Why Local Bead Stores Must Never Die

Mom's Christmas present

So, my lovely mother calls me from Florida. She's all perky with good news. She was wearing the bracelet I gave her for Christmas while shopping and the shopkeeper just loved it.

So much so, she asked my mom about it, and my mother tells her that I made it. The woman asks what it would cost to have me make her one. My mom quotes a totally whacked out price, way higher than what I would price it on Etsy, or what I told my mom it would cost to make earlier. It's just seed beads, for crying out loud!

Very smug in her twin-set,
isn't she?

But the woman said okay to this outrageous price! Then the only direction she gave was she wanted it in black beads with coral.  No size given, just "like what you made me will be okay,"  my mom says.

Now, when someone says "coral" what color do you think of?  I tend to think of the vivid red of actual coral beads. But I know this isn't true of women of my mother's age. They tend to think of a pinky-red (or reddish-pink) featured in twin-sets.  You know, those cardigan and shell sweater thingies women wore in the 50's.  Like this vintage knitting pattern pictured, available from an Etsy shop.

Classic coral?

Like this dress. That color coral.  Sortof. Do you have any idea how many colors of reddish pink, pinkish red, orangishpinkyred and assorted things very close to that there are in beads??? I'll tell, you. Zillions. Officially.

But of course, I don't have anything remotely close to classic coral color in my stash. I have bright pink. Pale pink. A dozen reds. Orange of various violent hues. No coral. How horrible. I will have to visit a bead store. I am desolate! 

I managed to find something close in size 11/0 at the first store I went to.  Something that I thought said "coral" in the classic sense, and was pretty and sparkly. Now I just need to match that with some 15s or Delicas in the same color. This is where things got a bit touchy.

The wrong stuff, not even close

I did find some 15s at the first store that looked close while in the store. Not so when I got them home and did a test run. Way too light. This is the wrong, unmatching tube of beads.  What was I thinking?

So, dolefully, I dragged myself to another store the following weekend, despite the fact it was raining cats & dogs. The things I do for my mother!

Yes, it's a match!

This is the wonderful Beads, Beads store in Orange, CA. They are among my favorite stores, not least for the fact that the staff will help you endlessly. They have a huge selection, but most of it is in the back room, with just samples out front. But so far I've never come out of there not finding something I truly needed.  So I got my coral-pink, in a delica.

This is where the local bead stores never dying comes in. I could have shopped and ordered seventeen times from online sources and never gotten a match.  I order beads all the time off the web, and have some wonderful sources. But in the specific instance of having to match an exact shade, there is no substitute for seeing and touching the beads yourself. You can't do that online.

Support your local shop when you can, because if we don't, when we really need them for hands-on, they won't be there.

You'll never guess.

And another thing you can't really do well online is discover new, cool colors. Yeah, they can list and describe them, but even expert pictures can't really convey the niftiness of certain colors. This picture is of something I ran across while searching diligently for coral. Can you guess the color???

It's not a great picture, but then, it's impossible to photograph the tiny transparent rim against the color-lined interior, that gives a mysterious conglomeration of sparkle and shimmer. Give up? It's olivine-lined orange. I can't even properly describe it in words, but the effect is wonderful. I can't wait to work it into something.  Stumbling across great new stuff also requires in-person presence. You can only get that in a bead store.

Coral in its glory

 So I did finally finish the coral/black bracelet. Here it is.  I'll mail it off tomorrow to Florida and see if her shopkeeperness likes it. If not, no sweat. I came up with a new technique for the magnetic clasp, to conceal it inside a tube of peyote stitch. Works great.

Nifty clasp

And I'm putting together a tutorial on the variation of the netted rope I came up with. I haven't seen this anywhere else. I took pictures as I worked and I'll also get some diagrams going. That ought to be fun.

Unbeading, or Two Steps Forward, Two Back

Struggling. That's how I feel about this bead project. I've been struggling from the beginning.

Let's face it. I'm so impressed by the winning competitor of each Etsy Beadweavers Team challenge. So, after December, in which I got a big Two Countem' TWO votes for my entry, I determined I was going to pull out all the stops for the next challenge in February. My goal was modest...to get more than two votes. 

Come to find out, many people recruit votes for themselves on Facebook and other social media. That's cool, because it drives more traffic to all of our Etsy stores. My stats certainly went up. 

