Been Busy

Well!! Here I am again; I had intended to blog every week this year, and life just keeps getting in the way!! But I have finally found a spare minute again, so I thought I would try to update the blog with what I have been up to. I finally finished my Dryad necklace - and (GASP) entered it into BeadDreams 2010!!! I am so excited to have entered into such a prodigious competition, and I can't wait to see all that entered their pieces in as well. Please come over to my website and check out the rest of the photos of Dryad, I love to have company!!

Dryad took quite awhile to visualize and make, and so I have been doing some smaller pieces since. But I already have another idea (or two) for more pieces on that scale, and am itching to get at them, so it won't be long now until I hunker down over some more embroidery. For now, I have been concentrating on some beadweaving. I made a smallish bracelet (no pictures yet) with three lengths of Russian Spiral - all in 15s!!! When using all the same size beads, rather than putting larger ones in, the spiral looks quite a bit like delicate netting - especially when done with the smaller beads. I really enjoyed making it, and am thinking of another, longer bit that could be a necklace.

THEN, I found a fabulistic free pattern on Sabine Lippert's website!!! Sabine is a friend of mine on Facebook, and she is truly amazing. Not only is she a creative genius with beads, she is also a doctor! When I asked her how on earth she found time to bead, she said she spends every spare minute either beading or thinking of beads (this sounds suspiciously like me!). She has been concentrating on the beads in the last three years, with incredible results. Some of my favorite patterns and works from Sabine are a combination of right angle weave and peyote stitch; once you make one of these projects, you find that the components are so versatile that you'll be playing with it for weeks!! I think she has a very distinctive flair to her work, and that her personality shines through her beadwork. Sabine likes to combine different and unusual beads and finishes in her work, such as Raku elements with Swaorvski crystals. As if all of this were not enough - she has already written and published a beading book!!! (Perlenkueche - the book is only available in German at the moment, but Sabine's illustrations are so clear that most beaders would be able to follow them without the written instructions.)

Above are a few of my favorite bracelets Sabine has made. The first two photos are of Network, a gorgeous cuff that really grabbed my attention. I LOVE how she made the netting over the peyote base, and the colors just drew me right in. The third photo is one of her newest weaves, and this one is called Golden Ivy. She also made a silver one titled simply Ivy. I love how they curve and flow, and how the components really do make you think of dainty little leaves. The next photo, below, is Sabine's Maze Lace bracelet - and this is the pattern that she has FREE on her website - isn't it GORGEOUS!!!!

And now, this is my variation of her pattern. I chose to use bright copper, bright silver and matte black for a palette, and added tiny little cube beads into the diamonds left open in the weave. I had the absolute BEST time weaving this - the steps in it just have the smoothest rhythm to me. If Sabine doesn't mind, I may make another as a gift for a friend... this pattern is addictive!

Sabine has soooo much more for you to look at, both patterns (free and for sale), her book, her blog, and her website. I really encourage you to go and look, and find a pattern for something you would like to create, too! Website: www.trytobead.com. Blog: try-to-be-better.blogspot.com. And her Etsy shop: www.trytobe.etsy.com . Have fun browsing!

Olympic Beading

Have you been watching the Olympics? I have. As a matter of fact, I think I have been watching way too much of the coverage. There I was this morning, edging a piece of bead embroidery for the huge collar project I have been working on, and I have sports casters running through my head: "...and here comes the favorite of the underdogs, NEDbeads, and I'm just not sure she's going to have the staying power to make it through here, she's been having some shaky stitches in the last few practice runs, no, wait, that was a good stitch there, and again, but NO, there, that was a sloppy one, you have to have much more concentration and determination when you're up against the greats like Sherry Serafini, she's losing ground now... but she may be able to get the bronze if she can get her game on..." And so on.

The collar is coming along. I am creating it in pieces of embroidery, and then linking them together. I only have two components, fringing and a clasp left. So I can almost see the finish line from here! It seems to be taking a very long time, to me, but then I am seeing it come together just as I saw the idea in my mind the first time, and that is a treat. I LOVE being able to come up with a visualization of something and then create it - something I was never really able to do when I was drawing or writing. To me, sculpting something with beads comes much more easily.

