A Time To Stitch 7 - Meet Pansy and Iris

Sometimes we all need a kick in the creative pants.  Or a creative kick in the pants.  Whatever works.

Anyway, two of the most creative beady ladies I know, Christine and Therese, occasionally reach out to pose a design challenge, focused on a particular beadweaving stitch or technique.  This time, it was bead embroidery.  And boy, was I in need of a kick in the creative pants!

Now, bead embroidery and I are old friends. I love combining it with beadweaving to make pieces like this and this and this, and the first necklace here.  I had visions this time of making another ginormous piece.  Of spending hours after coming home from work, beading happily away.

And then life said "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!"

The reality is that I needed to do something small, something that I had a prayer of finishing. And since it's been so *@#$ chilly recently, I wanted to do something that reminded me that, yes, it really IS spring.

So I dug out some colorful glass cabochons from the stash, and let their bright colors inspire me. I used some faceted firepolished glass, some lentils, and some magatamas to spice up the mix of sizes and shapes. I'm happy to introduce Pansy and Iris.

Pansy is a sweet little round-faced confection of purples, gold, and shades of green.  Like the cheerful flower that inspired her, she's a concentrated little burst of color.  And, if you know me at all, you know that anything purple has me from the get-go.

And Pansy's slightly less demure cousin, Iris.  Iris is a bit of a show-off, with her extravagant swoops of petals, but her unusual blue color makes her a star in any bunch.

Both will eventually have a woven bail added to them so that they can live on as necklaces, but for now, we'll just say they're in their bud phase, not yet fully blossomed.

Now before I torture any metaphors any further, here's the list of the other participants in the Time To Stitch 7 challenge.  Go, enjoy, get inspired.  Thanks to Therese and Christine, and thanks for stopping by!

Therese (Host) 

Christine  (Host)

Amy

Lola

Lori F

Kim

Becky Pancake

Karin G.

Debbie (Kepi)

LizE

Maryanne

Paula

Alenka

Wendy

Janet

Jasvanti

Ginger

Alicia

Bobbie

Shirley

Sarah

Cynthia

Mary H

Lizzie

Samantha

Sally

Niki

Karen W.

A Pile O' Earrings

Imagine...a weekend with no obligations, free access to all the past seasons of Game of Thrones, and a collection of twins, tilas, rizos, and other fun shaped beads that you've been wanting to play with....What might happen?

Well, if you're anything like me, you'll end up with a pile o' earrings.

This is just a part of what came off the worktable.

In all, I made over thirty pairs of earrings. And I caught up to date on Game of Thrones. Win/win!

Half Of A Good Idea

A lovely strand of faceted Czech firepolished glass in variegated soft colors called my name at a bead show.  So like any beader worth her salt, I bought that strand. And two of its identical twins.

We won't dwell on the fact that I just admitted to hearing beads talk to me.

The thought was to use them to make a netted rope necklace, kind of like this one.  Hopefully I had enough beads that I wouldn't run out halfway through (again...)

That was all well and good, until I actually started making the necklace. It was obvious that the beads were a little too big to let the necklace flow softly. Instead, it was going to make a rope about as big around as your thumb - a little chunky if it's solid around the neck.

So, plan B! Instead of a whole necklace, I made beaded beads.  

Oh, and it turns out it wouldn't have been enough to make a whole 16" or 18" necklace anyway. Gotta stop trying to eyeball bead quantities in the midst of the bead show floor.

But now I have an assortment of lovely sparkly beaded beads, and no clear idea of what to do with them. It's not the first time I've discovered that my great idea was actually only half of a great idea. Any suggestions for what might work with these?

Partially Elegant

For the Winter Blues reveal, go here!

Once upon a time, there was a small container of lovely purple druks that got set down next to a small container of light blue faceted crystals. No one expected that they would play nicely together, but surprisingly enough, they were kind of elegant together.

Sometimes a serendipitous discovery, or a junky bead table, can lead to some surprising combinations like this one.  So I whipped out the seed beads and the needle, and brought them together in a netted necklace.

Except that there weren't quite enough beads to make a complete necklace. At least not a complete necklace for a grown woman with a neck bigger than 12" around.

Oops.

So I toted the partially completed necklace to every shop in town, and even a couple of bead shows, trying to find purple druks that matched to add enough length at the back.  Here's a revelation -- apparently, a 6mm druk in a nice rich purple is scarcer than hen's teeth. 

