Cooking Up Some Fun

Hooray for Lori Anderson, the hostess with the most-est who wrangles hundreds of beaders together for her famous Bead Soup Blog Parties!  BSBH #6 is coming up, and I'm so happy to have been paired with the lovely Alice of Alice Dreaming.  We're in the third reveal group on August 25.

Alice and I have been swapping some emails to get to know each other better, but I knew we'd get along when she said she's never met a bead she didn't like (okay, I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea!)

Look at some of her beautiful creations (these pictures are all from her blog):

"Little Villa" from May's Art Bead Scene challenge - I remember really

liking this necklace, and now I get to swap with it's creator! 

Our sensibilities seem to be pretty similar, but our styles are different enough that this should be interesting.

Can't wait to start cooking up some bead soup for Miss Alice!

The Day Audrey Hepburn Bought Me Ice Cream

This past weekend, we were in a little town that we've spent summers in for the past 20 years, virtually every year of my kids' lives.

My son was visiting as well, so he and I made a date to get ice cream at a shop I used to bribe reward him and his sister with for good behavior.

We placed our orders, went to pay, and realized that there was a $10 minimum purchase for a credit card.  (Who, me, cash in my wallet?!?)  Even I can't eat $10 worth of ice cream, so I grabbed something quickly to make up the difference before the jamocha almond fudge in my cone started to melt.

It was this reusable shopping bag with the beautiful Audrey Hepburn on both sides.

So, Audrey bought me ice cream.

From now on, Audrey will carry my traveling beading supplies.  After all, she is wearing pearls!

What I Did On My Summer Mini-Vacation

A long weekend gave me a chance to spend time with family, reconnect with old friends, and play a little bit with some beads.

 I had packed a selection of seeds, drops, and daggers, intending to figure out how to make some flowers inspired by some I'd seen on Malin de Koning's blog.  Due to an unfortunate problem (namely, the fact that my brain decided to take a holiday and leave me unable to interpret printed instructions - aaarghhhhh!!!), my flowers are not Malin's pattern, but my own mashup creation.  

This will be a pendant, perhaps on a lovely length of cobalt blue sari silk

These made the cutest earrings, which I wore to a party Saturday

They were such fun, I found myself drawn to the local bead store like a moth to a flame, like a mosquito to my bare legs, like my son to the aroma of bacon.  So I came home from my mini vacation with a new pattern, some fun little flowers (more were made that didn't get photographed), and lots and lots of new daggers and drops to play with.  Now that's a good vacation!

I'm so in love with the gorgeous transparent green in the smaller flowers.

This Was The Crayola Color I'd Always Wear Down The Quickest

If your heart did a little extra flutter when you saw this shade of blue in these beads, you know why it's a good thing there wasn't anyone between me and the bead strand when I found them.

I mean, all's fair in love and the pursuit of transparent cobalt blue beads.

Sadly, my photographic skills do not do justice to these beauties.  Oooh, sigh....

Packing Daggers!!

When you pack for a long weekend out of town, what do you pack? Bathing suit?  Shorts?  Hiking boots?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.


I'm packing daggers.  

Isn't the green in these picasso glass daggers just delicious?

And drops.  And seeds.  And Fireline and sharp needles. (Insert mildly crazed beader laughter here)

Not entirely sure what these might become, but I'm gonna play this weekend!

Seriously, what do you pack for a long weekend away from home?

And I Was So Excited, I Forgot To Title This Post

Got a nice cool beverage and a comfy place to surf the net?  Then settle in for a fun blog hop - A Time To Stitch!   The challenge as set out by Christine and Therese, the fearless creators of the hop, was to make a piece in peyote or herringbone.

As I mentioned in my last post, life for the past two months has been at a crazed level of busy.  Like "turned up to 11" crazy.  What better time to take on one more thing, right?  But I'm a seedy gal (or "seed bead afficionado" so my mama doesn't faint if she reads this), so I couldn't resist.

Because I can't pass a challenge without adding more difficulty to it.  You know, like the Olympic triple flip dive off the high board doesn't really count unless you add a backward twist in pike position? Yep, that's me. So I made one peyote piece, one herringbone piece, and one that combines both.

Settle into that comfy place, grab the beverage, and enjoy!  (And you can click on each picture for a bigger version)

Here's the peyote bracelet - simple, but with a twist of texture.  Perfect to fiddle with when you're stuck in a boring meeting...

For the herringbone piece, I pulled out some beautiful lapis/malachite heishi that I'd been hoarding for years and years, just waiting for the right project -- this seemed like the right time to break 'em out.

I mean, seriously, LOOK at the gorgeous naturally
combined blues and greens in these babies!

And now for the extra credit, and because I entered the challenge hoping that I'd find a way to keep working up until the very last second, a piece that transitions from peyote to herringbone and back.  I'd never done this, never saw any instructions on it, but figured "how hard could it be?"  Let me tell you, it was kinda tricky, but it was fun to puzzle out.  The resulting woven portion doesn't have a lot of bend, so it didn't work out as the center of the necklace, but it makes for a great asymmetrical feature on a long necklace.

The order of the beads stayed the same from the Cellini spiral into the herringbone,
with the exception of the light blue size 8s, which caused the herringbone
to take on a life of its own and turn into a wildly fugly monster.
It was BAD.  So it was GONE.

A few rows of herringbone in one size (silver 15s) to transition between sections.

Thanks, Christine and Therese for giving me another reason to play with the tiny beads!  And go check out the other seedy folks who participated: 

Therese Frank and Christine Altmiller

Katherine Gale

Emma Andrews

Karin Slaton

Kim Bender

Lola Surwillo

Amy Severino

Bobbie Rafferty  (you are here!)

Sally Russick

Tanya Goodwin

Paula Kramer

Sarah

Karen Williams

Shannon Hicks

Andra Weber

Beth

DW

Marla Gibson

Lisa Stukel

Mandy Duffy

Cynthia Machata

Shirley Moore

I'm Armed With Seed Beads and A Needle -- Be Afraid...

It's time for another blog hop!  This time of year is always crazy for me at work, so committing to another deadline was not on my list of things headlined "Smart Things For Bobbie To Do Right Now If She Wants To Retain Any Semblance of Sanity".

But I couldn't resist this one.  Especially since sanity is, if we're honest, only a fond memory right now.

Christine Altmiller and Therese Frank dreamed up a fun idea -- A Time To Stitch, a challenge to create something in peyote or herringbone. 



Yippee! An opportunity for those of us who love the tiny beads to gather with likeminded people (some might call us crazy wackos who invite frustration by playing with miniscule bits o' glass...).  So I dove into the trove of seed bead tubes in my workroom, and grabbed a couple fists full to work with.

The hop is Tuesday (yes, I appreciated the gentle reminder Christine emailed yesterday.  I appreciated it more once I had recovered from my involuntary yelp of panic, but you know...).  Things are progressing pretty well, though nothing is completed yet.

Tonight's plan is to rip out and rethink an unfortunate turn things took during last night's work session.  Seriously, the design I had in my head was gorgeous.  What was at the end of the working thread looked more like the love child of a 50's horror movie nuclear fallout mutant creature and the wierdest sci-fi alien you can imagine. 

Yep, it was ugly.  But where's the fun if nothing challenges you, right?!?