Pineapple Blossom gets Married!

I began this necklace, using my Pineapple Blossom tutorial, as a demonstration piece for the TOHO booth at the Bead & Button show, but it proved to be a less than terrific demo piece.  The silver-lined crystal beads can be challenging to see without a darker mat and great light, and I wanted onlookers to be able to see what I was doing.

The results are gorgeous though, and I think this would be a great wedding necklace!

I had a hard time shooting this piece, and here is an image on black, that helps show detail.

Several people had asked if I will kit this, and I don't think so.  But I am happy to tell you, it can be made with my tutorial, and I will provide the beads list below!

My pattern is calibrated for a leather backing on the jewel, and that process is included in the tutorial, as well a in a video here on my blog.

Make some bride happy!

Or you can buy that piece in my Etsy shop here.

Swarovski 2016 Spring/Summer Launch Presentation

Boy was that ever fun, and inspiring!

I was invited to a Swarovski launch presentation this morning at my favorite sparkle wholesaler, Rhinestones Unlimited.  I have purchased most of the flatback crystals I use in my dance wear from them for many years, as well as a some things I have used in my beadwork, and they are great to work with!  They write a blog too, and here is a link to their post about new flat back colors available any day now.

The presentation by the knowledgeable Swarovski Rep Debbi Simon (a fine artist who was a Bead & Button employee for a time... you might know her book about crystals and adhesives called Crystal Chic) included an introduction to a tool that some of you might find very useful.  It is an iPad app that is essentially an interactive catalog of all available Swarovski beads, pearls, fancy stones, sew-on jewels... all of the over 16,000 items in their current inventory.  I downloaded it (free from the app store) and plan to play with it further this evening. It has several functions.  Fair warning, it took about 30 minutes to download it completely.

The app includes tutorials which help you understand how to use the catalog, filter products, find product details, and search a filter.  Then it also teaches you how to use the selections feature to choose products, group them to look at colors and finishes together, and even copy and arrange them as you see fit, maybe into the necklace or garment embellishment of your dreams. A very powerful design tool.  Pretty cool!  And once you have your selections made, it will make you an ordering list. Yikes.  It could be dangerous to the wallet, methinks!

In addition to learning about this cool app, we got to see and touch a wonderful inspiration look book, and receive a print version of the book, as well as the entire print catalog of available Swarovski products, featuring the new shapes, colors and finishes.  We were also given back issues of Sand, a Swarovski magazine of sorts, full of inspiring designs and designer profiles from past releases.

I really liked the pastel powder finished crystal pearls and matching jewels, which reminded me of E.H. Ashley Ultra Color finishes.  Plus of course, samples!  So I can show you what I saw.  Here's the sexy box...

And the cool products inside!  I love the pastel pearls, matching chatons, and Metallic Sunshine!  I have to say Blush Rose is not my favorite, but then it would be fair to say I am not very subtle most of the time. I like color purity and vibrancy, but it's nice there are pretties for every taste.

Rhinestones Unlimited host and owner Angela Peery and her staff provided tasty treats, and we all got a goody bag, which included...

...yummy checkerboard jewels and beads, plus a lovely new crystal pendant called Lotus, (top) which to me is an elegant sand dollar, and gorgeous!  PLUS...

...A bead mat with a measuring calibration of the left side.  Astonishing to me, as I mark all my mats in inches across the bottom with a permanent marker.  Apparently I am not the only one who likes this idea.  AND, the Rhinestones Unlimited version of the crystal katana, but without the blister-producing inset stone, and a narrower profile which suits my small hands better.

The best part of the day for me was the very inspiring imagery I got to feast on.  New ideas are floating happily in my brain.  I almost wanted to skip the Bead Dreams work for today and go try out some of them.  But that will have to wait.  Loved it!  Thanks for the invitation Angela, and for the great presentation, Debbi!

Kelp Forest

I needed a distraction, and the Etsy Beadweavers May Challenge provided an excellent one. The theme was "Nautical Inspired."  I didn't plan or draw.  I wanted to fill my mind, and use up all the time alloted. Since the description of the challenge mentioned "lush ocean life" I started by searching Google Images for ocean plants, and the first images were of a kelp forest and I was HOOKED!

Rocks with Barnacles

I searched through my stash for things that looked like they might be part of a kelp forest and found several things to love.  Deep blues and greens found their way into my possibilities pile, and two things really spoke to me.  I had some blue green Swarovski jewels that asked to be the rocks that provide the kelp with an anchor on the ocean floor, and some iridescent beetle wings that looked like kelp leaves to me.  I began bezeling the jewels, and realized I needed one more than I had, but (curses!) my supplier was out of town until the 30th of April.  I imagine this is how drug addicts feel when then need a fix, and their dealers are in Aruba!  So I posted an image of what I needed on Facebook, hoping one of my beady buddies might sell me one of these beauties.

And Cindy Hlavka (awesome ex-president of the Upper Midwest Bead Society, who recognizes bead need when she sees it!) came riding to my rescue!  We met in a parking lot and she opened the trunk of her "MN Twins Mobile" to display her Swarovski jewel stash, in a black velvet lined box no less.  I really felt like I was buying drugs!  THANK YOU CINDY!!! 

