Bead Peeps Swap & Hop - My Partner and What She Sent

I'm so excited to be participating in a new-to-me swap and design challenge, this time hosted through the Bead Peeps Facebook group.  And I'm thrilled to introduce my swap partner, Lori Alainn Blanchard of Alainn Jewelry. (What, you don't follow her blog yet? Get yourself over there, enjoy the eye candy, and put her on your blog feed immediately! You're welcome.)

Lori's an enthusiastic and warm person, who's planning her wedding while she works and designs her fantastic jewelry. She rides motorcycles, which proves she's the kind of brave bad ass lady I can't possibly claim to be (I would be decorating the pavement immediately). She's got a fun sense of humor, and her spirit comes through in her designs.

Lori and I are really well-matched. We both love to explore and mix a variety of techniques, and love color. We both work with seed beads and larger beads. Neither of us has met a bead we didn't like (or at least think we could so something with). She shops with the same philosophy as I do - if it's pretty or interesting, buy it with the certainty that you'll find a fabulous use for it eventually.

Want to see some of Lori's beauties?

This first one knocked my socks off.  It just got photographed for inclusion in Bead & Button (yay, Lori!), and I think you can see why.  It also proved to me that we were well-matched, because it reminded me of a necklace I made that I affectionately referred to as "the monster."

This next one has lush, abundant fringe. I can't do fringe. Don't know why, but I've never felt like a fringe-y kind of girl, but this might change my thinking.

And this bracelet? The colors are so pretty and the embroidery is great.

In yesterday's mail, I got the beads that Lori sent me for this swap challenge, and y'all, it's full of yummy things.  Take a look!  Czech glass and delicas and seed beads and daggers and tilas and half tilas and a highly cool focal, oh my!

Yes, take a closer look at the very cool focal.  It's a lapis cab with sculpted clay by Sculpted Windows.

The big challenge here? The neon creamsicle seeds. I told Lori I am challenged by neons, and she picked up on that. But she eased me into dealing with my phobia by sending neon beads that actually pick up a color in the focal, so I think I may be okay. Hold a good thought.

What did I send Lori? I forgot to take a picture before packaging it up, but you can see it here.  I can't wait to see what she makes with it!

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!

The Voice From the Bead Display

So I'm walking through a bead show recently, when I hear this little voice saying, "Psst, hey lady, look over here!"

It was coming from these luscious little purple glass drops with impressionistic blooms of color on them.  They were sitting, inconspicuously waiting to lure me into dropping some dollars in their direction.

What? The beads never speak to you? I see you nodding your head, so don't even try to deny it.

Yes, they came home with me, and we had a lovely play date.  And this is what they told me they wanted to be when they grew up.

Thanks, Nancy, for the clasp, which was left over from the awesome bead soup you sent me!

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!

Tilas Times Two (Say That A Few Times Fast!)

More results from my experiments with tila beads, again in bracelets.

This first one came from playing with creating the diamond shape.  I only had enough of the tiny crystals to make the section you see, which was too short to make a bracelet for anyone over the age of ten.  In another testament to the value of hoarding collecting beads, I found some larger firepolished beads that matched, to make it just long enough.  They really are the same color, but they have a slight AB finish, so it throws off the appearance in the photo.

The clasp is the first time I've fabricated a toggle, but it turned out better than it had any right to.

The second bracelet was a continuation of the courtship of the tila and the twin hole beads. 

I just noticed the honking long piece of fireline that's hanging out on one edge when I was uploading the pictures.  Dammit.  Time to get a stronger pair of reading glasses if I couldn't see that thing waving around without blowing it up to super size on the computer screen!

Wherein I Am Thankful That Fireline is Relatively Affordable

Yesterday was the first Saturday (heck, the first day) in a very long time that I could sit in the bead room and play.  So I thought I'd work on this necklace that's been living on my worktable in various stages of incompletion for a long time.

I have completed this necklace about forty bazillion times in my mind's eye, each time a little differently.

The centerpiece finally came together.  Well, okay, after versions 1 and 2 and maybe 3 -- I kinda lost count) just weren't quite it.  Ripped that baby apart a few times before I was satisfied.

So what to do for the rest?  I had fallen madly in love with the flat spiral when I used it on one of my Bead Swap Blog Hop pieces, so I thought I'd use it here. Then I was worried that I didn't have enough of the faceted firepolished beads to make a long enough necklace, so I added crystals in between sections of spiral.  Yesterday I finally sat down to put it all together.

AARGH!!! 

That is so NOT what it looked like in my mind.  The balance is all off.  The strap is just not proportionally right for the watch faces.  The sparkly wheel I made to use as the clasp is too small.

And to add insult to injury, I can't figure out why the picture is showing sideways instead of upright, but bless its heart, the necklace is bug ugly either direction...

And here, dear reader, is where I would tell you what I actually said, but to spare delicate sensibilities and avoid having my language compared to that of a salty old sailor, I'll sum it up as "well, crap."  Followed by a glass of wine to go with my whining.

I've got another idea percolating, and maybe tomorrow night will bring some play time.  If nothing else, there may be a massive sacrifice of fireline as I weave and rip it back out again...

Delayed gratification

Seems that I've been into the delayed gratification projects recently. I've got a Cellini spiral necklace going, and while the colors are working out better than I imagined they might, it's an exercise in patience (could be all the size 15's in the mix...they don't cover a lot of real estate quickly!). There are a couple of other beadweaving projects in various stages of completion stashed in various beading sports around the house, waiting for me to pick them up again.

I think it's time for some instant gratification work -- I feel an earring binge coming on!