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!

Components as Inspiration

I was super excited to be contacted by Steven Weiss at Beadsmith.  They have a new line of clasps, Elegant Elements, and he asked if I might like to design using these clasps. Then, my work (and that of other designers) would be featured as a sales strategy for the new clasp line.  The product line was GORGEOUS!  And I said "Yes!"  Although I quickly discovered many of the other participants are my beading heroes, and I hoped I would find myself adequate to the task.

I have only just met Steven Weiss "electronically," but I am going to go out on a limb here and say the guy is a public relations and advertising genius.  This was a really brilliant way to collect great photos of the clasp line in action and I suspect most of us are really happy to be involved in the project.  A win-win situation if ever there was one!

I chose two beauties from the wide range of Elegant Elements clasps.  The first one I wanted to work with was a three-strand, golden nest box clasp, with snowy white pearl eggs.  I thought this piece could serve double duty, since the February Etsy Beadweavers theme is "NEST."  My first thought was to create a similar beaded nest for pearls to rest in, but after a couple samples, I found my work didn't really allow the clasp to shine.  The clasp is a soft, pale gold and although it has beautiful leaf texture, it's very subtle and super organized.  My samples were VERY textural, and one was a little disorganized, and neither suited the clasp.

I decided I needed to let the clasp lead the way for me, as I often do when I find other components I want to work with, so I analyzed it's basic design.  It sits neatly flat, and the pearls sit up off the delicate, flat, highly organized nest to be featured in their little bezels. So I began a search for flat, golden, subtly-textured components that might allow me to provide contrast to big egg-shaped pearls.  I bought some golden shadow rivolis, and those were lovely, but I really wanted something metallic to go with them.  Then one night in a parking garage in South Minneapolis, the answer jingled out of the payment station in the form of a gold one dollar coin.  I had just read an article about the reducing of production of these beauties, because they are not highly circulated, and considered to be an expense our government can eliminate.  But I just loved it.  And lo and behold, it was flat, pale gold, and delicately textured.  Just what I had been looking for.  But coins in jewelry?  And then the idea of a "nest egg" occurred to me, and it seemed perfect design concept for both of the tasks at hand.

I bezeled the coin and dashed off to the bank for more.  Turns out several different presidents are featured, as well as Sacajawea, but I liked the lady liberty backs, so I chose the ones with the best looking "tails" and got to work.  With several coins and rivolis ready I played with placement, and found a way to organize a triad of each (half dozen packaging, just like the clasp) to allow for a place for some of my big freshwater pearl drops to sit, and joined them together.  I played with several edge details, including tiny leaf shapes, but they still felt overwhelming and out of scale with the clasp, so I just netted in some bicones and found that to be appropriately scaled and detailed.

 I broke the edge detail to allow some of the pearl eggs to drip out of the nest as fringe, and to allow for a soft three strand pearl neckstrap, which joined both the focal and the clasp with big pearls again, to help keep the clasp focused as a major player in the design.

Although I frequently let components speak to me in my design process, I had never before considered the possibility of allowing a clasp to dictate a design. This line is more than worthy of  that kind of attention and I am really looking forward to working with my second clasp.

Serendipity for my Sister

Two years ago, my sister gave me three cabochons for Christmas.  She told me that my mother loved one of them, and she loved another.  I made my mother's favorite into a necklace for her 87th birthday.

Last summer, my sister told me that what she most wanted for her December birthday and Christmas gift was "her" cabochon, transformed into a piece of jewelry.  I got it out and was not particularly inspired, but decided I would make a start and see what happened as I went along.

It's a Payne's gray and creamy white stone, maybe something like Dalmation Jasper but the domed surface was pitted and I was having a hard time with that.  I tightened the bezel on the front side and flipped it over to work the back.  EUREKA!  The back of the cabochon is a nearly perfect image of the mountain that my sister and I grew up on in Helena, Montana.  Had she seen this?  I had certainly not. It's the view from my parent's house front yard, on the North slope of Mount Helena.

 It has the right shape and proportions, the tree line is nearly visible in the markings, and the color placement makes it look just like the real mountain does about this time of year, with a beautiful frosting of snow.

Flat side of the cabochon, the Mt. Helena image!

I decided that the piece could be reversible, in case it was the front of the cab Cara was loving, and so designed a woven bail that would allow for "reversability."  Then I decided to add some branch fringe, again, in a reversible way, so that it might look as though you were viewing the mountain through frost or snow covered trees and shrubs.

