Purple Painted Turtle - The Flurries Continue

Still thinking about that beaded bead, I wondered if the structure of it could be made into a domed covering for a cabochon.  Something that would mostly hide the cab, but just allow a hint to peek through.

I had some purple oval Lunasoft cabs in two sizes, and those seemed like just the right thing.  So I used purple beads.  Plus I have a new purple, gold, coppery, scribbly tunic, with some flashes of white.  I really like designing for clothing.  And this was supposed to be time to play without thinking too hard about perfecting my designs.  "Just do it" time.

I'll show you the bracelet first.  

The cabs covered in the structural dome reminded me of painted turtles, and this picture shows that the best.

 I am pleased with my rope.  :)

Earrings?  Well, I had the two little cabs left, and part of the Flurry plan was to leave no leftovers.

My two favorite takeaways from this exploration are the little fringe finials, which I would love to use again...

And the loop for the toggle, the shape of which I adore.  I will further explore this idea for sure.

I am pretty happy with the structure of the bracelet too.

But after all that, I felt really guilty that I had not made any of the little beaded beads.

So...    I used the free beaded bead pattern from Crystals and Ice to damp down the guilt. I tried to keep the work sketchy, like my tunic from Art of Cloth.

 It is a really cute little bead.  Here's the tunic of inspiration.

And the accessories.

I worked to finish supplies off, and this was all of the SuperDuos in this color I had.  (Which by the way looks awesome with the tunic, but not so much in my photos.) There were just the two leftover 8mm rounds of Crazy Lace Agate, and I am more likely to wear those than the beaded bead ones.  I forgot that stringing is its own special challenge.  Nice to be reminded.

What did I learn?  Well, when I am not trying to be really proud of the whole, it's easy to crank through a lot of beading.  And in the mix, are some bits I am pleased by, to futher explore.  But nothing that really sings.  Except maybe the one that is not done and needs lots of frogging and some serious design effort.  This is not what I want to do with my time generally, but it was an interesting experiment, with some mine-able results.  

For My Friend

This work is a gift for a friend on the occasion of her 70th birthday.  Last year, for my 60th, she honored me with a generous gift certificate to one of my favorite local bead shops.  I wanted to return the favor.

My friend is intelligent, a voracious reader, and loves opera.  She is a mother to feline fur children, currently, a tabby named Holly. She plays bridge, and is a loyal companion.  She owned a cabin in Wisconsin, and that was the part of her that spoke to me, in this design.  Oh, and have I mentioned, she is a private person, and I respect that.  No names.

I wanted to return to my roots, and produce an entirely woven piece for her, and chose this jasper because it feels like a Wintery Wisconsin woods sunset to me.  It is either Cherry (sometimes called Red) Creek Jasper, or maybe Picasso Jasper. I have had it a long time, and do not remember where I bought it.  It has a nice polish, and because of this, I am going to guess, Utah Picasso.  I am fairly sure some of the supporting beads are Cherry Creek from China, judging both by their matte finish, and the not quite perfect drilling that China seems to be famous for.  I chose this stone, both because of its outdoor imagery, and because the beautiful silvery gray in the stone is very close to the color of my friend's hair.

Since as we age, dexterity dimishes, I wanted to make the work easy to wear, and especially, because my friend lives alone, with no one to fasten a lobster claw for her.  I used  hidden magnets to close the back of the necklace.

I created a delicate pair of earrings, as she is a small woman with delicate features.  The bracelet is also closed with a magnetic foldover clasp.

I had to ask her for a wrist measurement, since the oval beads will not lay flat unless the bracelet fits snugly and even though she has said "no gifts" she did oblige me.  I am sure she knows what I am up to, but I hope she will accept my gift in the same way I accepted hers; as an act of love, support, and celebration of life well-lived.  Happy Birthday!

Tweed Bracelet

"When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me."

 We all have things we gravitate towards as designers, and things we avoid.  I am not a silver girl.  I wear a gold wedding ring, and the silver bin in my bead storage is the emptiest of all the bins. 

Beadsmith's wonderful Steven Weiss sent me a clasp he chose for me, as a part of the Elegant Elements project.  It's a lovely thing, a pretty shape, with a subtle and unusual color combination.  But working with it really made me stretch my boundaries.  And for this I am thankful.  Every time we make safe choices, we close our lives off a little from possibilities.  A silver, mauve and siam bracelet was a big reach for me.  But I did it, and I have learned and stretched and grown.  And I have to add this.  These Elegant Elements clasps are made with Swarovski components.  So if you use Swarovski crystals, or their crystal pearls in your work, a beautiful and organic match with your work is guaranteed. 

