Creative Spark Summer 2016

For the past few years, I've been fortunate enough to be a designer for ZNetShows, a great supplier of cultured sea glass and other beads for retail and wholesale.  A few times a year, designer/artists are invited to choose from their new products and create jewelry and non-wearable art to be included in Creative Spark, an online magazine.

The summer issue has just come out, and it's chock full of eye candy featuring cultured sea glass in fun new shapes, sea glass beads, beautiful Chinese crystal beads, and glass pearls.

Two of my designs are included - a fun and lightweight cultured sea glass nugget necklace (page 31) that can be worn several different ways (including as a bracelet!) and earrings spotlighting Chinese crystals in a flat spiral weave (page 54)  that would look great with either a casual summer dress or a fancy outfit for dining under the summer stars.

This shows the bracelet option for this design - wrapped several times, with fun fringe.

Go check out the wonderful designs created by all of the jewelry artists, and if you're inspired, be sure to check out the offerings from ZNetShows!

Wherein We Dream of the Ocean

This is not an icicle...

'Tis the season of single digit temperatures and unforgiving wind chill factors.  The kind of weather when you step outside and rediscover your most colorful language.  For a Southern girl, I'm dealing with it just fine -- nothing a few extra layers of clothing and a giant puffy down coat can't help with.

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't welcome a whirlwind trip to a warm tropical beach right about now.

Of course, my bank account might differ with that dream, so I'll channel my tropical fantasy into some beady fun.

In the last ZNet Shows design outing, I got some really fun light turquoise cultured sea glass spikes, like the one in the picture at the top of this post. The color looks like the water in the Gulf of Mexico off the Alabama coast. The beads have two holes, and the base is slightly squared off rather than perfectly round, so I always wanted to experiment with using them in a beadweaving style.

It's fun, it's breezy, and it's nothing complicated. I loved being able to use these spikes in a modified right angle weave. 

You can get an idea of the height of the spikes, and you can see the second hole (which I didn't use in all cases)

Even if I can't sink my toes into some warm sand while sipping on a cool and fruity beverage, this necklace makes me think of summer. It'll look great with my puffy down coat, too!

Creative Spark Summer 2015

Once again, I'm thrilled to have been part of the latest issue of Creative Spark, which for the summer issues, highlights the myriad uses of the delicious cultured sea glass beads available from ZNet Shows.

The beads I selected are shown above -- beautiful colors that reminded me of sand, sunsets, and lovely soft shades of the ocean.  As always, I wanted to find ways to incorporate bead weaving into my creations, in addition to some more traditional stringing.  The main idea was to keep the designs light and summery enough to be comfortable if worn on the beach (or in the sweltering heat and humidity of the rest of the country).

First is a lariat using the orange and yellow nuggets, on a piece of leather long enough to wear looped low on the chest or doubled up to fit inside the collar of your shirt.  It makes a lovely tinkling sound as you walk while wearing it.

I set aside three of the orange nuggets and wove bead bezels, along with a St. Petersburg chain neck strap.  A woman tried to purchase this before I'd even gotten a picture. 

Next I played with the green rings, making a pendant and a matching ring.  The ring is a simple peyote band woven long enough to wrap around the sea glass ring on either side - easy peasy!

Finally, I used the red and blue rounds to make a pair of earrings and a matching ring.  Don't know why I seemed to gravitate toward creating rings, but these were so fun to make.

When making the ring above, there was a stage in its creation that was a viable alternative design -- more of a starburst than a puffy urchin shape that I finally decided on.  The starburst is shown below.

Thanks a million to Hope for her hard work on wrangling all the beaders together and editing the final product.  Thanks to Bill at ZNet Shows for providing the inspirational beads to work with.  And thanks to you for going to check out the magazine and seeing the creations of all the designers!

Lovely Sea Glass

In the midst of getting ready for shows and everything else that's been happening, I got these fabulous cultured sea glass beads from ZNet Shows.  Aren't they delicious? I've designed some sea-inspired pieces that will be in the next issue of Creative Spark magazine -- can't wait to share them!

The "Whoops!" Challenge Reveal

Have you ever ordered something online (or, gasp, horror, from late night tv shopping channels), only to discover, when you rip open the package with wild enthusiasm, that it's not quite what you had envisioned? 

Kind of what I imagine online dating might be like...

Cynthia Machata, the glorious woman behind the creations at Antiquity Travelers, had one of those "whoops!" moments when she ordered some glass pearls from ZNet.com.  When she expected to get some dainty grey beads, she ended up with some bodacious, bold 16mm beauties.  And a conundrum as to how to use them.

So she invited some friends to figure out what to do with these big balls. What does one do with Big Balls? (Now there's a sentence I never imagined I'd write!!) They brought to mind several ideas, which I had to pare down to be able to accomplish them amid the complete lack of free time that my new job leaves.  But I hope I've turned "Whoops!" into "Wow!"

First up, Big Balls become Beach Balls, when you add some equally bodaciously-sized shell beads.

These are wonderfully light beads, with the clasp in front for added fun. It may not be completely visible in the photo, but there's a lovely grey swirl throughout the shell beads that the pearls pick up beautifully. While I may be a beadweaver, I also apparently enjoy rocking some big beads, since these 20mm shell beads came from my stash...

Then, as anyone who came of age in the late 70s might do, I thought of Disco Balls!  So I added some woven beaded beads (made with crystals I had previously gotten from ZNet.com) to channel the glam.  

The sparkle is fairly subdued, balancing the size and subtle glow of the glass pearls, on a delicate sterling chain.  I don't go to the disco anymore, but work often calls for me to be in evening dress, so this necklace is probably going to get worn A LOT.

Thanks a million to Cynthia for the chance to play with these, and for the push to get back to beading and blogging. Go see what wonderful things these other folks have created with these Big Balls -- I know they'll make them from "Whoops" to "Wow!"

Linda    http://lindysdesigns.blogspot.com/

Bobbie     http://www.beadsongjewelry.com/ (thanks for visiting!)

Christine   http://onekisscreations.blogspot.com/

Hope    http://www.craftyhope.com/

Therese  http://theresestreasures59.blogspot.com/

Val  http://missvalscreations.blogspot.com/

Cynthia  http://antiquitytravelers.blogspot.com/