The TOHO Challenge - Winter Garden of Discontent

Over the last couple years I have begun to get to know the nice folks at Bobby Bead, a local bead shop in Uptown Minneapolis.  And as a result of that, I was invited to be one of the featured designers in The TOHO Challenge.

Here's how it works.  Toho chooses a collection of beads, and each featured designer world wide gets the same box. Everyone beads, and then, there is a big reveal at the Bead and Button Show, where all the designer's work is featured in showcases neighboring the Bead Dreams entries.  Here are the 2016 featured designer's pieces.  Each year there are some fantastic pieces, and I always find it really interesting to see many varied designers working with the same collection of beads.  I encourage you to check out the show, just outside the shopping area in the Wisconsin Center.

At the show, interested beaders may stop at the TOHO booth and pick up their own mini kit of challenge beads, and submit an entry themselves.  Here are last year's public entries.


All work is kept secret until the big reveal, BUT LUCKY ME, I get to show my work early, because it was chosen to serve as the TOHO advertisement in the current edition of Beadwork Magazine.

To tell you the truth, I personally found the colors challenging to work with. My beads arrived on Christmas Eve.  I opened the box, and was flummoxed.  Most of my work is nature inspired, and there was nary a leafy green bead in sight.  In fact, at first glance, not much color-wise from the natural world at all. But, thankfully, I am a gold-over-silver girl. I read somewhere recently that the colors were taken from the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, which now makes good sense to me.

 I took a walk in the park at the end of my street in the late afternoon, and saw golden leaves, still clinging to sleeping branches, with a hint of sunset glow making ice crystals sparkle.  I thought, "here it is!" and decided to create a winter garden piece.  I found myself saddened by the political climate in my country, and the ideas in Richard III's "Now is the winter of our discontent..." soliloquy were in my mind.  I would make a stark, wintry vignette, and then infuse it with hints of hope and joy.  Because I simply refuse to be a saddened by circumstances beyond my control.

SO, "Winter Garden of Discontent" was born, and developed over the icy month of January.  It was nice making little golden leaves in the cold and darkness.  (For those who have asked, they are the same leaves in my Rose Hips tutorial, available on Etsy.) I saw a beautiful image posted by a friend on her fB page of dangling Brugmansia flowers.  They bloom only at night  and I loved that, believing it fit neatly with my theme, so I created a trio of them.

I have since been playing with this flower shape, and am REALLY looking forward to this Friday, when 50 new colors of Demi beads will appear at Bobby Bead.  I have two variations of these flowers ready to be illustrated and written up as components in a new piece I am envisioning.  And these new colors?  YUM!  Can't wait!  Here is a sneak peek of my variations.

I LOVE those new DEMI BEADS!!  Great structural potential, and unique accents too. 

The little butterfly may be involved too.  At first I thought it would be a blue bird of happiness, but the crescents and demi beads wanted to be butterflies instead.  The butterflies are an amalgamation of the blue Morpho and the little blue Skippers that flitted through my childhood on Mount Helena.

And the acorns?  I believe they will re-appear in a project for the fall.  I have ordered those beautiful Czech Melon beads in a a myriad of autumnal colors, and I can't wait to have time to play with them.

Thanks TOHO, for choosing me as a featured designer, and thank you also for the great introduction to Demi beads and Czech Crescents and Melons.  They are a delight!

Buy the Beads, or Buy the Kit??

I read a most interesting article a couple days ago on Beading Daily, about the merits of purchasing a kit of beads for a tutorial, versus hunting down all the individual beads needed for yourself. The article mentioned several benefits, including time savings, not having to own and store leftover extra beads, one stop shopping, and cost.

Maybe it makes a difference if you already own a huge number of beads.  I certainly do, but I also find several $20 - $50 trips to the bead store are part of every project I undertake.  It seems no matter how many I have, the right one is missing.

I ran a little test this evening, on my most recent kit.   The kit for "Rose Hips" is very complex, with 20 different beads involved, some of which are discontinued by the manufacturer.  Holy cow, it was a LOT of counting and weighing!

In my test, I pretended I was a beader in my own city, with access to two great local bead stores with large inventory, were I do most of my shopping.   I used retail pricing for what I hope is the smallest packaging available, and shopped locally, at the fewest possible stops.  I did order a few things online, but did not count the shipping costs.

