-rumped warblers have probably been in the area for a while this winter, I saw my first one this morning. At first I was wondering what little gray birds were flitting around, some of them were pretty nondescript. I grabbed my binoculars and it clicked that I should be looking for some patches of yellow. Some birds can be shy about showing their namesake patch on their rump. Depending on the subspecies of yellow-rumped warbler, time of year, age and sex of the bird their may also be yellow patches on their sides, top of head and throat. The bird pictured here is likely an immature or female myrtle yellow-rumped warbler.

Over the past few weeks I have noticed other migrants coming back to the area such as American goldfinch and dark-eyed junco. I also start to see more sparrows again this time of year such as the song sparrow I saw yesterday. This could be due to migration or trees and shrubs that have shed leaves to make the little brown birds (lots of similar looking sparrows) easier to spot long enough to try to tell them apart. Seeing all of the bird activity gets me pumped up for the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). My city of Dalworthington Gardens will be hosting a GBBC event on Saturday, February 15 from 10am - 1pm. We will gather in the annex before going out to see how many species of birds we can identify in Gardens Park. I'm looking forward to it.