And the winning pieces are always incredible. In the spirit of elevating my own work, I was going for nearly-incredible. I'd had this idea in mind for a long while, but not the whole integrated piece. Bits of it. The netted rope. The netting on the forest green ultrasuede background. The donut was a late addition, but it really sparked a whole lot of the design. I was planning to cut around the donut and suspend it from the peyote straps, not touching the embroidered piece elsewhere. I could hardly wait to move on to the fringe I had planned for the bottom. It was gonna be spectacular.  

But, that part about integration is not negligible. How to connect Tab A and Slot B can be problematic. Netted rope with an embroidered piece hanging off it? How does that connection work? How do you sew netting onto a base fabric? I thought that would be easy enough. Netting isn't hard. Bead embroidery isn't hard. Separately, they're cake. 

Holy crap getting one onto the other is HARD!!!  The pictures here are of my fifth attempt. That's right, five times I started and got a fair way into it before I gave up, tore it all out, and salvaged the beads.  

Drawing straight lines and trying to bead along them didn't work. Anchoring each vertex bead in the netting down as I went didn't work. Then I made a square piece of netting, sewed that down in the center and tried to work outward from there. That was slightly more successful, but then I got to the outer corners. Fitting netting into curves is no fun. In fact, it started to look worse the farther up the curve I went. 

These pictures were taken right before I got out my scissors, cut off all that netting, and excised the two cabochons into separate pieces, just so I wouldn't be tempted to make a sixth attempt at something that is clearly not meant to be, or at least not at my current level of expertise.

I still don't have any firm idea of how to attach the bit with the cabochons to the netted rope. I don't have a clue as to what's going around the neck.  This one is going to have to lie fallow for a bit.

I hate unbeading. 

This will teach me not to have a fairly substantial concept of where I'm going before I start. The entire project doesn't have to be planned to the last detail, and things will certainly evolve as I work, they always do. But no more of these "oh just do the bits and it'll all fall together." Because what will happen is that I'll spend a lot of time learning the sad lessons of unbeading, and getting no farther forward.

So there won't be an entry from me in February. Of course, if I did enter anything, it would be titled "Queen of the Fat Chance" after seeing this entry.   Perhaps "Our Lady of No Way In Hell."

Adios to Christmas Gifts

Now I can put up photos of gifts that went out this year. I've been waiting, because I have a question about the last one.  Reading a post about the gift you're being given is the modern digital equivalent of finding your packages hidden in your mother's closet and very carefulllllly peeling off the tape to see if you can get a peek. Not that I ever did that. Mom. Really. Never.

I was amazed that these first two fit their recipients so well. My husband and son were chivvying me that they were way too small. Ha! They fit perfectly. So there. 

I made a simple peyote stitch cuff for my niece. The size 6 blue/plum beads worked up quickly, and then it cried out for some gold edging. I happened to have some huge 16mm glass beads in almost exactly the same iridescent color, so they became the double buttons. I have found I intensely dislike working with elastic thread, but sometimes, ya just gotta. I had some smaller beads in a matching tone, and did the loops in those, with elastic. Apparently I like this color, because I have a lot of it, in a lot of sizes.

The cuff looked totally elegant on the Niece's wrist. Much better than just this photo could express, actually.   I struggled with the elastic loops, though. If anyone has a hint or two on beading with elastic, especially the knotting and making it stay knotted part, I'd appreciate the help. Honestly, what a hassle!

Next, a gift for the Niece's mother, my sister-in-law. She is a tiny person, and so a bracelet that worked up to fit a tiny wrist. This started with the small netted rope portions, and then I came up with a way to join them, using lustered black/green triangle beads. So the bracelet is flexible enough to bend well, and somehow she wore an outfit on Christmas day that matched the bracelet perfectly. She does love earth tones. 

I sent my sister the hematite netted rope bracelet I'd done a while ago.  I haven't heard from her yet if it arrived in time. I hope so.

No, it's not all bracelets all the time. I sent my dad this ornament. I'd begun it a while ago, but didn't get the inspiration to finish it until last week. I dug out the green dyed shell spear beads, and fringed them around the bottom. This was another use of the dreaded elastic. I made the bottom of the edging from elastic thread so that it will slip on and off any 4 inch glass ornament. If it arrived broken, it wouldn't be a tragedy, or require re-sewing to get it on another ornament. Fortunately, it arrived intact and my dad called to say they loved it, and had hung it in their lanai. Overlooking the alligator pond. In Florida. We can't all have white Christmases.

