Renewal Reveal and a Link-a-palooza

After a late night on Wednesday, I was moving super slow yesterday. Even with my snail's pace I was able to finish my The Year of Jewelry Project design for this week. The prompt was "Renewal".

Now, my design is nowhere NEAR as impressive as some of the other designs in the album for this week, but I'm so happy with the way it turned out. It's very near to what I had imagined.

When I read the prompt, I saw in my mind's eye a blank canvas of white with a little bit of color starting to seep into it.

I was also struck with the notion of Springtime and the renewal of plants and flowers as winter's chill begins to lift. With this image in my head, I knew I needed to incorporate a flower.

The pendant is made from a Tim Holtz tag fragment and a piece of cardstock that I altered with paint, embossing powder, and distress crackle. I'm quite pleased with how well these worked together.

In addition to revealing this week's Jewelry Project, I thought I'd also share some links for

• If you saw my goals for 2013, you may remember that one of my goals for the year was to operate Analytics better. I haven't really figured out the best place to start on this goal, but did find that I had this link from Problogger saved on 5 Goals Every Blogger Should Set Up in Google Analytics. Now. . .I'm not positive that all the words in that article make sense (to me) when put together in that combination, but I think with some re-reading and actual hands-on experience I'll figure it out. I hope you do too.
• I had no idea you could use a high temperature glue gun and silicone molds to make awesome jewelry. Ashley at Lil Blue Boo shows you how with her Glue Gun Cabochon tutorial. See for yourself.
• Michelle Mach at Beads and Books always has some great information. Back in August (I KNOW, I'm wayyyyy behind), she shared some tips on SEO for Jewelry Shops. If you can believe it, I actually used to do SEO as a job for a little while. However, I've let all that information just slip out of my head. This was a fantastic refresher and so, so easy to understand.
• Over at Cheap Crafty Mama there's an awesomely simple tutorial on making your own Air Fresheners with items you probably already have sitting around the house. Go take a look-see.

Now I've got some photos to edit, some to take, and some XBox playing to get to later so I'm headed out. No worries, I shouldn't be gone long as I'll be revealing my Focusing on Life photo tomorrow. Eek! See y'all then.