After the jewels were bezeled, I decided they needed lots of sparkly ocean floor texture, so created a barnacle embellished look with freshwater pearls and bicones.  And I made a center back closure that would allow me to add kelp fringe and made a net connection, which seemed wildly appropriate to the ocean-going theme.

You can see a couple of the beetle wings in the corner of this photo.  I had begun playing with how they might become kelp, but holy mackerel (pardon the expression) that was a challenge!  They are wings, so they are SUPER LIGHT WEIGHT.  Sadly, lightweight things do not lend themselves to fringe, which requires weight to drape beautifully.  I tried MANY configurations and the best one abandoned all thread and used chain and jump rings, which provided the necessary weight for effective drape.  I loved those wings, but I just didn't love what I was able to make from them.

The Quest for Kelp

Thus began the hunt for a way to communicate the beautiful movement and shapes of the kelp itself.  I made a few samples.   One extraordinary thing about the kelp plant that really appealed to me was its flotation device.  Kelp needs sunlight for photosynthesis.  If it lies on the ocean floor, there is not much sunllight to be had.  So it makes its own little pontoons.  Each leaf has a gas bladder, connecting it to the main stalk of the plant and the plant fills the bladders and thus, keeps itself afloat to wave in the currents.  LOVED that.  And I found some awesome freshwater pearls that seemed perfect.  BUT, I struggled with how literal to be, how sparkly the leaves should be, and how to keep the two portions of the necklace harmonious.  This was lacking cohesiveness for me, but I thought it was close.

So I tried a bluer, less glittery version, without the big pearl bladder.

But then, the little bladder pearls were shocking and the leaves were stripey.

so I tried a simpler fringe, thinking it would still have the persuasiave movement.  Fail.

Then I tried putting the big bladder pearl at the bottom, more negative space a the top of kelp and softer stitching to achieve a more tassle-like result, and finally a tassle that I ripped apart later in my process for parts!  Still nothing right.

Plus I found working on this necklace was like sewing on black at night.  It's dark enough that I can't tell what I have done until the next day's dawn.  Finally, I waited for a dawn and did an assessment.  I like the sparkle, but not too much of it.  The bladder pearls were screaming and I needed them to be more integrated, so I found a different, quieter bead for the task.  And the color really needed to blend with the rocks, since the texture and shape were different. AND, I used the big bladder pearl at the top of the fringe strand.  It had a sprouted seed quality in that position that I really liked.   Finally, I could just make the kelp!!!

Final Results: "Poseidon's Garden"

Poseidon, mythological God of the Ocean was also responsible for horses.  Hence the clasp detail! 

This very glamorous evening-wear necklace is for sale in my Etsy shop and also an entry in the May 2012 Etsy Beadweavers Challenge, "Nautical Imspired."  Please visit our team blog to see all the wonderful entries and vote for your personal favorite between May 9th and 15th at:

www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com

And happy beading to you!

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. 

After a Long Silence...

Finally, a new post and a new piece.  I spent all of January and most of February pursuing a project that I was simply unable to realize in the way I thought should be possible.  I eventuallly set aside my fourth attempt, took the hundreds of dollars worth of pearls I had purchased for the "IP," ( impossible project) and decided I would enter the March Etsy Beadweavers Challenge, "Fashion Through the Ages."  I purposefully used the biggest and best of the pearls, so I could not revisit "IP" without re-investing. 

The March Challenge was to choose a historial fashion style and create a piece of jewelry in that style.  I found this beautiful painting by Victorian artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter very inspiring.  I loved the bare necks and beautiful soft shoulders and wanted to create a pearl choker with a three dimensional feeling that would embellish all that lovely bare skin from all angles.

I used triangle weave, one of my personal favorite stitches, to create the choker, and then added drops all the way around the base, so that there would be something beautiful to see from the sides and back, as well as the front.  This is my second attempt, and I was glad to start again after nearly finishing the first time, because it allowed me a opportunity to perfect the design, which had potential, but needed cleaning up.

Then I visited my favorite local bead store, The Bead Monkey and found this splendid sterling silver clasp, shaped like a little heart.  I was thinking my piece would be a great wedding necklace, and the clasp seemed perfect for that purpose, as well as continuing my "beautiful from all angles" idea.  And then of course, it needed a little extender chain.  I tend to design jewelry with my own skinny neck in mind, and like to make it possible for others to adjust the work to fit without alterations to the weaving.

On a side note, I just read about the tiara likely to be worn by Kate Middleton when she becomes a British Princess and, in the process, stumbled across this photo of a necklace worn by Queen Mary, with one of the tiaras under consideration.  According to Wikipedia, the neckalce is from Garrards, Inc, "Crown Jeweller of the UK, charged with the upkeep of the British Crown Jewels, from 1843 to 2007."  Very similar to my own attempt, but made of silver.  Wonder if the stiff, cold metal would be uncomfortable?  Too bad they didn't beadweave this piece!  Take a look.  The design inspiration must have been very similar to my own!

Fortunately, stepping away from the "IP" has been refreshing, and I am happily working on another new piece as well.  Maybe someday, I will revisit "IP," and by that time, I will either have a more realistic expectation, or the techincal skill to reach my goal.  Do you ever get stuck?

Let me add a note here: this is a contest entry, and you can choose your favorite piece and have your voice heard!  Please visit http://www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/ by March 15th and vote for your favorite entry on the right hand side of the blog in the poll!!!