A C Willis Western Adornments

10/10/2026

Ask me how I know... 💋

09/23/2026

Do you ever wonder "does she use cheap materials like vinyl to back the earrings?"

Nope. I use genuine leather to back all the earrings I make. Below is the leather I currently have on hand. The last picture shows the thickness of each compared to the thickness of a quarter.

The black is lambskin. It is very soft and supple. It is very easy to sew by hand with regular needles and sews well using my household sewing machine.

The tan is buckskin. This is a thicker, sturdier leather. It can be difficult to sew by hand with regular needles and beading needles, is best sewn with glovers needles specifically for sewing leather, and until I am able to purchase a sewing machine made for sewing leather will always be sewn by hand no matter what I'm making.

The white is goatskin. Though this is the thinnest leather I have on hand it is neither as soft and supple as the lambskin nor is it as sturdy as the buckskin. It is fairly easy to sew by hand using regular and beading needles and, even though I haven't tried it yet, could be sewn using my household sewing machine.

I use mostly the lambskin and goatskin for earrings, but do occasionally use the buckskin.

09/15/2026

Every. Single. Day.
In the words of Mel Robbins- No one's coming.

08/31/2026

Humble beginnings - Where it all began.

My daughter found my very first piece of beadwork yesterday.

This cellphone case I made a little over 20 years ago is based off of Martha Berry's bandolier bags from an article in Beadwork magazine. I scaled down the pattern and added a pin finding so I could lace the strap through my belt loop for the case to hang at my side. The lettering on the flap says "Tsalagi," English translation Cherokee, in the Cherokee syllabary. My beadwork has come a very long way in the last 20 years.

Thank you Nattaliey for finding it!

08/25/2026

The torrential rains the Midwest got hit with the middle of this month got me good. By the time it was all said and done we had a good foot of water in our basement. My town got so much rain that the town's sewer system couldn't handle it so multiple homes here in town had a foot of water in the basement. It's now dry enough down there I can finally start going through all my silversmithing stuff and see what's salvageable. I spent today going through the drawers that I had all my gemstones in and drying stuff. I lost some of my packaging supplies and the steel shot for my tumbler, my small torch is done for and so is my pickle pot (the crockpot on top of the drawers), but the gemstones are fine. Tomorrow I start going through the tools and the contents of my workbench which I'm absolutely dreading.😬 Hopefully my oxy/propane torch will be fine once it completely dries out.

08/09/2026

3 down, 2 to go.
Thinking about using glow in the dark beads for the last 2. What do you think?🤔

08/07/2026

I got 2 keychains finished and 3 more ready to be beaded. Colors picked out for the next keychain, but something is off with the colors. I think it's the green. Now I just need to come up with the pattern for the next one.

08/02/2026

A couple days ago I broke my very last needle for my teeny, tiny beads that I use to create the highly detailed intricate work you're used to seeing on here, like what I did on my denim shirt, so until I get more I'll be working on building my stock of keychains and earrings.

07/31/2026