How Lucky Can One Girl Get?

I've got jury duty AND a root canal, all in one week. How's that for lucky?  Still, it could be worse. I can afford the root canal, and the agony before the doc relieved the abscess made me realize how amazing modern dentistry (and medicine) is. I've never had an abscessed tooth before, and now I know why people used to just yank bad teeth out, even without anesthesia. Wow that was bad.

Sometimes life gets in the way of beading. I especially regret that now as I'm really starting to get back the flow of ideas that sort of dried up before when I was so overwhelmed by the needs of getting the software out to market.  One project after another leaps out of me, and I've got far too many to try even if I could bead for hours each day.

Our Etsy Beadweavers Team has a monthly challenge, with each entry being a listing in our Etsy stores.  This is my entry for October. The original title was supposed to be "Gifts of the Earth" because of all the semi-precious stones used in it.   The theme of the October challenge is "Inspired by Picasso" so I retitled it and related it to the theme as required.

From October 9 until October 15, you can visit the EBW blog and vote for your favorite entry. Every month there are some amazing entries, you'll be sure to get an eye-full, and find a favorite!

I've also been inspired by the November challenge theme, on Spirals, and have started a project I hope will develop into something worthy of entry.

Meanwhile, I'm learning to bead crochet, and trying to earn a living.

Notice where that last falls on the priority list.

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. 

New Project, Could be a Long One

I laid this out and got started today, on a project that will take me through an upcoming trip to Mendocino. The image is from a photo I found on Astronomy Picture of the Day, an amazing 360 degree fisheye shot of the night sky and a forest with dark hills and city lights in the background.  The photographer is Luc Perrot.

The circle of the image is 5.5 inches in diameter. I asked my husband the Math Guy to recall the formula for the area of a circle, and he tells me "Pi Are Squared" which after some clarification, I figure means that we're talking something north of 75 square inches here. Really? Yow! That's a lot of beads if I go for solid beading all over it.

But I had intended from the first to let the black ultrasuede background be part of the picture, only beading those areas that I want to not be black.  This is pretty heavy ultrasuede, part of the package of scraps I got a while ago from Fields Fabrics. So I won't need an additional stiffener for it. It will hold shape well by itself.

This is the palette of beads I chose. I'll be adding more, as I stopped by Beads Beads in Orange today and found some that will add quite a bit to the project. 

I also got a few different packages of beading needles. I was surprised on the spiral bracelet how much difference it made when I switched from a size 10 to a 13. Since the teeny part of the spiral is 15/0 beads, the smaller needle made pulling through much easier, rather than having to use a pliers to grab it, as I had to do with the size 10 needle. You'd think by this time I'd know that the right tool makes any job easier, faster and more pleasurable.

The final plan for this embroidered piece is going to include sewing it onto midnight blue ultrasuede, cut and sewn to fit over my old Kindle cover. I may further embellish the cover material around the black-backed embroidered portion. And I may decide to try to sell it.

In order not to infringe for my own profit on the copyright of Luc Perrot, the photographer of the amazing image, I will use his photo as inspiration only, and not copy the image literally.  I will adapt and change it to make it my own, and continue to give him credit as the inspiration. 

I will keep my faithful readers updated on progress on this project, as I always think it's interesting to view other artists' work in progress and you don't get to see a lot of that in blogs. 

I'm planning some other cool spirals too.  So stay tuned. 

Long Time No Update, ETSY!!!

So, what have I been doing, you ask? Or maybe you don't ask. 

In any case, I've been actually beading. Oh, and getting my ducks in a row to get the Etsy store working.

Many ducks, many rows. Needed a new gmail account so I could get a new Paypal account so I could set up the Etsy store. 

Then there were the struggles with the photos. I did find time to do some new pieces.

The first one is Tibetan Silver, coral and turquoise. So is the second one, but with different silver beads. Both are for sale on Etsy. 

I also have some better pictures of my second amber piece and the seaglass necklace. Somewhat better. Still not perfect. If I could get them all to be like that first Tibetan silver piece, I would be ecstatic.

I have some ideas for my next pieces, as well. I bought a ton of small color-graduated tourmaline strands on our last trip to Mendocino. Time to work something up with those. 

Time for Creativity, and More Better Pictures

Given that I spend so much time whining that I never get any time to bead, I do manage to get a fair number of pieces done. Never as many as I want to, but then, who does?

Looking back, though, the number of pieces I've managed to finish add up.  And this morning I worked a bit more with the camera and light box I built to try to improve on the pictures of recent pieces.

First, more pics of the most recent, still without the clasp.  This one is much more true to color, though the red is less prominent in the ammonite than it looks here. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm being fooled when I look directly at it.

The strung sections aren't quite as clear as I'd like them.  Here's a detail of the same item. I worked and worked on that embroidery. By the time I'd finished (on the outer edges and top) I'd gotten quite a bit better at spacing the beads without letting them pile up on each other. I'm just pretending for now I meant them that way. Ahem.  Although I planned the shape of the pendant and the placement of the ammonite, the rest of the design "just grew."  I'm happy with the subtleties that emerged as it neared completion. In some places, the beads that came next were more of an 'of course!' moment rather than 'what the heck do I do now?'  I think when you're experiencing that kind of moment of flow in creativity, the end product is more successful than either total planning or total thrashing about. 

Next, the amber/carnelian piece I've shown before, but I think the pics are more clear than any I've posted. Once again, the full piece and a detail.

It actually hangs quite a bit better around a real neck. I need either a model or a neck-shaped display piece. I may construct one for photo purposes over the weekend and give this puppy another shot. 

And, something one cannot know until one wears this piece, it is a sensual delight. There's a slight sound of amber rustling together as you move, and a satisfying but not too heavy weight. Then when you raise your hand and feel all those small fringes and beads shifting through your fingers, it's almost like a worry bead or rosary. I find myself playing with it all the time, not to readjust it, but just because it feels good to touch!  

Last is one slightly blurry picture of a previously unseen piece. This one was started long ago as a kumihimo braid with beads, in forest green, translucent orange, and yellow-green. The braid sat just sewn end-to-end, with overlap in the middle, for a long time in the unfinished project pile. I had intended to sew just the fringes with the fruit beads, but when that was pretty much done, I decided it needed a small embroidered pin with a dichroic glass cabochon I had gotten quite a while ago.  The pin finishes it off well, and the pin-back means that it will hang asymmetrically as intended without having to fuss with it all the time. It's long enough to slip over the head, so no catch is needed. It's fun to wear and gets quite a bit of attention.

I'll try for better pictures of this one soon.