As I worked the fringe, I have another EUREKA moment.  The fringe looked like the branches I was hoping for, and it also resembled ROOTS.  MY roots.  My SISTER'S roots.  Simply amazing to me how a duty can become beauty, and touch your heart with a little effort, confidence, and faith.

The "right" side of the cabochon, with the pendant on the twisted 8- strand neck strap.

I first strung an 8-strand necklace for the pendant to live on.  Well, no.  FIRST I tried to make a bead crocheted rope.  For a couple of days, and many online tutorials, and many different sized and colored beads, and with tremendous frustration, I tried to make a bead crochet rope.  Apparently, being able to crochet has little to do with bead crocheted rope.  This is the first thing I have tried to do with beads at which I have achieved a complete and total FAIL.  I will not allow this to remain something I cannot do, but with a deadline looming, I strung an 8-strand necklace for the pendant to live on.

Because of the breadth of the bail, the strands had to be twisted to look nice and I didn't love that.  SO, I looked up Heather Collin's brilliant and easily comprehensible tutorial for cubic right angle weave, and made a second strap, which I liked much better!

On the CRAW rope, Mt. Helena side visible..

I'll send both necklaces, since either could be worn by itself, or with the pendant.

I know Cara does not read my blog, so I think it's safe to publish this post at this point, but please don't spoil the surprise.  Don't share this post with Cara until December 24th!

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

What it Took...

... to make my Arabesque Hearts and Flowers Necklace.

Some materials:

1 8.4 carat Rhodocrosite Teardrop Cabochon  12.00

1 pair Rhodocrosite Cabochons                        20.00

1 piece Pink Bead Backing                                   .65

1 piece Gold Ultrasuede for backing                    4.00

2 2x2mm Gold Filled Crimps                                .30

2 3mm Gold Filled Jump Rings                              .40

22 4mm Swarovski Rose Champagne Bicones      5.50

1 tube 24k Rose Gold Plate Delicas                    15.25

1 tube Nickel Plated Size 11 Seed beads                4.00

1 pkg Size 8 Green Iris Teardrop Seed Beads        2.00

6 tubes Size 15 Japanese Seed Beads                     9.80

1 tube Size 15 24k Gold Czech Charlottes          17.00

1 tube Size 13 24k Gold Czech Charlottes          15.45

4 tubes Size 8 Seed Beads                                    17.00

1 Gold Filled Toggle Clasp                                    9.50

4 bobbins Nymo in 4 Colors                                 5.00

1 spool 10 lb test Red Power Pro                        14.95

1 spool Crystal Fire Line                                    16.80

1 spool Fine Gold Extreme Soft Flex                 25.50

I didn't use up all of each of these items, but I made a just under $200 expenditure to have each item needed at hand to make the necklace. 

Plus some tools:

Needle nose pliers, crimping pliers, beading needles in various sizes, tailors thimble, awl, card stock for making patterns, Lazer shears for cutting the fishing lines, beading mat and tray, bead scoop.

Plus some time:

Usually I keep meticulous track of time, but this time (because I started so late and worked so fast) I have to guess, about 12 hours, but I suspect that is a conservative estimate.

Plus some experience:

Which enabled me to know that what I designed originally could not be finished in time to make the deadline for completion, so I adapted and adjusted my design to allow me to complete it in the time I had available.

Plus the inspiration:

 I got from watching my Etsy Beadweavers teammates post their entries for this challenge, and after deciding that I just didn't have time to do this, re-deciding that I REALLY wanted to make my own response to the challenge of "Arabesque Style."

Tomorrow is the last day of this challenge and if you have not already done so, please visit our Etsy Beadweavers Team blog, and choose your favorite entry of the many delightful interpretations on display and VOTE!

A Gift for a Friend

For her birthday, I told my friend Donna I would design a piece of jewelry to go with any outfit of her choosing.  She delivered a new top to me a couple weeks ago and I thought it was a great choice!  It has a funky peacock-inspired print in shades of turquoise, purple, fuchsia, cobalt, and ruby red, on a black ground.  The print is luminous and the colors really pop off the surface of the fabric in some places, and fade to neutral in others. The neckline was a deep V and I immediately wanted to fill that V with a Y shaped peacock tail image of my own.  The top is lush and rich, but subtle, and could be a casual shirt, looking great with jeans.  It could also dress up for a coctail party, so I wanted my piece to serve both purposes.








