Two Pieces, A New Stitch, And A Long-Hidden Pendant

Kicking off 2013 with the two newest pieces off of the bead table.

First, a peyote bangle  -- a new version of a design I've made a couple of times before, this time in shades of rose and mauve that seemed attractively warm on a cold day.  The shades kind of remind me of the camellias that bloomed outside my bedroom window in the middle of winter when I grew up in SC.

The second piece is the result of digging deep in a stash of cabochons and focals that have been living in my supply drawers for a ridiculously long time.  Almost as long as it's been since there were camellias outside my bedroom window.

I wish I could tell you the name of the artist who made the lovely dichroic glass pendant.  Her name was in a spreadsheet that lived on my computer until my computer lost the will to live a few years ago and wiped its own hard drive clean as it died.  I believe her first name was Jeanne.  Any ideas as to who it might have been would be greatly appreciated.  (I've had the pendant for at least 10 years - shameful!!)

New year, new stitch

This was my first time using St. Petersburg stitch.  I do love it!  I'll be playing with this stitch a lot in the near future...

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011, everyone! Rather than making any resolutions (which I realized, years ago, are only slightly more productive than repeatedly banging your head against a brick wall), I've been spending the past few days lining things up to try to be more productive my jewelry-related life this year.

So I inventoried new bead purchases made over the holiday, prepared an application for an exhibition, made vague attempts to clean my beading table (attempts that usually just got short-circuited by working on putting together new pieces, which is more fun anyway), tweaked the website, and played around with my camera. One of my greatest frustrations has been a lack of a permanently set up space to photograph my work. The result has been haphazard quality photographs, at least when I found enough time to fuss with setting up and remembering how to use the camera...

But I think I may have found a solution that, even though I can't leave it set up all the time, is at least easy and reliable enough to do quickly. Hooray!

Here's picture of a recently completed bead embroidery piece that will eventually be the centerpiece of a necklace. It'll have to live with me for a while before I figure out how best to finish it.