Here's Looking At You!

We all thought I stopped beading but sometimes, it just takes a little bit of inspiration to get back into it.

The cabochons are some sort of crazy lace agate that I picked up at Bead Fest last year, along with the spikes. The eyeball is an antique prosthetic eye that I got from Laura McCabe. I knew about how I wanted to place stones and when I saw the glass eye, I knew where it would go in the piece. The only thing stopping me was another beading project that I didn't have much interest in but felt I had to finish. Well, I decided to put that aside until some later date and got started on this.

I also knew I wanted to incorporate a spike bead into this piece. I knew I had the large spike but when I dug through my bead stash, I also found the smaller spikes that I thought would be fitting to line the eye.

I wanted to do some sort of a spiral rope for the actual necklace part so I incorporated more of the Czech firepolished beads and the small 3mm pearls from the fringe into the spiral rope and later the clasp. The clasp has also been slightly embellished to go with the rest of the necklace.

As for the fringe, I didn't want normal fringe. The main body was starting to remind me of the characters from Greek mythology and while I didn't want to go the route of Medusa (I have a snake phobia - I wont' even touch pictures of them in a book!), tentacles seemed to fit. I ended up doing a layer of fringe in a embellished square stitch. The 3mm pearls with the small red size 15/0 beads make up the tentacles. I added another layer of fringe underneath that with some dagger beads. When you look at it all together, they remind me of the arms of a large squid!

I'm very happy with how this came out. I know the eye ball freaks out some people but I think it's neat!

Eyeball!

You all probably thought I stopped beading. Well, I thought so too but I've been recently re-inspired. The cabochons were purchased at BeadFest last year and the eyeball was bought at the Laura McCabe class I took last year.

FO Friday 12/7/2012

Some finished things!

First up, I took a couple of Laura McCabe classes through the Northern VA Bead Society a couple of weeks ago. Some of her stuff I find that I can whip through very quickly. Others take a lot more thought and brain power. The Stargazer Bracelet was the first of two classes I took with her and the component came together very quickly for me. I had most of it done by the end of class and had the whole bracelet together the next day.




Next up is the NVBS Bead Challenge project. Everyone who participates is given the same set of beads and we all have to create something with those beads. I wish I had taken a picture of the beads before I got started but I'll know better for next time! Mine ended up being a hair stick with fringe!

Pretty Pink Necklace

Last time, I gave you a quick preview of this necklace. Today, I finished it!



The large stones are some crazy lace agate that I found at Bead Fest. The larger round stone is cut in a way that I didn't want to hide one of the sides. The grey portion is also slightly transparent so I wanted to be able to hold it up and see light through it. There is a strip of peyote stitch that goes around the edge and I used netting to capture the stone.



There are some smaller faceted stones in the fringe and that connects the two pieces of crazy lace agate that are some left over tourmaline from a past project. The pink of the tourmaline fit right in.



Finally, that is a straight peyote stitch bale. I did think about adding some fringe or other decoration to it but it seemed to be enough as it is once I put the necklace together. I made a twisted herringbone rope for the necklace along with a beaded toggle to complete the piece!

Pink! Fringe!

I picked up the crazy lace agate and the dagger beads at Bead Fest. I managed to find some of the other beads from my stash. It's a work in progress!

Ring around my finger

I don't normally go for beaded rings but I'm here in Taiwan with barely any bead stash so I'm making do with what I've got to work with. There were still leftover beads from the Eiffel Tower bracelet and the shape of the components was inspiring me. The chatons wanted to be made into rings and so...







I picked up some Swarovski bicones to add some additional sparkle. I'm hoping to play around with this design some more and submit it to one of the magazines as a pattern. If not, look for it as an individual pattern sometime in the future!

Go For Baroque

Go For Baroque is a Melanie Potter kit from School of Beadwork. I picked it up at BeadFest Philly last summer and it is finally done! As usual with a Melanie Potter design, there's a lot of chevron stitch involved.



The seed beads used are all size 15/0s. Tiny!



The most frustrating part was probably the clasp. While normally odd count peyote stitch isn't a problem, it gets to be really finicky when you're working across 7 beads on size 15/0. I made the clasp three times before it was finally done. Third time's the charm!

And there's a set of earrings

Half year round up

I've been busy! I showed you the finished Eiffel Tower bracelet while I as in Taiwan. Then I headed to visit my dad in China where we went to Beijing. I got to climb the Great Wall!



I also managed to finish knitting the Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl. There will be a separate blog post about that once I'm home and it is washed and blocked.



Finally, back in Taiwan, I also visited the National Palace Museum and ooh'ed and ah'ed over jewelry from the Qing dynasty and the House of Cartiers! Very inspirational for me!

Finally! I also finished this set from School of Beadwork called Go For Baroque. I will also include a separate post about this necklace but for now, I'll show you pictures!