It was incredibly difficult to get the photo of the ornament. I took 18 pictures, and only this one was anywhere near focused. And it's not perfect. The shiny surface of the bulb got in the way, not to mention you can actually see me taking the picture in the reflection!  And I didn't clear out the work area to take the photo. I was a bit rushed getting it all ready to ship.  My camera is still making me crazy. 

But yes, the last one was a bracelet, for my mom. This too is netted rope. I wanted to try some smaller beads to net, so I used the same size 6 blue/plum beads that were used in the Niece's cuff. 

Netting such small beads (also beads that weren't perfectly spherical) made a little bit of a lumpy piece. These seed beads don't nest together the same way spherical beads do. The lemon-lime netting was fun, though.

Now for the question. In my limited experience, I haven't seen anyone link together sections of netted rope with exactly this technique. Has anyone else? It's an adaptation of the netting stitch, and lends itself to a lot of variations. Would a tutorial be interesting to anyone? I'm not going to bother if everyone says, "oh yeah, I've seen that lots of times."  I liked doing it because it allows the use of the netted rope without having to have zillions of the larger beads and making the same solid rope every time.  I used the same inter-connecting technique on the sister-in-law bracelet above, so you can see that it works up in many different ways.

I guess this is an extension of the discussion on the Etsy Beadweaver's list lately on inspiration, plagiarism, and original design. Is something you think you invented really original? How do you know without extensive research??

Any thoughts on the matter are much appreciated.

Quiet Times On the Blog

It's been quiet because I imagine that like me, most people are scrambling to get ready for the holidays. I've got a lot of presents in the mail, so no pictures to show until the day. 

But I do have a couple of items I've been working on to show.

Old Gold button

A couple of weeks ago I put up some pictures and solicited some critique. I decided that the advice to change out the button on a previously completed bracelet was wise. So this bracelet went from gold to silver. The new button is slightly smaller and thus fits the loop better, and it blends more smoothly with the cherry-pop red and opalescent green/purple/blue of the small beads.

New Gold button

The silver is more understated. Good call, advisors. 

In other news, I've been netting my little heart out. This bit here is a trial to see what a 4.5-5mm bead looks like. I had a fair quantity of multi-colored various stones, and netted them with an opalescent crystal size 15 bead. Lovely. 

I'm not sure what this will end up as. Not a bracelet as it's too stiff to bend easily. Part of a necklace almost certainly. But like most of these netting bits, it's not long enough by itself, and when I was buying beads I didn't anticipate having to buy four times the length needed. I just simply don't have enough of any single bead to do an entire necklace in netted rope.  One thing I plan to do next time I get money to spend is buy enough 3-4mm beads to make a whole necklace.

Here's a sneak preview of something that I hope will be my Feb challenge entry. It's done in green jasper with gold netting and gold beads with green netting, with the larger rose-lined forest green intersection beads remaining constant. I've got some additional bits done but no pictures yet.  By combining beads I've got enough length for the central part of the necklace.  There will also be a big bead-embroidery component too. I think. I'll have to see as I get there. I really like the coordinating themes in the part in the picture. Something about forest green and gold is so...elegant.

And here, too late to list on Etsy for Christmas is another Cellini spiral necklace I finished. This was the one I started to explore a backless bezel for the malachite donut.  That part turned out well, I think. However, in the process of working that bezel, what happened was that in some sections, especially the top part, I passed so many threads through those tiny size 15 beads that the tension got very very tight, and a few of the beads just broke after one last yank! of thread through them.  Oops.  Live and learn.

So then I had to figure out what to do to connect the pendant to the spiral. If you just sling a single strand of beads over, even if you follow the spiral, the pendant hangs crooked. But  if you look at the close-up picture, you'll see that by doing one diagonal from left front, over the spiral, to the left rear, and then compensating with a shorter link of beads to the right front, it works. There's a matching short link in the back. It straightens out the pendant wonderfully, while not actually sewing the pendant to the spiral. Trying to sew to a spiral and get everything centered and balanced is a losing proposition.

In fact, the pendant can actually "screwed" down the spiral and off the necklace entirely, if you want.  It will come off over the flexible beaded catch. The spiral is done with 3-4mm drop beads which give a lovely look to it, with transparent red, christmas green, and nickel-plated silver beads.   I need better pictures to list this one. Still struggling with the camera. I'm beginning to think that it's not me, it's the camera. I just can't get really sharp pictures without a lot of fuss. 