I expected that the kit, at $60, would likely cost about the same as the beads, and other supplies included in the kit.  But boy was I wrong.  Purchased separately, the beads cost more than twice as much, $141.84.

Material	Name	Grams or Pcs per Kit	Source	Packaged Amount	Cost
A Dark  Bead	Aiko #617	3.50	Bobby Bead	14  gr Tube	8.65
B Dark Bead	Miyuki # 306 Transparent Luster Olive Gold 11/0	4.50	Stormcloud Trading	30 gr Tube	6.95
C Bead All Colors	Miyuki  # 465 24k Gold 15/0	1.80	Stormcloud Trading	10 gram Tube	21.95
D Bead Dk & Med	Miyuki #143B Transparent Olivene 15/0	0.80	Stormcloud Trading	30 gr Tube	2.75
E Bead Dark	Toho #167 Olive Green Matte Metallic 8/0	2.50	Bobby Bead	14 gr Box	4.50
E Rainbow  w/E	Too #2631F Glazed Rainbow Iguana 8/0	2 pcs	Bobby Bead	14 gr Box	4.50	Only 2 pieces needed
Aa Bead Medium	Delica #1135 Opaque Dk Olive	2.20	Stormcloud Trading	5 gr Tube	2.75
Bb Bead Medium	Toho #1007 Metallic Lined Olive Luster 11/0	4.20	Bobby Bead	14 gr Tube	3.25	Discontinued
Ee Bead Medium	Miyuki #411 Dark Olive 8/0	1.30	Stormcloud Trading	30 gr Tube	2.75
Aaa Bead Light	Aiko #1610F Moss Matte Opaque	1.30	Bobby Bead	5 gr Box	11.50
Bbb Bead Light	Matsuno #356H Lined Rainbow Olivene/Tan	2.50	Stormcloud Trading	30 gr Tube	2.95
Ddd Bead Light	Beads By Dee Unknown Peridot Transparent 15/0	0.20	Beads by Dee	15 gr Box	2.00	Guesstimated cost
Eee Bead Light	Toho #2011 Ancient Light Green Matte Opaque 8/0	1.50	Bobby Bead	14 gr Box	3.85
F Coral	9x5 Rice Coral	17 pcs	Bobby Bead	50 piece Strand	10.00	Special ordered
G Rondelles	Red Czech Rondel	11 pcs	Bobby Bead	100 piece Strand	3.15
H Stringing 6/0 Dk	Toho #617 Olive Green Metallic Matte 6/0	12 pcs	Bobby Bead	14 gr Box	4.90
J 6mm Czech FP	Unknown Color	16 pcs	Papio Gems	25 piece Strand	1.00	Discontinued
K Miyuki 11/0 24K	Miyuki  #191 24k Gold 11/0	40 pcs	Caravan Beads	5 gr Tube	11.25
L 4mm Czech FP	4mm Czech Olivine Snakeskin Fire Polish	8 pcs	Prairie Flower Beads	50 piece Strand	4.00
M Czech Drop	Czech Drop Bead 5x8	12 pcs	Prairie Flower Beads	0.12	7.00	Discontinued
Clasp	Gold Plate Toggle & Loop	1 set	Stormcloud Trading	Pkg of 10 sets	2.95
4 Soldered Rings	4mm Soldered Ring Gold Plated	2 pcs	Stormcloud Trading	Pkg of 10 pcs	2.25
4x6 Oval Jump R	4x6mm Oval Jump Rings	4 pcs	Stormcloud Trading	Pkg of 100 pcs	3.95
Nylon Core	Stren 50# Test	12"	E-Bay	100 yd Spool	3.99	Limited Supply
Thread	One-G Thread	1 spool	Bobby Bead	50 yd Spool	3.75
Spring Clamp	Beadalon Bead Stoppers	2 pcs	Amazon	20 piece pkg	13.95
				Total Materials Cost	141.84

Now there were two big ticket items, the spring clamps, and the 15/0 24k gold plated Miyuki rocailles.  But even if we assume that I could have found either or both in smaller quantity, the kit is still looking like a great deal.  Also, there are sales at Bobby Bead, so if I didn't mind waiting for what I needed to go on sale, and buying some this week, and some more the next, money could be saved.

Substituting beads would be a challenge, because the hues and values in the leaves are pretty tightly controlled and each one depends on the others.  I did many samples to come up with combinations that worked.

