Spark Kits in Stock Tomorrow!

 

Many of my Fall Flame necklace kits allow you to make the rope with either the A beads at the center, or the E beads, as the tutorial is written.  To accomplish this feat, you can simple re-label the A beads as E, and B beads as D.  C remains C as usual. I believe you could also change the leaf around if you prefer, but honestly, I like the contrast between vein and leaf, and I think that would be lost if you made that switch.  BUT it's YOUR CHOICE, to make.  

For the next week, I'll mark the tutorial for Fall Flame down 25%, so if you want to try your own colorway, please feel free.  Many people have done so, very successfully, and enjoyed it.  

What I love most about this colorway is it's Spring into Summer look.  And it looks great with many different clothing options.  I had to do a little styling for you!

I love it on my favorite little black summer dress, as well as with citrusy lemons and limes.  It also looks great on deep avocado, since the vein is a complex bead that features that color with a pinky glaze, and this year's Viva Magenta was made for this lovely leaf.  

If you want to try the beautiful shapes and ripples of this leaf, and you don't want to wait for any of the more Autumnal color versions, this is for you, right now!

I'll put the listing in my Etsy shop tomorrow morning, April 29th, 2023, at 9am CST, and pop back here to drop a link for you then.  I have nine of these kits, but if you miss getting one, I could make a few more, so just drop me a convo.  

I'll leave you with this above closeup, and this side view, which reveals it's shapely natural curves.  

Icicles for the Neck!

I designed "A Hazy Shade of Winter" originally for an Etsy Beadweavers Challenge, many years ago, and sold the resulting work promptly.  I have always wanted to replicate that piece.  I wanted it for myself!   In the process, I have written a tutorial and assembled kits for you too.

The glorious stick pearls that make this necklace look so lush and wintery are sadly becoming harder to find than they used to be.  Most pearls are grown in China, and according to one supplier, the Chinese government is taking increasing control of the pearl industry, deciding what will be grown, and in what quantity.  I tell you this because I do not know how many more of these kits I will be able to assemble.  I have worked through my own stash, and managed to produce 32 kits.

Let me tell you about the Midnight version first, because the Dusk and Dawn colorways both employ the same design ideas.

 The piece was inspired by the Paul Simon song, but the elegant poetry of the title was most exciting thing in my mind as I worked.  The fact that where I live has experienced a freezing Polar Vortex and set an all-time record for the most snow ever in any Minnesota February has helped and encouraged the imagery along.

I worked to make all components take a supporting visual backseat to the pearls and the focal piece, a button cut from the mussel shell that grows these pearls.  As you can see below, they have fantastic nacre, and beautiful rainbow effects and shine.  Each one is unique and I have really hunted to find the best of what is available.  I have the buttons in two sizes, 7/8" and 1".  I am planning to pack 7/8" buttons with the Dawn and Dusk kits and the 1" buttons in the Midnight kits.

I LOVE the big 6/0 beads in the Midnight yoke.  They are a Miyuki Jet Matte with a rainbow finish that has a HUGE color range.  There are teals, blues, purples, hints of green, and a little bronzy brown too.  I wore this necklace yesterday with a coral sweater, and it worked beautifully,  I think the possibilities are endless.

Partnering with the matte beads in both the yoke and bezel are shiny transparent Black Diamond AB finish beads used as thread covers in the yoke and in the fringe.  The transparency provides a hint of the dripping snowmelt that creates icicles in eaves and branches, along with the drop beads I have hunted down for each color way.  In the Midnight, the drops are Black Diamond AB.  You can either position the AB finish mostly up where it will be a bold part of the whole, or down, so it behaves more subtly.  The tut tells you how to get either result.   I also adore the drops I found for the Dusk version.  The supplier calls them "Moonlight" and although they are Czech pressed glass, I think they have a lovely feel of Moonstone or Opalite. Some are translucent and a few, milky opaque. 

 And then, there are the stick pearls themselves.  I have organized and strung them all into sets for you,  gradated in length, and matched in pairs for drill hole depth.  Each set contains 7 sticks strung together for the focal fringe, and two sets of 6 sticks for each side of the yoke.  I worked hard to make the best possible sets out of the materials in my hands, and I hope you'll love them!

A bit more about the Dusk colorway. I try to design jewelry that can be work by normal people in their daily lives.  I realize that this is a little more statement necklace than I usually design, but for me, Dusk is the demin version of the piece.  Not to say it could not be worn for a dressy occasion!

But it pairs quite nicely with my stone wash jeggings and a soft blue sweater, and looked good earlier on a grey knit dress.  There is lots of this beautiful soft blue in the stores right now.