And that is enough said. Except for one thing.  In the corner of this private group forum, it says,

"A very intimidating group...  you've been warned :o)"

But the support and kindness there is what makes it possible to reach outside your personal comfort zone and try something entirely different with which you do not have experience, technical expertise or the even the ability to be securely successful.  

Now I am aching for emerald and gold.  Off to clean my table, and follow my heart.

If Everyone Else Jumped Off a Bridge...

...would you jump off too?  I have asked my son this question a few times, and the right answer is "Of course not, Mom."  But I just jumped.  When I started work on my second piece for the Beadsmith Elegant Elements Clasp Project, I told myself it would be a bracelet.  Why?  Because it seemed to me that EVERYONE ELSE had made a fabulous bracelet and I really had to just DO IT.

I am really not a bracelet maker.  Part of the reason maybe is, I don't wear bracelets because they get in the way when I work.  And I seem to design jewelry I personally would want to own.
Another part is maybe because my wrist is teensy, and a bracelet that I might be able to enjoy would not proportionately (or size wise) fit anyone else on the planet.  Well, ok, maybe a few people, but we are talking a tiny minority here.

So, in a pressure situation, where I am trying to design to feature a lovely clasp, and trying to keep up with the other amazing designers in this group, (mostly who do this for a living, while I am really a hobbyist) I decide I will do something I have minimal experience with.  But really, what is life without a little challenge and bite, I ask you?

Given the floral aspect of the clasp, I thought there should be a flower quality to the design.  And I really loved the structure of the flower.  I thought it looked very tropical, and hibiscus-like.  So first, I tried a hibiscus flower with peyote and netting.  And while I really liked the first part of the structure and the over and under-lapping petals, I didn't love the netting, or the colors I chose, which were too sweet to be elegant.  I might come back to this idea one day.  But it also seemed kinda literal, and the clasp was stylized and more a flower symbol that an actual flower.

It also seemed flat.  And while the clasp is flat, there is a depth to it and the beautiful use of negative space was compelling.

So, I thought I'd try to make a more 3D symbolic version of the petals, with inside and outside curves that represented the shapes in the clasp, which might be assembled in some interesting way.


These were kinda cool too, but TOO dimensional.  And still not a color I thought was very elegant.  And the clasp is elegant.  For sure.








So then I thought I might try some wacky cut-out bead embroidery, using shapes from the clasp.  After I selected my clasps, they got lost in the mail.  So the sweet and concerned Steven Weiss sent them to me again.  And of course, as soon as the replacements arrived, the original shipment appeared.  I thought I had two of the little flower clasps and that this bracelet would be able to employ both.  But then I opened the box and realized that what I had was not the flower clasp, but a different one in silver and purple, plus, I had filled in and ripped out a swirly motif on my bracelet in three different ways, and I didn't like any of them, so I set that idea aside as well.








I find I often need to simplify when I am stuck, so I tried a simple woven version of the golden flower, and also tried embellishing it, but this was back to too literal.  Sheesh.










Finally I went to my personal favorite stitch, triangle weave, thinking if I had to travel in the foreign land of bracelets, I could at least speak a language I understood.  And triangle weave is happy to organize itself into six petal flower forms, which was just what I wanted.  Plus, I love olivene Swarovski.  It was a reason to choose the clasp I did, so now I had a familiar traveling companion.

I did the bracelet first in just olivene, but wasn't seeing my flowers as powerfully as I wanted to, so I added in more color, light olivene and olivene 2XAB, plus a few Czech olive bicones as well, just a shade darker than the Swarovski, and of course some gold seeds and Aurum rounds, and finally, I had a bracelet I was pleased with.  Then the task was to find a perfect attachment for the little clasp, that made it look like an inherent part of the design.  I think I got it pretty right!

Just as a side note, I rarely weave with crystal, because I worry about durability, but I used doubled  Power Pro (my favorite thread!) coated with microcrystaline wax, and I find the resulting work supple and sturdy, so maybe I'll do more work with crystals.  They are certainly blingy!


This little bracelet looks like a B&B project to me.  It's essentially very simple, but devilishly tricky to weave the second pass and get all the colors in the right places with the correct number of seeds in between.  I wondered if I had failed to produce an appropriately complex and fabulous design.  BUT, really the task here is to create a reason to want to buy the clasp.  And maybe a simple design that integrates well is a good solution to that problem.   Now to take the perfect photo!