Letter writing 4x4

This is a 4x4 that I made for my altereddesigns yahoogroup.  the theme is letter writing as a background, and it should be no surprise to you that the vast majority of the ladies playing are using fancy script with images of Victorian ladies or the Tim Holtz pen nibs.  I hate making what everyone else is making, so I went a completely different direction:
 The school photos and the math worksheet are printed off the internet.  The notebook paper is actually a cardsock pattern from AMuse Studio.  You may wonder why I would buy cardstock that looks like notebook paper when I have tons of the real thing, but now that I've used some of it, I have to say, it is much easier to work with (real notebook paper is translucent and fragile), it isn't white but a cream color, perfect for a vintage look like this, and it takes media much better than real notebook paper, which was only designed for pen and pencil.the stark white of the math worksheet was too extreme for the rest of the piece, so I used some milled lavender distress ink to tone it down, and I threw in a few hearts (from AMuse Studio all for love stamp set) because, well, it is a love story.

Challenges:


Juliet Arrighi

Crystal heart

This evening I made a little crystal heart necklace from a  pattern I found online:

It came to together fairly easily.  I was feeling too lazy to try to thread two beading needles, so I used tiger tail.  it wasn't bad doing right angle weave with tiger tail, and the ends came out at the perfect spot that I could thread on the lighter pink beads to make it into a necklace.  There was only one problem - running the tiger tail through the beads caused it to curl much like curling ribbon does, and it won't hang straight as a pendant.  I tried running it though straightening pliers, and hanging a weight on it to stretch it (I don't have enough time between now and valentine's day for that to work, even if it would work eventually).  I hate the idea of unstringing all those seed beads to thread it some other way - any suggestions?
Juliet Arrighi