I've had a busy week thus far, and forgot several things along the way - calling a friend (oops, still not done), getting the laundry done, staying upright while walking the dogs outside on the ice. However, a skinned and bruised knee is not enough to keep me from beading! (Just put the foot up, angle sideways, and there you go! Not particularly comfy, but it works.) At the very least, I did not fall ON the dog, which is a blessing, as she is a Pomeranian, and would have squished.

Speaking of Olympics and beading (which I was before), I wanted to introduce those of you who aren't familiar with her to Leinaala Mitchell, of BellaBeadjeweled. If there was such a competition, Leinaala would be right there in the top spots. Her work is incredible. She works with deep, rich jewel tones with precise workmanship and produces sumptuous and organic works of art. She is a self taught artist who has been beading for years, and she says that she beads intuitively, letting the pieces grow as they wish. I had to include a few of her works here, my favorites:





Pictured above are her lovely Tango Earrings, the incredibly detailed Mermaid's Ransom, and the gorgeous, organic, and voluptuous Hidden collar. I have such respect for Leinaala as an artist, and she is a wonderful friend, as well, and a member of the Etsy Beadweavers Team. If you have to see more (and I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't want to), you can visit her at
http://www.BellaBeadjeweled.etsy.com, http://www.BellaBeadjeweled.1000markets.com and http://www.LeinaalaMitchellArt.com .

As for me and my collar, keep thinking trees. Lush, dark green leaves and crystals, pearls...you get the idea! I hope to have another teaser picture soon, but in the meantime, here is a photo of my other favorite tree-related beadwork, Mighty Oak, which features a terrific bead by Lloyd Osborn:



Now, back to the collar. "...and she may make it yet, she only has a couple of curves left to finish this piece..."

Life Lately

I did not have a hard time picking something out to blog about this week; just the reverse, I was only trying to figure out which of the ten things I had on my mind to include!! I was included in Mortira's awesome blog this week, where my Serenity Vessel was featured with a lot of other really wonderful artists, which I thought was pretty exciting, AND I was featured in an Etsy treasury listing, which was terrific! Unfortunately I was not able to figure out how to get a link to show you the treasury, but you can see the blog here:

"http://inspirationalbeading.blogspot.com/2010/02/poster-sketch-beads-potions-and.html"

Please visit Mortira at her shop:

"http://www.etsy.com/shop/sagescupboard"

I bought two new beads (of course!!) at Hannah Rachel's shop, Good River Gallery, on Etsy:



Is that not GORGEOUS??!! I love her beads, but especially her florals. The other I purchased is also a flower. But I wanted to include some of her other work. She does amazing and intricate beadwork and I had to include a picture of one of my absolute favorites of hers, Toas Sunset:



I am thinking of which new things I would like to list on Etsy this month, possibly a few more of my vessels. More of my necklaces would be good, too. I have noticed that I don't have very many earrings included anywhere...I haven't made any in ages, so I should be thinking about that, too. And, of course, I am in the middle of two large collar projects as it is, and have three cuffs in mind to start...I don't have enough hands! It would probably be helpful if I would stop shopping Etsy quite so much, as I seem to find something new that I HAVE TO HAVE every week! No, I don't buy them ALL...really. Honestly.

This week I have also spent a lot of time grooming and caring for my dogs (Nikki, Teddy, Sunny & Sydney) . I realized that I had not added photos of them in my blog, and so planned to correct that today. So, here are a few of my favorite ones:

This is Teddy (Theodore H. Bear), who just turned 4 today!

This is Nikki (Nikita Bean)

This is Sunny Bear

And this is Sydney Belle

These guys are such a huge part of my everyday life that I had to include them this time. Teddy is my shadow, Nikki is the Princess, Sydney is very much like a huge cat ("Pat me when I ask, otherwise LEAVE ME ALONE, thanks."), and Sunny is my husband's dog. The chows like to hang out, the pomeranians want nothing but playing and attention at ALL times - including beading times! It is a challenge to bead with a Pomeranian on your lap...

