I Feel Better Now

Sorta.

I feel better because all my bead stash from our trip (see previous post) is now entered in the software, and labeled and file into the storage drawers. My workspace is once again functional, if not as clean and tidy as I want it to be.

Only sorta better, because I ran out of larger storage boxes, which are no longer available from Harbor Freight. I never had the largest size I needed for really substantial strings of stones like turquoise and coral, and right at the moment, I can't hunt for substitutes because we're on an austerity drive due to lack of income. That's right, I've got to put my beads in plastic bags for now. Makes me a little bit crazy. Plastic bags don't stack, they don't arrange, and it's not as easy to sift through them to see what's in those drawers.

But the plastic bags are labeled, systematically. They're in the right color-category drawers.  Someday I'll have the cash to get storage boxes again. Maybe for the large beads I'll use small food-storage containers. That might be about the right size.

Another thing that's driving me antsy is the lack of a camera. I swear every two seconds I think, "I'll just take a picture of that and post it...oh crap." I've sent the camera off to Canon for a free repair of the CCD card, but it's going UPS Ground from California to Virginia, so it could take a bit. My posts are going to be photo-free and a bit boring until it's fixed.

I want to show you all the new Cellini spiral I'm doing.   It's lovely, with 6/0 gold beads as the spine and purple and iridescent green/purple beads in the spiral. I think I may make it long enough for a necklace.

I also ran across a book I got several months ago on netting techniques by Diane Fitzgerald, and then when I was storing away these 3mm peridot round beads I got to thinking....oh my. A netted necklace in peridot with some drop beads, perhaps citrine, would be lovely, wouldn't it?

Oh, and I want to get more listings up on Etsy. Right Now. Not going to happen until the camera comes home.

Inspiration comes to us as we do other things. Particularly when that other thing is handling beads. 

Back to work, so when the camera arrives I can spring into action.  Happy Sunday, all. Get beading!

Tubular Peyote: Deceptively Simple. Or Is It? With Pictures

At the aforementioned Pasadena Bead Show on August 1, I saw some work done by the President and Vice President of the LA Bead Group. Sorry, don't know their official name. They had made some tubular peyote neck rings and the work was so tight and fine that the rings were nearly rigid. Either that or they had wire inside. The bead weaving was still very tight, though.  Beautiful. Admirable. Something to aspire to.

I wanted to try something similar. So I tried, four times, to start a tubular peyote tube with a lovely golden 15/0 seed bead. Each time I missed my mark on where to step up, and so the entire tube fell into devastation. Clipped it apart, tried again.

On try number 5, I got sick of it and worked each successive round in a different color, one round gold, one round a lovely fuschia purple. This gave the effect of stripes. Not what I wanted, but at least the tube was working. Once I had the tube established, I switched back to all gold. 

For some reason, when starting ANY peyote project, I struggle with the first three rows or rounds, sometimes a few more. This may be common, I'm not sure. I haven't taken and classes to watch anyone else do it, and any online video tutorials make it all look soooo easy. But I really hate that my first rounds are loose and somehow I can never get them as tight as the later work.

The first picture is of the initial tube, with stripes, and then, where I transitioned over to all-gold.  The tube is in two parts because I ended the thread badly without a proper knot, and it just fell into two parts! But I kept going on part 2, first weaving in a purple diamond, then starting a purple spiral to mark where to step up each round.  The picture is hard to see because the gold is so sparkly. 

The second picture is of my first Cellini spiral, from an article in the new Bead & Button, the Cellini Sampler, by Anna Elizabeth Draeger.  While it is a very straightforward tubular peyote stitch, the variation in the size of the beads makes it spiral. With other types of spirals, you have to increase & decrease to get the spiral, but with this one, it's super easy. I figured out the secret is that whatever bead you just sewed through, that's what you pick up. If you just sewed through a color B, pick up a B. If it's a D, pick up a D. And so on. So you always know exactly where you are. 

You would think that the straight tubular peyote would be as simple. For me, it's not. From one end of a round to the other, even if each round is only 5 or 6 beads, I can't count as my mind wanders to other thoughts. And there I am, wondering where the heck I am.

Oh, to be such an expert that starting and continuing on tubular peyote is easy!

Back to Beads

Well, having got that Wells Farto rant out of my system, we can get back to beads. Whew!

When I got the June 2010 issue of Bead & Button magazine I was intrigued by the "Layered Ladders" article by Lisa Keith. 

I looked at the instructions for the project, and the finished bracelets and necklaces and thought to myself, "Myself, what if instead of laddering just a couple of beads, you make a ladder of bugle beads?" 

So I did.  These are a blue/plum raku finish bugle. I used the two-needle method of ladder stitch to minimize the number of passages through each bead. And I used a nice teal Nymo thread that cost a ton. $8 for a tiny spool, if I recall.  I thought at this point that the thread would show when finished. And it would have if I hadn't gone crazy with the design! Like many kitchen recipes, I use the original as a jumping off point, and don't follow it exactly.

I made the ladder a bit longer than 7 inches. Then I started following the instructions for the next layer. In this layer, you are supposed to string several beads from the top of one ladder row to the bottom of the next in line, passing through the ladder bead(s). So it zigzags. I did this with 5 small square beads in a nice teal all along each row on the first side. But in the center section of the bracelet, I substituted a small liquid silver bead I happened to have left over for the central three beads of each row.

When I got to the end, I really liked it. But the back was naked bugles and looked a bit odd. At this point too, the promised spiral had not happened at all. 

So I turned it over and started again. This time I used alternating rows of triangular pink/purple raku beads, and purple 3mm magatamas. As I worked, I noticed that the triangle beads nestled nicely with a flat side down and the point up. This made the magatamas lie very neatly in between. Nifty!  About halfway through, I also noticed that the spiral was appearing! Imagine that. Keeping the tension tight enough made that zigzag path of thread pull up enough to create the spiral. 

So I finished that side. Then I realized that, hey, the sides were now hanging out, with thread passing through each bugle multiple times. I couldn't have that!  So I got out some triangular 11 silver-lined crystal beads and did an up-down weave through each row of bugles, picking up a crystal bead each time. At the end, I realized this left spaces on each side, so I turned around and did the same weave on the alternate rows, which filled in the line of sparkly beads completely! I was really pleased by this time. 

I finished with an increasing/decreasing peyote button, but it came out sort of lumpy because triangle beads do not play well with decreasing peyote. I may replace it if I find the proper silver button. I think that would look marvelous, don't you? A loop of crystal beads to capture the button and I was done!

As it turns out, the very thin Nymo was a good idea, as in some places I ended up passing through the ladder bead about 6-10 times. I would probably use less costly stuff next time, though, as I figured out it probably took about 18 yards. and in the end, it doesn't show, if you do all the sides. That's a lot of back & forth!  The finished piece is surprisingly substantial, and I'm very pleased with my almost-original design sparked by the B&B article.  In fact, the finished piece looks a lot more weighty than the magazine article samples, as I thought those looked a little thin. A tiny petite person could wear those, not someone with a lot of....presence. That's what we'll call it, eh? 

Presence. Yeah. That's the ticket!

PS. The pictures were taken on a pink working mat, so that's why it looks so pink. The colors of the finished piece are very close to true.  Also the depth of field on that shot is not good, so only the back of the bracelet is in focus.