Jonquils On The Beading Table

If you're looking for my Freeform Peyote - Choose Your Challenge entry, go here.  Then please come back!

This will probably become a pendant when it grows up...

Some days you just want to sit at the bead table and play.  No agenda, no preconceived notions.  Just a pile o' beads, some thread, and a need to let it flow.

These crackle yellow glass beads have been in the stash for a while, and amid all the grey gloomy days recently, they're a nice little jolt of sunshine.  Kind of like the jonquils that are on the verge of bursting into bloom in the front yard.

Can't wait for another play day - although next time it'll be to plan what to make with my bead soup!

Adventures in Freeform - The Reveal!

Karen Williams and Mandi Ainsworth threw out a challenge - create a freeform peyote piece and share it for all the world to see.

Some of the folks participating in the challenge are using this as a way to jump into the freeform world.  I've done a fair bit of freeform, so while it wasn't new for me, it was a great kick in the creative butt and a wonderful motivation to pick up the needle and play.

I decided to base my piece around a focal I'd had for years -- a beautiful borosilicate glass freeform pendant.  It has ruffles and colors and openings and bumps and lots of fun stuff.

Now, in the midst of this challenge, I spent a week out of town while my mom had some surgery (she's recovered beautifully and is doing great).  There was not as much downtime to bead during that week as I had imagined there might be.  Ah well.  Then earlier this week, I had my own little outpatient surgery.  All is well, but beading on the gurney was not happening.

So, this piece is perhaps not as elaborate as it might be, but it's fun - I hope you like it!

And some closeups of the focal that started it all, complete with all of its delicious nooks and crannies for attaching bead strands...

Thanks so much for visiting - be sure to visit the other folks participating in the challenge for great doses of beautiful eye candy.  And thanks to Mandi and Karen for their fearless leadership!

Adventure Guides

Mandi Ainsworth

Karen Williams

The Happy Adventurers

Bobbie Rafferty  (You are here!)

Sarah Meadows
Katherine Gale
Mandy Duffy
Leanne Kirsch
Jean Hutter

Nancy Dale
Judy Riley
Natasha Wiegelman
Pam Chesbro
Stephanie Woods
Romana Tschunko

Bette Greenfield
Mary Harding
Melody Marie Murray
Shirley Moore
Marj

Sally Russick
Therese Frank
Tanya Goodwin
Christine Altmiller
Lea Paličková
Ivona Šuchmannová

Jennifer Chasalow VanBenschoten
Kay Haynes
Tammy Bowman
Alisa Lehman
Lori Callahan
Debbie Rasmussen

Jane Kettley
SaraBeth Cullinan 
Tami Norris
Julie Schmidt Bowen
Tammi Clapper
Cynthia Machata

Wherein The Calendar Once Again Freaks Me Out.

 

You may not believe this, but some people actually consider me a fairly bright individual.  I mean, I've got lots o' degrees, a know to close my mouth if I look up when it's raining, I usually put my pants on before going outside.  Why, then, am I so often surprised by the calendar and rapidly approaching deadlines?

Karen Williams, the rock goddess of freeform peyote, and the lovely Mandi Ainsworth, who's quite the rock star with a freeform herself, have put together a challenge.

 

Since I'm over my self-imposed challenge hiatus, and because I have the impulse control of a two-year-old when it comes to freeform, I jumped right in.

 

Today, I looked at the calendar and realized that the reveal is a week from tomorrow.  A week from tomorrow, y'all!!!!

 

My impulse control is only outdone by my tendency to commit to big projects, which leads to one of those "eyes bigger than your stomach" conundrums.  The project I've envisioned, the one I've got underway, may be bigger than the time I have left to do it. 

 

Thank goodness it's a long weekend.  The massive housecleaning I had planned (HAHAHAHA - snort!) will just have to wait.  There are beads to be woven, folks!

 

Will she get it done?  Will her house disappear under a tidal wave of dust bunnies and dirty laundry?  This will, indeed, be an adventure.  Stay tuned...

No Postal Workers Were Harmed In The Delivery of This Soup

Y'all, I have discovered my bead twin from another mother, and it's my Bead Soup swap partner Nancy Dale.  Check out her blog, and go enjoy the eye candy at her website.

An envelope from Nancy arrived, and (proving miracles do happen) I managed to restrain myself long enough to take a picture of the lovely packaging:

Ooh, lucky me - two packages!

And then I opened them up to find these!

I wish my photography skills were good enough to show the luster on
the lampwork - it's luscious!

Look at the different gemstones! Look at the fantastic details on the lampwork rounds!
 Look at the delicious Bali silver!  Wipe your chin, because I know you're drooling!

Not one soup, but two delicious mixtures of gorgeousness, both built around lampwork beads by Julia Cannon.  Bless her heart, she sent two soups, because she was worried I wouldn't have enough to work with from just one package.  Either of these would have been perfectly grand.  The two together?  That's enough beads to roll around in like Scrooge McDuck.

After I picked my jaw back up off the floor, I had to laugh.  Why?  Because I came THIS CLOSE to sending Nancy a focal by Julia Cannon!  Yep, I knew Nancy and I were the perfect partners.

I did tell Nancy that if we ever had the chance to bead shop together, it would be a toss-up as to whether we'd enable each other into spending way too much money, or whether we'd be arm wrestling over the same strands of beads.

So, if I didn't build the soup I sent Nancy around a JulsBead, what did I send?

This!

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait to see what she makes with these!

Bead Soup 7 Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak peek, disguised because it's travelling incognito, of the bead soup I mailed off today to my partner, Nancy Dale.

Hope she has fun with it!

Going To Tuscon

No, not me.  But five of the pieces I made as part of the ZNet Shows design team were selected to be featured in their booth in the Tuscon shows this month.

I'm thrilled!  While I'd love to go to the Tuscon shows and enjoy a little bit of the sunny Southwest, to send these little pieces of myself is pretty cool.

If you're in Tuscon, go by the ZNet Shows booth and wave to my babies!

Bead Soup #7 - Woo Hoo!!

After six days with zero internet access (oh, my dear heavens, don't let anyone tell you that invisible connection to the online world isn't just as addictive as any drug), I'm back on line, and y'all, I'm doing a happy dance!

For the next Bead Soup Blog Hop, I've been paired with Nancy Dale.  Don't know who she is?  Bet you do -- just look here, and I know you'll recognize her work.

I mean, really, look at this: 



Dryad, Nancy's necklace that was a 2010 Bead Dreams finalist.


There is not one piece on her website that didn't just knock me down, wow me, or cause a spontaneous case of the vapors (the Southern girl's version of drooling, panting, and falling over in a dead faint - sounds so much more socially acceptable to call it "vapors").  She does absolutely jawdroppingly beautiful bead embroidery and bead weaving.  Do yourself a favor and check out her website.  Seriously great eye candy.  Try not to lick your computer screen.

I'm not at all sure my work is worthy of being paired up with Nancy, but I know we'll have fun with it!

Now, to get up to the bead room and start cooking up some soup...that's so much more fun than doing all the laundry that accumulated while I was out of town!