Dogs, beads, shopping, laundry, housework...life goes on!!

Beading Away and a Few Favorites

Hello again! Here I am, sitting at my kitchen table, watching the rain fall from the gutters onto my deck. I am surrounded by beads, and had to make a place for the laptop. Pearls, gemstone chips and beads, seed beads in all sizes, bugles, crystals, flip tops and strands and baggies and a huge pile of bead soup in glorious hues of green, bronze, gold, browns and topaz, with a tiny hint of Montana Blue here and there. Coffee sits at my elbow. Doesn't it sound fantastic?! But instead of beading, I am blogging...at the moment!

I am working on a long project now, something that I expect to take me about a month to finish, as long as my muse doesn't desert me. It will be a collar, eventually, but right now it sits in separate components. I have one component almost finished and have started the second. There are at least five more to go, before assembly will begin. Whew!! The photo at left is the one that I have posted on my Facebook page, as a teaser - it shows part of one component in the middle of its creation. (At least that is the largest one, and the one that is almost all done!!)

This particular design came to my mind about eight months ago and has been percolating ever since. It all started with a pendant made by the wonderful Chris Kapono at MandarinMoon on Etsy. I was browsing her amazing shop, which is chock full of her polymer clay art, and there, low and behold, was a leaf pendant! I HAD to have it, but wanted to know if she could remove the bail, as I desperately wanted to use it as a cabochon. And off it went!! Pretty soon I was begging Chris to make me cabochons of all kinds, and asking her (nagging her, I think) if she would make me some more leaves. Fabulous being that she is, she some really wonderful ones for me...I hope you will be able to see the results soon - in about a month!

I am also in the middle of a different choker, more on the lines of Honeybutter, but in different colors and with a quite different feel to it. That one hasn't got any teaser photos, yet, but as soon as I can get my beautiful cabochon (it's on its way now!) attached to it, I will do some.

For anyone who checks this out and isn't familiar with her, I wanted to include Carol Dean Sharpe in my blog today. Carol Dean has been creating art her whole life, and started beadweaving in 2004. An amazingly talented artist, she is consistently prolific and turns out peyote stitched cuffs and patterns at an astounding rate, given the amount of work involved in just one of her pieces. She creates all of her own original patterns, and has a crisp, yet flowing style. I have added two of my absolute favorites here, with Carol Dean's gracious permission:



Her Red Bargello Hearts Cuff, and:



Her Golden Scrolls Cuff, which includes a gorgeous hand made button. Carol has been an incredible friend for me since I have been on Facebook, and she is so supportive and generous. Please visit her shop at www.sandfibers.etsy.com. She is having a 3 for 2 pattern sale right now in both her Etsy and Artfire stores, and for anyone who wants to weave themselves a stunning cuff, this is an excellent opportunity to grab some really beautiful patterns!!!



I also wanted to include here two cabochons that I just purchased (and they came in the mail yesterday!!). I LOVE them, and HAVE to show them off:






These were handmade by Cindy at ccvalenzo, also on Etsy. (Can you tell that I am a huge fan of the artists on Etsy??!) She produces gorgeous pendants, earrings, cufflinks, barrettes and more with her dichroic glass, and graciously agreed to remove the bails and make these two into cabochons for me! I got onto Cindy from Sandy Spivey, who made this stunning necklace with her cabochon:



And, I just barely realized that I bought the same cabochon as Sandy did!!! So that one will have to be for me or for a gift, and I will just have to make something for sale with the other one!! (POOOOOOOR me!!)

Beading as Therapy

This time I am pretty late in getting my blog going, it is already after six in the evening! I struggled all day to come up with what I wanted to say this week, and was finally helped along by a friend on Facebook (thanks, Sheila!!) who suggested that I write about how I started beading. The beginning is a little depressing to read, you may want to skip a paragraph!