Just to illustrate the point...

And then, there's the fact that some of the beads in the kit have been discontinued by the manufacturer, making them a challenge to hunt down and purchase.

Note to self, before deciding to write a tutorial, and kit a project, it might be best to have everything needed on hand.  Sigh, learning curve.  Perhaps simpler would be best, but as a designer, this is what I like to do.

SO...  before you think kits are expensive, and before you think you can find everything you need for yourself, consider my little test above.  It surprised me.  Did it surprise you too?  

The Rose Hip Saga... it went on forever!!!

I have worked out several ways to make this project easier and tutorial-worthy, and am hoping for a release date just after Thanksgiving!  Never say never, I guess.

This idea came from a shrub rose cluster near my home.  I had taken pictures of it a year ago, in the fall, when it was colored, and had a few hips still dangling and I fell in love with the extraordinary look of the thing! Sadly, I could not find that image, but this exceptional one has the feel of the thing beautifully.

Staggering, right?  Yep, someday I'll have a go with the fall colors, because OMG!  But what I loved most was the little hip.  BUT, I have just played with fall color and leaves and I thought it might be time to move on.  So I did more looking about at my world.  The beautiful rose patch had changed.  It's been cut back to allow it to thicken for next year and just a few little leaves had begun to sprout.  But they still had that great TEXTURE.

I did a little more research with my BFF Google Images.  I believe in working from life (lol) as much as possible when I try to do botanical imagery, so I hunted for pictures of rose hips.  What I found showed me that they came in two different shapes, both oval, and like the rondelle shape I had seen.

So first I set out to create some leaves, with the cool, quilted texture and vein-y-ness of the shrub roses.  I had to remember how to make Russian Leaves first, and then I began playing with the texture, which I ultimately got with both a combination of cylinders and rounds, and also with finish, using a matte cylinder and a shiny round, and vice-versa.  I had to stop and draw bits of leaves to figure out how to get that all to happen.

After much color experimentation, (much of which I ripped out before finishing a leaf) I finally had leaves and colors I liked.  I thought I would do a less shiny, casual version first, and then explore using silver-lined beads too, for a dressier look.  But I never got past the casual version, and I think it's plenty dressy.

I also thought I might want to use thorns. Because, WOW!  Thorny!!!

Then I went on a hip and thorn hunt.  One of my local bead shops (J-Ring Glass) is closing.  I am sad about this, because I liked their semi-precious collection especially.  I found loads of possible dressy and casual hips there (both coral and glass) and some amazing red/gold daggers at Bobby Bead and brought them all home.  I added the actual thorn beads I had been hoarding.

And then, I played a bit with the funky ends of the hips, the part that would have been the base for the rose flower, before the petals fell off and the fruit matured.  Actually, I got completely obsessed with these.

OK, meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had my leaves assembled on a piece of Stren, the same magic that supports my lilacs.  I had a rope with the red dagger thorns, and I wove them together, and tried out the hips.  I hated the results. Clunky, awkward, the daggers were stealing the thunder from the leaves and hips, and I had imagined a cascade of hips, but they were fighting with the leaves. EGAD.
I rather wanted to quit.  You cannot imagine the difficulty of weaving this uncontrolled, catchy sprig of leaves into this insane thorny rope.  I gave it a couple days, and ripped the leaves out of the rope.  I did like the bright red berries against the dark forest-y green leaves, so thank goodness, all was not lost.

Then I made MORE leaves and attached them in a triangular shape, which thank heaven, I liked. But the darn hip-tip thingies (of which I finally had made ones I just loved) were totally wrong, and masked the berries. And I thought the fat rondelle berries were awfully heavy for the sleek leaves, so they were wrong too.  OF COURSE.  I think this was just that kind of project.  Although, I often do things so many times it makes me dizzy, so maybe because (like childbirth) while it's fresh, you remember all the agony, and then later on, you think... maybe another baby would be nice.  Anyhow...

Also, I thought the placement of the hips was just too perfect and inorganic.  I removed the hip tips, and put in more hips with just a tiny Czech rondelle and a gold picot, and did it as randomly as I could, although they arrange themselves despite my efforts to be organic.

So, finally, I like the dang thing!

And a back view, for structure.

Did you make it through all the angst?  I don't blame you if you didn't, because I nearly gave up several times.  But I am glad I didn't.  Happy beady trails to you!