A Beady Holiday

It's been a nutty six months. Seriously crazy. Upheaval at work, family job changes, losses of loved ones, moves - all said, not a lot of time or brain space to be creative in the bead room.

So when I had the day off yesterday for the 4th, I was determined - determined!! - to spend some time at the work table. Rather than jumping into a new project (there's one of those on the horizon, which I'll share in a couple of days), I completed a few simple necklaces that I'd strung up months ago. Several of them were ways to use up some beads that I'd had in my stash forever. Easy peasy, but I needed to make clasps and finish them all off.

This one has faceted carnelian (pretty big - about 12mm), amethyst and sterling. I am obsessed with the luscious richness of these two gemstones together.

This too a little extra planning and fiddling, to figure out how to incorporate the copper filigrees into a knotted necklace. With the rhyolite marquis and green jasper rounds, I'm pleased with the result.

Czech glass beads - clear with white cores swirled with black and gold stringers - paired with faceted clear beads with gold cores and onyx rounds. Nice and long to slip over your head without a clasp.

About as simple as it gets - a dichroic pendant that's been at the back of the bead drawers so long it's probably eligible for a driver's license. Hard to see here, but it's a lovely deep purple with a flash of dichro blue at the top edge. A couple of coordinating beads, chain and a sterling clasp. Done.

Again with the substantially sized beads - this time with gorgeous black fire agate, faceted and nestled into pewter end caps with onyx and glass spacers. It looks so elegant.

One of my favorite gemstones, flourite, kept simple with Bali sterling so that the variety of the gemstone colors is the focus of attention.

Mavis Smith may have been one of the first lampwork artists I ever purchased art beads from. Here's a focal of hers that I've been hoarding for way too long.

Aah, a vacation day, cooking out and fireworks, and some completed UFOs. A good day all around!
So what did you do for the 4th?

Winter Expo Preparations

Over the weekend, I tagged, bagged, and delivered over 70 pieces of jewelry for a month-long show and sale at the Evanston Art Center. Yes, that's 70+ pieces - 39 pairs of earrings, 31 necklaces, and 4 bracelets. Whew!  There's a little bit of everything here - big fancy statement pieces to simple fun pendants.

This is a juried show, and I'm still relatively new to the area, so I'm especially excited to be part of this event. For more information, go here.

If you're in the area, please come see the show!  Below are some of the pieces included:

Earrings, earrings, earrings!

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 Soup That Stayed Home

In putting together bead soup mixes this year, I came up with five possibilities.  Yes, five. I was having a grand time, sitting in my bead room, cackling like a bit of a mad beady scientist.

I eventually settled on the one (okay, ones) to send to my partner Rita. But the third runner up, or the Miss Congeniality of the bunch, kept calling to me.

So I made something with it myself.

Ceramic, agate, jade, freshwater pearls, Czech glass, ZNet Shows
 crystals, copper, hand fabricated clasp

The pendant is two ceramic beads, an agate donut, and some
copper discs, all on waxed cotton

I wore this soup out to lunch yesterday, which in a strange way seemed an appropriate place for it to make its debut. The soft greens felt especially spring-like to me, which was a welcome reminder that the weather will, eventually, warm up.

Long Weekend In The Workroom

Happy Labor Day, everyone!  I hope you've had a chance to relax a bit, doing whatever makes you happy for a while.

My workroom looks a bit like a bead bin exploded, but that's just a sign that I've been having some fun.  I'd show you a picture of the room, but seriously, I don't know how strong your stomach may be, and I don't want to cause anyone unanticipated visual trauma.

So here's something that I hope will be a little less visually jarring:

The agate donut had been sitting in my UFO pile forever, attached to a piece of backing in prep for a bead embroidery class I was going to teach, um, over eight years ago.  Class didn't happen, and so little donut sat there, forgotten and unloved and unembroidered, for a long time.

She's strung simply, on lustrous mother of pearl rounds, with some rich aventurine fan slices as dangles.

What else is working on the table?  I'll be posting those in the next couple of days!

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!

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.

Fresh Off the Beading Table

Slowly but surely, new pieces are finding their completed selves coming off the bead table.

This lovely sodalite chunk is not really a cabochon, but it also has no hole, so I couldn't fall back to the default mode and string it.  My wire wrapping skills (beyond the fairly basic) are relatively tragic, so that was out.  Ta da - it had to be in an embroidered piece.

I had these beautiful seed beads, which are palest sky blue lined with fresh spring green -- really a delicious combination, especially at this time of year.  The blue/green combo invited the inclusion of the malachite drop, which was another lovely purchase that had languished whle I figured out what the heck to do with it.  And who can argue with pearls (especially when they fill in the gap caused by the sodalite's irregular sides)?

See?  The pearls are kind of like a proper lady's petticoat, hiding what doesn't need to be seen underneath!  And this picture gives you a better look at the yummy lined seed beads.

I'd love to have a great name for this one, but my brain's on vacation.  Any thoughts?

The Queen's Tiara

Finally, after WAY too long, here is something relatively fresh off of the worktable.

This crazy lace agate cabochon has been living in the back of the bead drawer for years.  I love the beautiful colors and whorls of this stone.  The shades of grey and pink are so soft, but the striations make the whole thing graphic.  It looks like a designer topographical map.

I decided to surround the cab with soft pink freshwater pearls, but I wanted to make them a little playful.  So they're standing on end.  One's a little wonky in this photo, but he's since been disciplined back into line.

The final result looks kind of like a tiara of pearls surrounding the cabochon.  Or a starburst.  Or a crown roast (that last one may be because I'm hungry...).

I'm gonna go with the tiara comparison.