I suffer from chronic depression and a disabling panic condition, which resulted, years ago, in needing to have a case-worker help me out each week, so that I could go to the grocery store and so on, as I could not go alone. (Thank God, I am better than that now, and am able to get out usually without help.)

But she did more than help me with that, and this lady was SERIOUSLY cool!! Janet was her name, and she was fun and funky and just the most cheerful woman I had ever met. She seemed to love her job, and I know for a fact that she must have helped out more people than her employer ever knew. She wore great printed dresses and birkenstocks and socks, and wore her black hair long, sported gorgeous jewelry and hummed Grateful Dead songs when she was thinking. Her jewelry, as I am sure you can guess, was mostly beaded - and mostly beaded by her!! One day while we were visiting, I asked her about a pair of particularly long and elegant earrings she had on, and that's where it started. Janet took them off and handed them to me, and then explained that she had made them herself, and how. They were brick stitch dangle earrings with long fringe, ending in pretty iridescent blue drops. Before the week was over, I had purchased seed beads, bugle beads, drops and earring findings, and Janet showed me brick stitch. I was completely blown away and lost forever into the bead world.

I don't know if she knew, but she started much more than a hobby for me. I hope she knew - I tried to tell her, but before I knew it she was gone. Apparently she had left work in a hurry, and no one seemed to know where she went from there. Beading became my passion, my calling, and the most effective tool for therapy that I had ever had before. The calming, methodical stitching eased my panic and helped me to escape the long depressions. Not only that, but I was then left with a beautiful result - something pretty to wear!! I determined that I would learn as many stitches as I could, and that I would get GOOD at something. If I could, I would get GREAT at something!! It was wonderful to have a goal. Being able to attain that goal, learning more and more, and getting better as I went, went a LONG way toward helping me along.

One of my main aims was to get great at peyote stitch. I LOVED that you could shape it, that you could get beads to hang together ON THEIR OWN, and stand as sculptures, or beaded beads, or fabric, or...anything!! I worked and worked, and boy was I bad at it at first...but it got better, and better, and before I knew it, I HAD it!! And loved it. I still adore peyote, but these days the tension seems to get to my tendonitis (in my working thumb, of course), and so I am working mainly with other stitches. And now, low and behold, there are MORE stitches that let you make and shape sturdy beadwork sculptures, and I am getting good at those! It seems that the things you can learn are endless...the combinations are endless...and the things you want to make are endless. Beading makes every day an adventure, whether it is a good day, a bad day, a sad day, or even an angry day. I bead through whatever I am feeling at the time, and sometimes come out with some surprises for myself.

Two things that were beaded during different moods and times in my life:






The first image is a vessel, and the second is a paperweight. I had fun with them both, mostly because I had no plans to conform to- they could turn out to be anything they wanted to be, I was just beading to feel better!

So....my little story on how it all started, and how it continues.

Beaded Bangles & EBW Friends

Here I am again! This last week has been pretty devoid of beading - a horrible thing for me - but I thought I would tell everyone a little bit about my new beaded bangles that I am offering for sale on Etsy. I am so proud of these!! I have seen many different designs for bangles that include an armature of some kind, such as a rubber cord (Marcia DeCoster) and brass rings (Lisa Kan), and some that are completely beadwoven...but I don't think any of them are made the way I made mine (I hope, anyway!) and I was extremely happy to have thought it up!

I started with two ropes of cubular right angle weave, stitched them together with a strip of right angle weave, finished the other side by adding another row of right angle weave, this time of beads AND swarovski crystals, then joined the ends, and VOILA! a beaded bangle that keeps its shape really well, and is flexible enough to slip over the hand without stretching out. (I used fireline for the whole project, which means people would really have to TRY to break it!!) I really enjoyed the process of creating it in my head first and thenn translating it into beads. Since I am sharing my technique - if not in detail - I ask that anyone who tries it out, please give me credit for the design in your description of your piece.