What I ended up with is close. Not perfect (the new purple's a little too blue), but close enough for me to wear since the back will be hidden by my hair.  If I want to sell this, the search for the perfect purple will continue.

Until then, it's partially elegant.

Winter Blues - The Reveal!

Liz E of Bead Contagion found some very cool blue goldstone donuts, and like any good friend with a box of goodies, she offered to share. Beads, donuts, blue, sparkly?  Um, yes, please!

These beads, as you might guess from the name of the hop, arrived in the mail in the dead of winter.  And like a clear, dark winter night, they turned out to be a delicious deep blue with the sparkle of a million stars. So pretty.

Recently obsessed with chances to improve my budding soutache skills, I whipped out my soutache, my seed beads, and my dandy new scissors, and decided this was the perfect chance. And boy, howdy, did I have fun with this! I don't usually name my pieces, but I think this one has named itself "Night In The Kasbah"...

You can just glimpse the jump ring that will eventually connect this pendant to a necklace,
but wowza, look at the goldstone sparkle in that donut!!

Liz, thank you for the beautiful blues, and thank you for the chance to create! These beads were a bright spot in the darkest part of a long winter.  And now, to wait for the breeze outdoors to warm up enough to evoke the warmth of the Kasbah...

Now, go see what everyone else made with their sparkly blues!

Liz (host):  Bead Contagion
Christine:  One Kiss Creations Beaded Jewelry 

Jasvanti:  Jewelry by Jasvant 

Cynthia:  Antiquity Travelers    

JoJo:  Tahoma Beadworks & Photography

Bobbie:  Beadsong Jewelry

Therese:  Therese’s Treasures 

Amy:  Amybeads

A Surprise Behind The Door

There's a little hole-in-the-wall shop near my office that has an unassuming little sign out front saying, "FABRIC".

I needed a new pair of embroidery scissors for my new soutache adventures (ok, who am I kidding -- any excuse for a new tool!), so I dropped in, hoping to find something.

Behind the unassuming door to the narrow little hole in the wall shop, this is what I saw:

This was half of the store. The other half of the store is REALLY full.  And you should see
the back wall (actually, there's no way to see it -- you just have to assume it's there behind the trims)!

Holy cats, I found fabric heaven.  The whole place was packed - PACKED - with fabric from floor to ceiling, front to back, with only the narrowest of paths between the three towers of bolts of awesomeness. It was amazing!

As in "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe", where the children open the door of a wardrobe and discover a fantastic new world, I felt like I'd fallen into a magical place. It's a good thing I don't sew anymore, because I'd have rented a UHaul and backed it right up to that unassuming little door and cleared the place out.  Some lunch hour soon, I'll be back over there, digging through the stacks in search of the treasures you know must be there.

Oh, and the scissors? Yep, I got some.  They look like a tie dyed rainbow stork, they're just the size I wanted, and they're weird unique enough that no one will walk off with them by mistake!

Melting Lakes and A New Bracelet

The weather around here has been absolutely glorious for the past few days.  Temperatures warm enough to go out with fewer than ten layers of clothes on. Actual, honest to goodness sunshine. Ground visible where before there were waist-high piles of snow.  Spring is truly on its way.

So I went out for a stroll yesterday down to a little park on Lake Michigan that's near my place. It's always a little colder next to the lake than it is a few blocks away, so there was snow on the sand, and large shards of ice being pushed up to the shoreline by the waves of the thawing lake.

Those are thin sheets of ice, each about the size of a poster board, piling up on the
shoreline as the lake melts
and the waves push the surface ice to land

The sky was blue, the ice on the water was sparkling, and people were enjoying the promise of spring.

A week or so, when the snow was still deep on the ground, I finished this bracelet, and to me it just screams "spring!!!!" It's a pattern that came from just sitting and playing with the beads.  With the recent thaw, it seems right to show it now.

You'll see it's kind of the next step in the patterns I developed here as part of one of the Time To Stitch challenges.  I was having ninety-three kinds of fits trying to figure out an appropriate clasp, but I found the cute little citrine colored mushroom-shaped beads, and ta da!

Here's a little video I shot on my phone at the lake.  Ignore the sounds of the people who were behind me and enjoy the gentle sound of the waves under the surface of the ice, whispering the promise of warmer days. (That is, if the video works -- it's behaving very strangely for me....)