Everything's Coming Up Crocus

When the Etsy Beadweavers "Seed Beads Only" challenge was announced, I thought it might be nice opportunity to make beaded flowers, something I usually enjoy.  I began with researching crocus on google images and found the variety of colors and shapes appealing, so decided to make several different colored and shaped versions to replicate one particularly appealing image, from Dutch Mill Bulbs.

The range of colors ran from white through yellow to blue, purple, and even magenta. There were also lovely stripey patterns and beautiful ombre's. They all had six petals, but some were pointy, some more blunt, and opened from tightly closed to gently cupped with age.

I simplified a little to try to avoid visual confusion. And finally after a number of test petals, selected five I liked, and got the flowers finished, complete with upright stamen and pistils.   Most of the plants had delicate grasslike leaves and those were my biggest struggle.  I tried some peyote ones that I could cup a little with bead choice and thread tension, but they looked like bandaids to me.  Drat!  :o)

Then I turned the peyote sideways and did a double needle odd count technique, with beads in 4 sizes.  This did not have the same structural merit as the little bandaids, but did pleasantly reflect the size and shape of the leaves.

The white center stripe was also clean and clear with this technique, and I could create curves, but they required support.  So, enter the bead backing.  I created each leaf and then stitched it to the bead backing.  I decided the spiky quality of the leaf structure didn't really want to be other than straight, so ditched the curve potential.  I placed the leaves in what I hoped was a randomly balanced  pattern, and trimmed away the backing as I went.

Then I went on a hunt for something soft and comfortable to back the bead backing with, and a means to apply the backing without widening the leaves with the traditionaly quilled edge beads. I asked my friend Kinga Nichols (beauteous bead embroiderer!) a million questions about leather, adhesives, and stitches which she patiently answered. I found a beautiful piece of "super softy pigskin" in a deep green, and know I will re-visit Tandy Leather in Roseville to buy more in other colors some day.  I tried buttonhole and blanket stitches without an edge bead, but finally decided that the best finish was the quilling.  I quilled with both size 11 and 15 beads, and kept my shape reasonably well with only a small amount of additional width.  I thought the leaves looked like tiny crocodiles from the sides, with their two rows of scary tooth beads!

This finished product is certainly organic in feeling, different from my usual precise and more formal results, but a happy little piece, and certainly a nice harbinger of Spring.

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!