Decisions, Decisions

The December Challenge for the Etsy Beadweaver's Street Team was tough for me, for reasons that shall become clear, I hope. The first image is the finished piece.  I started it a while ago, as an exploration of netted rope, which I talked about in the Elizabethan Sea Slug post.  This is a post about the series of decisions that led to the final look. The reasons behind all the weirdness.

The development from that central piece was....odd. At least to me. At one point, I was very dissatisfied, on the verge of ripping up the center part and salvaging the beads, as it seemed, well, unwieldy and stiff. Those large beads don't flex, not at all.

The ends of the netted rope did just naturally blend into a seamlessly integrated tubular peyote stitch for the neck piece, though. That was nice. But I had no plan. Where the heck were these things going? After a few (boring) rounds of all crystal seed beads, I decided on a two-color spiral. Okay. Look for some orange and some black beads for the spirals. Well, no black. Wait, I have over 200 different seed beads. Can it be true I have no black??

Yep. True. So...very very very dark purple will have to do. These days I'm all about making do, with budget restrictions everywhere.  So I spiraled away, and...hmm. When the side bits were about 3 inches long, I realized the whole thing look like nothing so much (and felt like it, worse, when picked up) as a purse handle. There were curse words. Internally, at least. There was a true feeling of "Argggghhh!!" A purse-handle? Was this truly what I wanted?   I actually spent several days considering whether it was worthwhile to try to figure out a way to find and attach a purse body and submit that to the challenge.

Then I decided that would take too much work and I didn't have enough time or energy to bead an entire purse to go along with the handle, and also, I wouldn't trust the handle to stand up to the kind of use even a dressy purse gets.   I hadn't designed it to take those stresses, and if someone were to purchase such a purse, they'd surely expect good wearability for the price I'd charge.

So it's a necklace. After about 5 inches on each side, I got really tired of tubular peyote. This is something that used to happen to me when I made art quilts, years ago. I'd get tired of whatever stitch I was doing and so each of the four sides would have different stitches on them.  So the tubular peyote had to end. What next? Kumihimo! That works up quickly, and I enjoy doing it while watching TV in the evenings, so it expands my beading time each day. But kumihimo, using the same beads as the peyote, works up more slender than the peyote. On one side I can put the clasp. I have to connect the two disparate braids on the other side...how?

First, sew them together, strongly, of course. Then cover them somehow. I came up with the peyote wrapped into a spiral around and secured to the connected braids.  Where they were sewn together, I decorated it with a double row of beads, on each side of the seam. Not only did it strengthen the seam, it was pretty!

But should those anchor beads have been a different color? I don't know. The shiny size 15 orange beads make a beautiful fabric, but does the whole thing look stupid?   From the back side, it's less graceful. In order not to distort it too much, I left a bit of opening at each end. Is that dopey looking?  I had to move on at this point.

Surprisingly, I think it took me three days to figure out that I needed to make a beaded clasp. Duh. I agonized over how to end the strands and connect a clasp and what findings did I have that I could use? Finally it dawned on me. Just bead one, Lynn.  Not everything should be difficult to decide, should it? But for this piece, it was.  The clasp came out nicely, though. Works well, is the right size in proportion to the necklace, and the loop and the toggle work together.

Even before I got the kumihimo finished and the toggle done, though, I thought that it wasn't elaborate enough to be submitted for the challenge. Don't ask me why, I know as well as anyone that often elegant simplicity is far more stunning than complexity for it's own sake. But that's when I started on two fringed elements that I thought would add the necessary finish to the piece. Here are both of them, photographed together. Each is beaded on a base ring of silver 8/0 beads, which can slip over the clasp loop or toggle, together or separately. I thought I would hang them at either side of the central netted rope.

When everything was finished enough to try that, though, it looked pretty stupid, to tell the truth. Because of the stiffness of the central sea slug, those danglies ended up hanging down and pointing right to the wearer's tits. They reminded me of misplaced tassels on the falsies of a very upscale cooch dancer.

