Aloha, Pink Hotel, Lu'au oops, and Bitty Book Necklace!

Aloha Friends!

Yes, I have been on vacation. 
OK, I did squeeze in a little pinning on Pinterest while there,
but other than that, I was pretty much unplugged,
sipping a pina colada with my toesies in the sand.
But...
I did consider my Pink Saturday friends,
and therefore insisted we stay in a PINK hotel!
Just so I could blog about it, lol!
Well, not exactly, but the hotel was pink,
the very lovely, historic Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki.
I took this picture of it...

 and a few more pics and then...
I dropped my camera.
And it broke.
Aaargh!  Right at the start of the vacation!
If you've been a reader of this blog,
you may already know that I am very hard on cameras.
I drop them, I leave them out in the rain...
So I toughed it out for a few days using my lame cell phone camera
for the rest of the time we were in Honolulu,
and bought a new camera when we got to the Big Island.

I just love the Big Island.
Funny story - well, kind of embarrassing, but more funny than embarrassing,
so I'll tell it.
You almost always come across, at the very least,
one or two or more weddings when you're in Hawaii.
Now, I am not a big lu'au fan, but we were staying at the Orchid,
and figured they would have a pretty good one, so we decided to give it a try.
Ocean breezes, beautiful live Hawaiian music, long lovely tables with tropical flowers,
tiki torches, a lovely buffet, and everyone was so friendly!
Striking up conversations with us, asking us about ourselves...
we thought, wow, this is sooo nice!!
Well, just before we started stuffing our faces with kalua pig and poke salad,
we heard the beat of distant drums....literally....from the real lu'au....
and realized that we were at some wedding couple's rehearsal dinner!!  LOL!!
In our defense, there were at least 100 people there....who knew?
And we missed the real lu'au because we spent so much time at the RD.
Oh well, a good reason to go back.  :D

OK, OK, on to artsy crafty stuff:
I do have a lovely collaborative bitty book charm necklace to share with you.
The lovely Robin of  Once Upon A Pink Moon
recently hosted a swap in the Marie Antoinette Mail Art group.
She did not just host it;
she taught us how to make itty bitty book charms with a wonderful tutorial;
she attached our charms and books onto our necklaces,
AND
she wired lots of extra pearl charms that she made for us onto it
so that we would all have a beautiful necklace like this:

 There were five of us in the swap,
and we each made five bitty books so that each member would have
one book from all the other members.  We also made 14 charms each.  ;)
These are books by Terri and Marti:

Each ties shut and has a dangly charm at the top.

The inside pages are Frenchie/Marie images.

These are books from Robin and Lisa:

 
I loved them all!
Do you even see how Robin made a teeny weeny birdnest with two pearl eggs in it?
Fabulous!

And this one's mine.
I used gold embossing powder for the French wording and edges of book.
There's a gold german scrap crown on the front,
embellished with rhinestone chain and pink crystal.
A gold fleur de lys charm,
and tied with gold metallic filament thread:

 

Here's a pic of all the bitty books I made: 

This really was one of my favorite MAMA swaps yet,
I just love this group!  Thank you so much, Robin!!
And thank you Marti, Terri, and Lisa!!

OK, so you may be thinking...but what's inside these bitty books?
Holding the little books open and snapping a pic proved too much of a challenge for me.
So, for your Friday Freebie this week,
I offer you an assortment of images which I pasted to the inside pages of my books;
each little image would be pasted onto one of the ten pages in the book.
Perhaps you will be inspired to create your own book!  :)
Check out Robin's blog for inspiration!
Or use for charms, etc.

and

Click to enlarge, right click and save!

Aloha!!

Sigh...
 

For links to lovely, shabby, chippy whites, stop by White Wednesday!

Lots of links to lovely pinks at Pink Saturday!

 

Thanks so much for visiting, and have a great weekend!