I also decided that I would really like to include some of the members in my Etsy Beadweavers Team in my posts, so I am going to add in a few things here and there this year about their designs and shops. We have the most incredibly talented group of beadweavers EVER!!

This week I would like to introduce those of you who aren't familiar with her, to Patricia at Silver Dragon on Etsy.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SilverDragon

This is just one of her lovely designs, I encourage you to follow the link above to her shop!



And I just have to include my friend Linda Jones in this, as she is a huge inspiration to me and has been a great support through some hard times in the last few years. She has the most amazing color sense, and stupendous amounts of creativity. You can find her lucious work at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/wildwickedbeads

And a tease; just a sample of what she is capable of:



I am hoping that the coming week will yield much more time to bead, I am starting on a new right angle weave collar, which I have been thinking of for awhile. I also have a bead embroidered collar in the works, and have almost collected all the various beads and cabochons to start on that one. (Think of woods, forest, cool, quiet, shimmery woods in the late evening...)

I wish beady blessings to everyone, and hope that the coming week brings you everything you need! See you next Wednesday!!

New Custom Order Done

But first, I just have to tell you about a give away that is going on NOW, friends!! Carol Dean Sharpe, of SandFibers, is having a lovely give away from her blog site to celebrate 1000 sales in her Etsy shop!! Please do enter, Carol is an amazing bead artist and you will be sooooooooo glad you did: http://sandfibers.blogspot.com/2010/01/first-sand-fibers-1000-giveaway.html

The first photo above is of my first right angle weave collar. I loved the bead colors and was trying to think of what I wanted to use them for, and then suddenly I found this lovely honey onyx cabochon on Etsy, and HAD to get it; this was the result!!

I have been working away trying to get an order done for two months now - it took longer than usual because of the holidays, and having to find time to make a few gifts as well. My customer is fantastic, and a very sweet person. She sends cabochons that she has collected to me, along with a few beads that she would like included in her jewelry, and then gives me complete license to make whatever I feel looks good. Who could ask for more?! This time, I am making something small to give to her with her other items as a thank you for all of her business and for a gift she gave to me with her last order. The cabochons she provided this time were really gorgeous, and her color choices were terrific! Usually she prefers the asymmetrical look to things, but one of the cabs just screamed at me that it had to be symmetrical, so one cuff sports the same design on both sides. I made up for it by making sure the other was as she likes it and that the necklace was as well. I am a little nervous that she may not like the symmetrical one as well as the others, but I just couldn't get it to work any other way. When we were finally able to get some photos of finished work, I was SO pleased to be able to share them at last!! I named this one Painted Desert:

The next one is the asymmetrical one, which I think she will like more, named Copperclad:

And here is the necklace, Moonrise, which is in a new direction for me creatively, which made it even more fun to make:

I should be shipping these out to her this week, and crossing my fingers that she will like them all!!

All in all, it was a really hectic set of holidays this time, and I am relieved that it is over with finally. Now I am trying to get back into my normal scehdule and find some time to clean up the house and so on after all the ruckus. I am finding it a little harder than usual to get my creativity up and going, although as I type I am looking at a nice bead soup on my bead mat in dark blue and purple iris colors with some silver thrown in, and a dichroic cab...maybe I will get there sooner than I think! But it's hard to choose, as I also have a large pile of custom made polymer clay leaves and cabs (by Chris at Mandarin Moon on Etsy - check her out, she is AMAZING) that are waiting for me to begin my second embroidered collar...

I had some good news in that I have been accepted into the Etsy Beadweavers Team, which I had been thinking of trying for all last year, and I am THRILLED to be part of it now! It is a wonderful new way to feel involved in the beading community, and they have been excellent to me, giving me a very warm welcome, hearting my shop (Thanks!!) and generally answering any questions I have had. Please do search for the EBW tag on Etsy and see all of the gorgeous things being made by the members!!

I am also looking forward this next week to updating my website with some of my newer creations and maybe changing the style a little on the overall composition of the pages. But for now, I better get going on that housework!