I found a dyed howlite torus in a nice turquoise-y color, and collected beads from my stash in all the colors in the shirt, choosing some Swarovski sparkle and lots of matte stone to serve my dual purpose.  Then I began fringing the torus wrap to create my tail.

I got it SO wrong the first time!  Bad proportions with too much length, and I mixed the color in horizontal bands and that was a mistake as well.  When you lave lots of texture and color, I think you need to organize it well to keep it from being a  messy pile of confusion, which my first effort was.  I'll show you, because it's the only photo I have of Donna's wonderful top...  But you can tell I wasn't pleased by the photo I took.  Sigh.  See how that color pops?  What a great shirt!

I don't know why this should be, but frequently when I design my beadwork, I have to do it wrong to see what it should be.  After staring at my chaos version for a while, I realized I had an opportunity to create a peacock eye image with the color selection, and that brought order to confusion and calmed the messy texture down to a reasonable level.  BUT, Donna is a petite woman, and I was worried that I had still not gotten the scale right for her. So I dithered about maybe making something more simple, and couldn't quite put the beads away yet.  But I did really like both the color arrangement and the depth and lushness of my second effort.

Fortunately, Donna stopped by yesterday with coconut macaroons from the Crossroads Deli, and while I made us tea, and she noticed the necklace on my stand and liked it! She tried it on, and I marked the length and finished the clasp while we drank our tea, and she will test drive it on Friday on a date she is looking forward to. 

I'm so glad that worked out!  And now all I need is a photo from that date... 

Pearls from China

My friend Doris Coghill spoke at the Upper Midwest Bead Society meeting a couple weeks ago, providing insight and information from her many years of beading, teaching beadwork, and selling beads.  When asked about beading supplies from China, she used a very bad word.  She explained that the Chinese government has recently forced the retirement of many skilled workers to provide jobs for younger people entering the workforce.  When many of those experienced workers left, with them went skills and ethical work habits. 

One of the results of this forced mass Chinese early retirement program is a flood of poorly drilled pearls on the market.  Earlier this fall I bought piles of pearls at the local Gem and Lapidary Workers Show when it visited Minneapolis.  I love to weave with pearls, but usually find I must buy them wholesale to afford them. Weaving eats up materials quickly, and the GLWS is a great place to shop.

So when the blitz of my fall costume work ended, I happily sorted through my goodies and got out my favorite 3 strands of golden bronzy 3mm-ish rice pearls and two pieces of Biggs Deschutes Jasper and set to work, with this result:

The jasper was pricey, especially the upper piece, but the pearls were very reasonable, so I had plenty to play with, and after configuring the focal section, I decided to drape the pearls on each side.  I liked the exclaimation point image I had, but wanted to soften and disguise it a little, so it had subtlety and invited a closer look, since the details in the focals were so lovely.  This is where my trouble began. 

When you are draping strands of anything, uniformity is critical to success.  And these pearls were far from uniform. I loved the differences in color, since they echoed the depth in the jasper.

But the differences in length were more problematic.  For what I had paid for them, I didn't think the size differences were unreasonable, and the surfaces were smooth and lovely and with a deep glowing nacre.  I sorted them by length, and realizing that I would not have enough of any one length to do the job entirely, tried to organize them in my draping to provide the best results.  They were visually deceptive!  Fatter ones looked shorter than they were, and vice versa.  But all that was 100% acceptable to me and my purposes.

What I found disappointing was the funky drilling of many of the pearls.  In my triangle weave section, it didn't matter, but in the draping, it did.

I did the left side first (ok, REALLY I did the right side first, hated it, and did the left side and got a better result, and then ripped the right side and re-wove it) and I was able to use mosly the pearls with the holes drilled straight through, but by the last strand at the bottom, I had to start encorporating the pearls with the angled holes.  See the one in the center of the picture? There's one in two strands from it as well.  Sigh. 

And the right side has more of those badly drilled babies.  I don't see this as a crisis.  My piece is still pretty.  But my friend was right.  Less care and skill is going into the drilling of pearls from China.

Now, maybe the specific Chinese supplier makes a difference, because I ordered the pearls for my Victoria's Secret piece from China, and I was really pleased with their quality, price, and super fast service with reasonable shipping costs.  Better than companies in this country that shall remain nameless.

So, for future reference, caveat emptor!  When you buy a strand of pearls, hold them up and look at how they have been drilled and consider your purpose before plunking down your cash.  If you want to drape them, you want the holes drilled straight.  Thanks Doris, for opening my eyes.