I love those lampworked beads, and thought the titty-tassles look didn't serve the work well at all. I considered leaving them off entirely. My husband, patient critic that he is, encouraged me to go with the simpler look.  I delayed submitting the listing so I could contemplate the necklace hanging on the display both with and without the fringed bits, for several days.  I auditioned the fringes at the sides, or hung asymmetrically over the clasp or over the spiral connection on the side opposite the clasp.

I realized the buyer, should she actually ever materialize, could move these bits around and wear them as she likes, or remove them altogether. She could even hang them from earring wires and wear them as earrings!

My final decision was to go with the fringes, configured to hang asymmetrically from the join of the two different braids, on the side opposite the clasp.

What would I do differently if I did the piece over? I might try to have a plan, though sometimes there's a real charm to pieces that just grow.  I would see if I could build in a curve to the central netted rope section to see if it would look more graceful. I'd make the tubular peyote bits much shorter, as I think they're slightly out of proportion. I would find a better way to connect the kumihimo, or just do away with the tubular peyote and make the entire braid out of kumihimo to start with!

Any critique, disagreement, agreement or comments are welcome on this piece. I'm really trying to study hard and develop my design skills, and I can't do that without hearing from others as to what they like or don't find appealing about my designs.

I've actually finished another piece after this that I'm far more pleased with. But it's a gift for a dear friend, and I can't show it until she receives and opens it.  It'll be interesting to see what the challenge brings.

The Elizabethan Sea Slug - A Sneak Peek

"Oh my, that's a really odd name for a piece of jewelry, don't you think?"

Yep. But let me explain. In seeking to extend my new netted rope passion a bit into the extreme end of things, I tried a much larger bead as a central anchor. In fact, I started with some sponge coral beads that are about 16 -18mm. These things are huge!

Then I netted with 11/0 crystal beads and some silver-plated 6/0 beads. Well, as anyone who has tried this technique can tell you, it eats the core beads like crazy. Four beads for every round, and since they're solidly packed together, each round is only half a bead tall. 

So I decided after four rounds of the 16mm sponge coral to reduce the size with some 12mm sponge coral beads. Those I used 3 rounds on each side. Then I reduced further with some 8mm onyx beads. Three rounds of those on each end. 

At this point, the piece was lying on my work table while I considered the next step. The shape and size reminded of a beautiful sea slug.

Sea slugs or nudibranchs, are some of the most gorgeous creatures on the face of the earth. I may end up doing a whole series of pieces inspired by the many species. Some of them are so spectacular they look like they were made up by graphic designers who have been enhancing their creativity with recreational chemicals.  I mean, does this one look real to you?

The netted texture made me think of an Elizabethan (or Tudor) jeweled hair snood.  So...an Elizabethan Sea Slug. See, it makes perfect sense. Sort of. 

Now I'm extending the tube with peyote, and starting a spiral of two colors. I have plans for further enhancements as well.  And I had a grand time and gained immense inspiration seeking the images to add to this post. The Sea Slugs images are copyrighted by their owners, I'm just borrowing them.  Sea slug inspired jewelry, coming up.

Extreme Netted Rope. Perhaps a new Olympic event?

Thank You, Kate Tracton

I was looking at some netted ropes and thought I'd try, as you do, to find some instructions on the web. Just try! You can find free tutorials for every kind of spiral out there, all sorts of netting and crocheted things and what have you. Netted rope? Zilch. A few sorta patterns for money, but nothing precisely like I wanted.

Then, on the Etsy Beadweavers email list, this, from Kate Tracton:

"String four pearls alternated with four size 11 seed beads. Tie into a circle. Step up through a seed bead and do a net around each pearl using size 15's and an 11 in the center. Go around all the pearls and step up to the center 11 in the next net. Add a pearl, and come out the next center 11. As you progress, you pull the loops up around the pearls.  Continue those two rows for as long as you need.

"Lather, rinse, repeat" :D"

So, I sat down with thread, needle, some pearl substitutes, and the aforementioned 15 and 11 seed beads. The colors were awful, but this is a test sample, not a finished piece.  And behold, it was easy!  For something that looks so complex, amazingly easy.

So thanks, Kate, for so generously sharing a technique. I can see that to make it more flexible, I need more beads in the netting. The way it is, it's great for making netted beads, as pulling the thread tight makes it very stiff. Varying the sizes of the "pearls" would make an oval bead.  Quite a bit can be done with it, I think, and I'm looking forward to exploring. So thank you, Kate.

Your generosity is much appreciated.