The Eiffel Tower Bracelet

I'm over on the other side of the world in Taiwan. I'm here for a bit and thought kits were a good way to bring some beads with me without having to dig through my entire bead stash. First project that I've finished is a design by Laura McCabe called the Eiffel Tower Bracelet. The kit can be found at Just Let Me Bead.

It was a fun project and I definitely learned from it. Once I finished the first component, the rest went quickly. The construction is brilliant because I wouldn't have thought to combine the herringbone stitch and peyote stitch in this way!

Stashes

Bead stash, yarn stash. I have them both. I recently left my job for sanity reasons and have been doing some traveling and working on my house. I had moved into the place a year ago but it had only been a glorified hotel for that amount of time. The big things have been unpacked but I just didn't have the energy to DO anything to the place. Well, I painted and I got a wardrobe from IKEA. The wardrobe from IKEA was a big puzzle that left me near tears and I finally had to call someone in to finish it. I know people have been wanting to know how I store things and what my stash looks like. At the end of 2011, I showed you all my yarn stash all laid out on my bed. Well, now you can see that from the bed, it went into these Rubbermaid containers


I can't hide these containers in a closet so it gives me extra motivation to work through the yarn because this just looks ugly.
As for the beads...I present the IKEA wardrobe of beads!


The top shelf is just storage of jewelry trays, extra stuff. The large shelf has my stem wire, beading work trays, a couple of containers of unfinished projects, and my container of all of the Swarovski crystals. Then we get to the drawers.

I have trays of focal beads, buttons, lampwork beads, a box of glass beads, findings


A drawer of my tubed seed beads. These are mostly the Japanese beads.


Then 3 drawers full of Czech seed beads

In Suspense

I bought this kit last year at Bead Fest Philadelphia from School of Beadwork. It's a Carol Wilcox Wells design. It was simple and repetitive, perfect for my current mindset. Also, since I was traveling, I figured it was a good project to take a long because the kit came with everything! It's a two sided hanging pendant.

There's a purple side and an orange/gold side.

There are some dangling sparklies at the end of the lariat Overall, it was a fun piece to work on!

Suspended

Suspended. It refers to my job that I left but also to this necklace. I had recently bought a red dresses that I wanted some jewelry for.



This was originally inspired by a couple of Laura McCabe creates and I finally made this based off of her Crown Jewels design. Instead of six Swarovski rivolis, I used two and then used beaded rings for the other four sides. That is an odd count peyote rope that I then thread through the rings. I wanted this to seem like it is suspended on the rope, hence the name "Suspended".





I love my toggle clasps. I also love it when I can add a bit of details to the toggles!



The bracelet, well, I'm not that happy with it. I was inspired by a bangle bracelet that I had seen. If I make this again, I wouldn't make it a bangle. I would include a clasp. Also, I'm not sure if I would use the peyote rope because it does have a tendency to twist and stretch which was not something I was going for.

A Bead Embroidered Bracelet

Bead embroidery is a beautiful thing...when you complete it. I've had some many starts on bead embroidered projects but I've never finished. For me, bead embroidery tends to be a free form thing and I get distracted and lose interest after a while. So, I was incredibly pleased with myself that I was able to finish this one for my friend Shawn's birthday.

Sunday night, I had my bracelet, my suede backing and the brass cuff


Then you add some epoxy and get high off the fumes


Then you sew the edges together


To get this






And finally

Order in Chaos

To me bead embroidery is a bit chaotic. I don't normally go into it with a plan of any sort. I may start off with an idea and let it go where it might take me. As it grows, lines to start to form and there is some order within the beads that I love to see and feel.

Milady's Pendant

Last year, I took a class with Cynthia Rutledge. Finally, I'm done.



The pendant itself was mostly completed by the time class was over but I had set it aside for a while.



I pulled it out last week and finished up the bail and made the spacers. The last couple of days, the east coast had been visited by hurricane Irene so I decided that I would hunker down and try to put the necklace together. I spent a lot of time working on the clasp and in fact, this is the second version of the clasp that I made.



Since the necklace itself is actually strung, I originally thought about using a metal clasp but what I had on hand did not do this piece justice. So, I decided to bead it. The first iteration of this clasp also had a beaded bead cap that cupped the end pearls with a loop inside through which I could thread my Softflex. However, the combination of the loop and the crimp bead left the bead cap sitting just a bit apart from the pearl so I put it aside last night and went to bed. This morning, I came up with this iteration.



The toggle and loop are made and I decrease the ends to a loop so they look like a part you would buy at a store. I then strung the same beads onto the Softflex and used that as the connecting loop on my necklace.

I do love this necklace and I must find a way to incorporate this into my wardrobe. It is a beautiful piece and very ornate but by day, I'm a software developer who dresses business casual leaning more casual!