Creative Beading - Volume 5

I am tickled pink to announce that my 'Bling Button Bracelet' (aka Button Fan as named by Bead & Button and originally published in the August 2009 Bead & Button magazine) is being included in the Creative Beading - Volume 5 annual publication available by pre-order through Kalmbach at the present time.  I know Borders carries the Creative Beading series as I purchased two of the earlier volumes at the Borders store close to my home.

Convergence II: Adorning the Past, Present and Pretend

Terri McGill, a glass beadmaker from Dayton, OH and I collaborated for an ISGB Competition called "Convergence II:  Adorning the Past, Present and Pretend".  We got the email late last night that our neck piece was accepted for the traveling competition!!!  The tour starts in Rochester in May 2010 and ends in Ohio in 2011. Other than a stop at the Bead & Button show in June 2011, I don’t know yet where the other exhibition locations are scheduled.

The competition theme this year was to choose a person (real or fictional) and create a piece of jewelry inspired by them.  Terri  (The Rabbit Hutch) and I chose Marie Tharp, a cartographer at Cambridge University in the 40's who used sonar readings gather by the university to map the ocean floor. Marie co-discovered the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which then gave credence to the theory of continental drift. The map of the ocean floor she created in the 40's is still in use today!

To read more about Marie and learn what a true pioneer she was ... http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/06/08/tharp.html

"Marie's Ridge" (Photograph taken by Helen O'Donnell)

Bead Embroidery ... on a small scale

After getting my work table cleaned off from my last big project (a competition piece, but more on that in a later post!), I decided I wanted to try my hand at something small.  And new.

Going through my sewing basket, I came across some of the button frames that you can cover with fabric to match an outfit and decided to try my hand at making a bead embroidered button. I went through my stash of hand dyed fabrics left over from a myriad of quilting projects and pulled three different colorways and have made two different buttons so far.  The first button was a combination of gold and matte olive/apple green beads and the second was a combination of blues with brass/gold accents.   After completing my beautiful buttons, I knew I had to incorporate them into something ...

The Gahanna Bead Studio has just recently started stocking a very cute little cube bead (1.8 mm) that I just had to have and I have bought quite a few tubes in several different colors.  Using those to create a peyote band, I made two different styles of a cuff bracelet.

The blue bead embroidered bracelet has the peyote running length-wise on the long side of the band and I created a button hole at the end of one side.  With the rotation of the peyote stitch, this bracelet is very stiff and much more like a bangle type bracelet.  I actually liked the sawtooth appearance on the edges so decided to leave them 'as is'.  The only additional accent was the 15/0 bronze seed beads that I used to finish the ends of the band and to accent the button hole.


The green/gold bead embroidered bracelet has the peyote running width-wise across the band with a peyote loop to form the second half of the toggle. Since I don't like to see exposed thread on my work, I used the 15/0 bronze seed beads to add a picot edging length-wise on the bracelet and to fill in the 'gaps' on the bracelet ends.  I really like how they looked in the peyote toggle too.  This bracelet is very fluid and fabric-like.

How did you spend the week between Christmas and New Years - Part 2

Since it sure looks like Christmas outside, I figured this was as good a time as any to post the second half of what I was able to get completed and off my work table between Christmas and New Years.  (Clicking on any photo will bring up a larger version.)

The lovely stone in the pendant on the right is a Morrisonite Jasper from Designer Cabochons in England, as are all of the stone cabochons that I use.  I stumbled on their website several years ago and LOVE their cabochons.  They always have unique stones and fossils, with quite a few from vintage slabs.  Vintage and stone, two of my most favorite things!

I used a combination of seed beads to create the bezel and pendant embellishment because I wanted to keep the setting on the simple side.  I like the combination of the 11/0s and 15/0s in the bail too.  I'm an admitted pearl lover so seem to include pearls in almost all of my pieces.  In this case, I used the pearl coins as separators in the tubular Ndebele necklace and top drilled pearls as accents to the fringe.

The final pendant that I finished during my holiday week is pictured on the left.  Even though I am more of a 'green' person, I loved the colors in this Ocean Wave Jasper and how much it looks like a beach scene.

The surrounding fringe is a little on the wild side, but the colors are muted and don't (in my opinion anyway) take away or over power the beauty of this stone.  I used a combination of seed beads and a couple of different colors of faceted Czech glass beads.  I had exactly 12 of the little mottled red glass squares so used them to accent the red band in the stone and as highlights in the strung necklace.