Which brings me to the Dawn colorway. Because OMG, there is so much of this glorious orchid color in the mall windows that I am having a really hard time walking there without drooling. This sweater was a closeout at Nordstrom a couple weeks ago, but honestly, there is something of this color in every store, including Gap, and menswear shops.  And it truly is the color of many beautiful winter dawns.

And while I think the piece looks great on white and cream, it is really just perfect on this glorious orchid.  There are some deeper richer blue-pinks around in the stores too, and I think they might be equally delicious. I am having a really hard time taking a good photo of this color because of the drop beads. They are Alexandrite Czech drops.  Their particular magic is color-changing in different lighting situations.  In daylight and incandescent, they are dreamy orchid.  In flourescent light, (and in my light tent, which has new, fancy "balanced fluorescent lighting") they are lavender.  In fact, my camera just does not want to see them another way, no matter how I set my white balance.   They end up looking like this:

The lavender look is not bad, but it's also not what my eye sees, and I want to make that clear. So please, do not judge harshly because of my incompetent camera work.  This color is my personal favorite.  Like the Midnight version and the Dusk version, the yoke and bezel are matte rainbow beads and the fringes are transparent orchid, with the same focus placed on the beauty of the pearls accomplished.  There are enough different soft blue pinks in the necklace to make it wearable with quite a range of those colors.

I hope you'll love this design and these kits.  As I have said, I don't know how many more of these I I'll be able to create.  I do want to mention that I have one strand of bright gold sticks, and I am planning to make a few, maybe 5? kits from those this fall.  They look like honey or amber to me, and I might pair them with some purple for autumn.  I also have just a few pale pink sticks and a pale gold, and MAYBE enough grey sticks for a couple necklaces, but I may have to switch for keshi pearls to make that all work.  But my point here is, don't wait, these may not last very long!

Happy Winter!  It's been a fun one here, with crazy cold and tons of beautiful sparkly snow, and all that really made creating this tutorial and these kits special for me.

Vintage Jasper

Well, I still have work to do, but tomorrow at noon CST, I will release the kits for my new project, Vintage Jasper.  I want to use this post to just quickly introduce you to the two colorways, and the 14 available cabochon sets.  You get to choose your own.  You might want time to think about it.

Here is a quick peek at the two colorways.  You will also notice that it is possible to put either one or two links between the large cabochon and the smaller ones.  If you are taller and plan to make a longer necklace (the kit accommodates up to 22") you might prefer two links, and if you are shorter like me, one link might be your choice.  Both are given in the tutorial, and a chart for number of links needed for sizes 17" -  22" are given.  FYI, I have to double check all my numbers and calculations, but I think these kits will be $75. Actually... $73.  Here's a link. 

So without further ado, here are the yummy Red Creek Jasper cabochon sets for your perusal!  You'll notice I used a GemDuo with color variation and hints of warmth in the Heirloom Silver group, with a link to those here. And the bezel is my favorite of all the Aiko colors.  It's called Oceanic Metallic, and is a mix of silvers, with bits of gold and dots of copper.  Here's a closeup for reference. The bezel embellishment really adds color and merges the cabs with the GemDuos.

I did the same with the GemDuos in the Antique Bronze group, and some are almost coppery.  Again, for reference, here is a closeup.  The bezel is simple Bronze Metallic, because most of these cabs have dramatic patterning and I did not want to distract.  Here's a link for the kits.

Enjoy!

Blue Morpho

I have a new offering today in the beaded silk butterfly bag series.  I'm calling it Blue Morpho.  It creatively represents a female of the species, with a really yummy color gradation from the palest turquoise to a deep and rich cobalt, accented with black and white edging.

One of my sweet buyers asked some questions yesterday about the project, and I want to answer them in detail here, for everyone.

I will release the bag and bead kit together, in one listing, and here is a link for you.

First, some bag information.  This bag was produced in two sizes.  Each piece of this quilted silk fabric varies in terms on how large the quilted squares are, from under an 7/8" to 1-1/8" and multiplied by 8 squares, you can see how large a difference that makes.  It also affects how many bags can be cut from a width of fabric.

Consequently, there are 10 bags available, and seven are about 9 x 6 x 2.25" and three are 8 x 6 x 2.25".  So you can choose your preference.  These bags are essential light capacity, and comfortably hold my wallet, big cell phone, sunglasses, keys, and lip gloss.  They are really not suited for carrying much more, although I have added a little packet of tissue and some tubes of beads at various times.

The bead kit includes a spool of black One-G thread this time, and I stitched half of my sample all in black which looks no different from the side where I carefully matched colors.   Below is a snap of the assembled kit, and the entire bead list.

