Often = every five months or so

It's halfway through the year. Let's revisit those resolutions we made back in January...

Like the one I made to try to maintain a blog. On a regular basis. Updating often.

Apparently, "often" has turned into "every four or five months".

Shoot.

On the bright side, I have been busy with jewelry making. Had a couple of good shows, a couple of so-so shows, and one that really crashed and burned. It's all part of the adventure, right?

Here's my mid-year resolution: I'll update this blog much more regularly. At least monthly ;-)

Serendipity

A couple of weeks ago, I was leafing through some of the books on my shelf, looking at eye candy and getting inspiration for new explorations. Leave it to Carol Wilcox Wells and her book, The Art and Elegance of Beadweaving, to spark an idea.

http://schoolofbeadwork.com/theartandeleganceofbeadweaving.aspx

The shape and proportion of the Cellini spiral caught my eye, and I decided to work with the size mix indicated in the pattern, although I wasn't going to make a bracelet. The pattern calls for three different colors of size 15s. My selection of that size is pretty limited, and since it was 10:30 at night, my access to the local bead store for a quick fix was not happening. I pulled out all of the teeny tinies in my collection, and found about seven colors to choose from.

When I found the three (graphite, moss green, and light mauve) that worked best together, it was time to search for other colors and sizes that would play nicely. The result is a color palette that's somewhat outside my norm, but I think that this time, serendipity was my friend.

Oh, and Carol, thanks for the inspirational eye candy!

What I Do

Beadweaving. Creating fabric, structure, texture from myriads of infinitessimal seed beads. Madness? Maybe. Frustrating? Frequently. Obsessive? Magnificently.

While I do a lot of stringing, beadweaving is a special kind of love. So here is a sample of my recent beadwoven work. This one is a poppy jasper donut as the delicious centerpiece of a freeform peyote necklace. Freshwater pearls and some red jasper add spice.

Treasure Hunting and Upcycling

One of my favorite recently-heard terms in the beading world is "upcycling" -- that is, recycling and reusing old jewelry bits and other fabulous stuff that can have a new life in wearable art. I really love the implication that you're not only giving something new life, but raising it to a new level. It's something I've dabbled a bit with in the past, but was itching to jump in on the action again.

So yesterday when I found myself with a little free time (okay, I should have done a few loads of laundry, but you understand) I went to a local antique mall and treasure hunted. There was some truly fabulous eye candy there, including several cases chock full of beautiful old rhinestone jewelry just screaming my name. I tried not to embarass myself by giggling like a kid in a candy shop, drooling excessively over the gorgeousness, or smacking my head into the glass trying to get a closer look. If only I had unlimited funds to answer the call....

But I did find some fun things that I can't wait to work into new pieces --

-- great leaf-shaped earrings with rhinestones and faux pearls, some rocking huge pierced silver earrings (nearly 2" in diameter and 3/4" high. Seriously, the woman who wore these originally must have been able to pick up radio signals from space with these babies!), and a lovely Victorian style silver, marcasite and black crystal necklace that was a steal at only $10. (I know! I was amazed, too!)

They'll probably have to live with me a while until they tell me exactly what they want to be in their next life, but rest assured that they'll show up here after their upcycling!

Obsession Results

As promised, here are quick photos of the results of the weekend's earring blowout. This actually isn't all of the earrings I made in that one night, but it does include some beadwoven earrings (along the top row in the picture below) that I had finished a while back, and finally added the ear wires to. They're not all terribly intricate, but they did fit the goal of the evening, which was to find some instant gratification and put together some pieces that will be bread and butter in my next show.

Earring overload!

Last night, I was pursuing instant gratification -- so I sat down to make some earrings. Quick, easy, satisfying.

And twenty-seven pairs later...

Apparently, I had a little pent-up need to play in the bead room. But I'm a little afraid that my picture will be the illustration of the definition of "obsessed" in the next edition of the dictionary.

Pictures (of the earrings) are forthcoming, I promise.

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!