Then, there were some questions about the tutorial.  Like, if you already own one of the other project tutorials, so you need this one too? Again, here is a link for you.

I have tried very hard to make this project easy and painless.  I have done many samples and ripped repeatedly to get my own results, and I have tried to show you what I figured out in a simple to understand way.  Do I think you NEED each tutorial?  No, but I know for a fact that it is lots easier with these guides.  So I am putting in chunks of two pages from the tutorial for you here, so you can judge for yourself. They are .png files and a little fuzzy in this format, but you get the idea.

SO you can judge for yourself, whether you wish to purchase the $10 tutorial.  The bag is priced at $47, and the kit at $18, combining to $65, and if your purchase the tutorial, the total bag price is $75.

I don't know if I will do another series of these bags or not.  I have fabric, but I also have another interesting idea that combines fiber and beads, and may pursue it next.

Watch for a new quickie video from me, in the next blog post, and on YouTube.  I tie off really frequently when doing bead embroidery.  I know may beaders carry threads a long way across the back of their BE, but in this case, since there is no glued backing, and minimal support for the embroidery, I recommend you tie off frequently and not carry your thread more than a quarter inch.

SO, I want to show you how to tie a professional dressmakers knot, which is super fast and stable.  It also makes it really easy to remove a row or small section you might wish to change or improve, with out jeopardizing the stability of neighboring work.  A nice technique for your collection.

In the mean time, back I go, to finish off the last 4 bag linings.  I'll release these 10 kits around noon today.

Happy beading!

A Happy Little Bag

I am close to releasing the first set of Butterfly Bag bead embroidery projects and tutorials! If all goes according to plan, I will post a few of them next weekend in my Etsy shop.  

Carl walked past my bench yesterday as I was finishing up my original sample and said, "That's a Happy Little Bag!"  I loved the Bob Ross reference, and so this sample has a name!

Making this little bag, helped me figure out what might constitute a good size, shape, and expedited construction.  I carried it around with me over the last couple weeks, unfinished, just to test how it worked and felt, and I have made several design improvements as I worked my way along.

This idea grew out of wanting to pass along something I have enjoyed in the past.  I began using fabric applique about 10 years ago in my dancewear, and the idea translated really well to bead embroidery.

A little history...   Among of my first projects along this line was my "Falling" vest.  If you want to read more about this project, you can do that here. 

And after this, I made my Urban Safari Coat, again done with applique, and the same yummy quilted Dupioni Silk.  This was a competition piece for Battle of the Beadsmith, and if you like, your can find more pictures here, and read about the construction and beading process here.

I have to confess, the idea of creating clothing in all sizes imaginable was overwhelming.  So instead I decided upon a "wearable" handbag to serve as my offering to you to try out this technique.

I am planning a release for next weekend (June 19-20),  and will continue to make these for a while, as long as there in interest, I have stamina, and until I use up the fabric I have for the purpose.  I have gold, silver, and limited bronze and celadon silk.

First release will be bags made up in gold silk, with the two versions of the tutorial.  One will include instructions and approximate charts for two options, a Monarch butterfly and a Fantasy butterfly, based on the applique.

Here is my sample for these two options, and I will assemble kits for these.

There will also be a couple different applique options, and a minimal guide tutorial for those who are experienced bead embroiderers and would like to try filling the printed lines with beads of their choosing. You are also free to add anything else of your want; flowers, scrollwork, or filling the ditch in the quilted fabric with beads as below.

So if you enjoy bead embroidery, or are interested in a gateway to the craft,

stay tuned for a more detailed blogpost, and keep an eye on my Etsy shop next weekend!

Spring Acorns for Caramel

Teaching Caramel's Acorn Earrings at the Upper Midwest Bead Society (much better than my first teaching effort, but still not what I would consider to be flawless) wiped out my stock of Acorn Earrings kits, so I have begun re-stocking.  A wonderful friend has volunteered to help with these kits, which are crazy labor-intensive!

I have a new color way, called Spring!

  I had hoped that by the time I was ready to publish these new acorns, there might be some real ones to shoot.  Some oaks set acorns early in the year to mature slowly through the summer.  I had hoped to have some photos to show you when I published these, but the Oaks here have only just stopped shivering. They really are amazing, and flower first, with long dangly catkins of golden green pollen-producing tassels.  I promise to add some images to this post when they finally appear.  EDITED TO ADD here is a starter! I found the twig of new oak leaves blown down on the path during my walk yesterday and the color was so fresh and similar to the acorns!

It has been a very slow Spring in Minnesota!  Yesterday, I dragged the deck chairs up from storage through my house, because it was finally warm-ish!  And the Best Man Ever put on his snow boots and brought the table around the house through the melting drifts for me.  I am so starved for sunshine!  And all my outdoor critters, including Caramel the squirrel, are very hungry  I keep my feeders full to meet demands.

In the mean time, you can check them out here.  My personal favorite acorn is from this site:

https://montereywildflowers.com/tree-fagaceae-quercus/

Scroll down to the Valley Oak/Roble, and check out the color in that acorn!

  

Or take a look at a range of images of catkins and Spring acorns here.  

The Canopy Melon beads in this colorway have a pinky sheen, and the colors I used are both from nature, and in support of that sheen.

If you want to duplicate my results, here is the bead list, and if you want a kit, visit my shop through the linked photo below, and choose "Spring"!  

A - 12 pcs CzechMate Crescent Opq. Rose Gold Topaz Luster

B - 12 pcs Toho 8/0 Hex #262 Light Bronzer Lined Crystal Rbw

C - 25 pcs Toho 15/0 #764 Rose Chalk Matte Opaque

D - 38 pcs Toho 11/0 #764 Rose Chalk Matte Opaque

E - 38 pcs Toho 8/0 #169 Light Rose Transparent Rainbow

F - 24 pcs Toho 11/0 #PF551 Peach Galvanized PF

G - 14 pcs Toho 11/0 Demi #PF551 Peach Galvanized PF 

(plus 2 pcs #994 Bronze Lined Crystal Rainbow)

H - 2 pcs Czech 14mm Melon Bead Canopy

J - 2 pcs Toho 8/0 Demi #PF551 Peach Galvanized PF

K - 2 pcs Toho 6/0 #PF551 Peach Galvanized PF

3 yds One-G Thread 

3 pcs Copper 2” Headpins

2 pcs Copper Fishhook Earwires

2 pcs Earring Nuts

Find the new kits here, and the tutorial here.  I am in the process of getting most of the colorways re-stocked, so I'll keep you informed as they appear.  And the Silk Butterfly Bags are in process!

Caramel's Acorns

Way back in January I was introduced to Czech 14mm Melon beads when they arrived in my TOHO Challenge kit.  I used them to make a few acorns, and have finally gotten around to re-working and writing a pattern for them.  Because, Autumn!

I have named them for my little squirrel friend Caramel.  Every morning and evening she arrives in my beading window, begging nuts.  I asked my hubby (The Best Man Ever) to make me a little rack, so I could show her the acorns I have been making.  Those ears seem to call out for decoration, don't you think?  She makes a sweet model and works for peanuts!

I love how the Patina and Pomegranate Melons are translucent, a lovely thing for an earring!  The others are all opaque metallic finishes.

My ten page tutorial shows you how to make the acorns as earrings, and also provides a metal free finish for those who want to attach them as components to other beadweaving.  I also have kits available in the five colors listed above.

The acorn is worked in peyote and square stitch, suitable for Intermediate beaders.  They are fast and fun to make.  Here's how the acorns look finished with wrapped loops.

And here is how the acorns look, finished with fireline.  This particular colorway was a one of many tests that did not make it to kitting.

I have been playing with the acorn as a component for use in necklaces this week.  I am very pleased with the proportions.  They seem to work well with many different commonly used jewels and cabochons.

Here is the Pomegranate acorn, added to one of my Pineapple Blossom bezels, based on a Swarovski Pear Fancy Stone.

And here was a quick effort with several kinds of chain from my stash.  I thought it make a good finial, and felt I could have added more acorns to the chain as well.  This particular chain was a little busy though, so I kept it cleaner.  The rope is almost 36" long and needed no clasp.

I have been playing with using crescent beads in bezels to create a sort of prong setting effect, and am pretty pleased with this one.  I am thinking about writing it up as a tutorial, but it may have to wait for a while.  The stone is a common size of Red Creek Jasper, so again, I am pleased with the size of the acorn and proportional relationship to the cabochon and bezel.  I think this acorn component has lots of possible applications!

I even tried a little Bead Embroidery, but in limited time, I don't really think I did it justice.  But I do think that the acorn component can work with BE.  I liked how the acorns were attached to the little oak leaf bunch I found in the park, and tried to emulate the organic aspect and the dual grouping.

You can find my tutorial HERE in my Etsy shop and the kits for all ten different beads needed to make two acorns, plus earring findings HERE.  I have included thread in my kits as well, as is must match the Melon bead.  Caramel wants me to be sure to tell you that the 14mm Melon beads have been discontinued by the Czech manufacturer.  They are still available in many retail bead shops, but be warned, when they are gone, these acorns will be no more.

Caramel is always in favor of hoarding.