Choose Your Own Adventure Freeform Peyote Challenge

I've finished my freeform peyote necklace for the challenge. I think I have, I mean. That's one of the beautiful things about freeform, one can always add to it later. Here's a closeup of an area I like especially well: 

And a shot of the whole necklace:

It was fun to have a deadline to work to. I want to thank Karen Williams of Baubilicious for sponsoring the challenge. 

There are as many ways to do freeform peyote stitch as there are beaders. You can see the gorgeous things challenge participants came up with by starting here: http://baublicious.blogspot.com/2013/02/freeform-peyote-choose-your-own.html

Freeform Progress

Freeform progress sort of describes how my life meanders and changes over time. I'm nowhere near who or where I thought I'd be when I started out, but I'm happy about where I've landed.

It also is descriptive of what's happening on a necklace I started last week.  I love freeform peyote stitch, so when I read about Baublicious and Bead Circle Network's blog hop coming at the end of February, I had to sign up.
(read about it here http://baublicious.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-in-podcast-and-im-cohosting-design.html )

Here's what I've got so far. I'm incorporating a bunch of my own lampwork beads. I love the sea/summer feel that it's shaping up to have. 

SALE!

5 day Spring Cleaning sale in my etsy shop & it's a BIG one! 
40% off everything with coupon code CROCUS. Valid through 1/20/13.

Here, Now

Custom work for a young friend who fell in love with Baba Ram Dass last year. On the wrist, it looks less like words and more like an interesting, semi-random pattern. The purple is semi-transparent, so held up to the light it glows.

I'm fairly pleased with the way it came out, but mostly I'm just glad he digs it. And glad he digs the book, which also came to him from my hand.

Weddings and Weak Excuses

Here's my latest finished work- custom garters for a bride (one to wear & keep, one to toss). The fun part of this is that the customer is the sister of one of my very first boyfriends, someone I hadn't heard from in more than 30 years. For all that Facebook is annoying, it also has the power to connect people in odd and interesting ways.

Aside from the wedding gear, I've had an extended fallow period. I've been caught up in other jobs, other economic demands and it seems the longer I am away from the work, the harder it is to resume. I have a million ideas, maybe 20 of them fleshed out enough in my head that I could sit down and begin to translate them into being. But I haven't.

I did organize and tidy my working space, looking forward to the rainy nights of winter in Oregon where one must perforce do something with one's hands.

Forget-Me-Nots

It's getting to be Betsy-Tacy Convention time again, and I'm making jewelry for my booth there. Here's a sneak peek at a new bracelet, Forget-Me-Nots. Fans will remember that Joe had to go to extraordinary lengths to procure out of season Forget-Me-Nots for Betsy's wedding bouquet. Being Joe, of course, he had no trouble with this task.

2 Days, 4 UFOs

It's been a productive couple of days. I have LOTS of unfinished stuff lying around, and I've decided that finishing it up will go a long way toward getting the studio organized again. You'd laugh if I posted a picture of my "work area" right now, because what it most resembles is the aftermath of a bead store explosion. So, from the top: a right-angle-weave necklace made with faux goldstone rounds, a chunky funky triangle bead bracelet with a fun vintage button, a peyote choker with a gold satin ribbon tie for glam, and a wide, elegant picot edged bracelet. Whew.

Finished Freeform Plus Downton Abbey Inspiration

Here's the finished bracelet, courtesy of my dog's fabulous color sense. They CAN see shades of blue, so it's possible he did this on purpose. Then again, this is an animal who can't remember what "sit" means and runs through his entire repertoire of tricks till he gets a "Good dog!"

Like a lot of people, I've been sucked into the over-the-top drama of Downton Abbey. I've been spending a lot of time scrutinizing the lavish Edwardian jewelry and it makes my beady little head spin. Here's a teaser of a piece I have been playing around with. When it's finished, I'll just go back in time, dress up in one of those cool aprons, and clasp it around Lady Mary's swan-like neck.

The Vagaries of Freeform

After the dog crashed into my beading tray, causing carefully arranged piles of beads to go cascading up in the air and eventually all swept up into a common dustpan, it occurred to me that I've not done any freeform peyote in a long time. As much as I like to sort beads into lovely little piles of like colors & shapes, it's also a delight to let the needle choose as it goes, building something truly unique and magical. I think what I've begun here will be a bracelet when it's finished, but it might just decide to be a necklace. Either way, I'm enjoying this happenstance journey caused by the dog.

Curly Earrings!

Aren't these cheerful and fun? They worked up fairly fast, and they are very light. There's a bit of subtle sparkle from the Swarovski crystals at top and bottom. I might have to make a bunch of these!

I finally have some new work to show! After a long dry spell, I'm working a lot suddenly. This necklace is a re-worked piece that originally had the lampwork beads on a flat sterling chain. It was very pretty, but tended to pull the owner's hair, which is never good. So I played around with Cellini spirals till I got one I liked. And here it is!

I made a bunch of earrings the other day. I'm getting better at making wrapped loops that are actually round, and suddenly I want a huge spool of wire to play with. I also started making... I am not sure what, exactly. Components, I guess. Little runs of beads and wires that are not long enough to be a necklace, not long enough to be a bracelet, but that maybe will someday find friends and join up to make something. And I have some new ideas sort of simmering.

It's been a long fallow period, I'm hoping that coming into the rainy season will bring some of these new ideas to birth. I'm ready.

Updateless Update

Is this thing on? I haven't beaded anything in what seems like forever. I've been working at other jobs for money as the recession seems to have taken the bottom clean out of the artisan jewelry market. After a 10 hour day on a ladder, I'm just not inspired to do much more than look at other beaders' blogs when I get home.

But there should be a lull in the painting & hammering work come fall, and I hope to bring some of the ideas I've been having to life.

So, yeah- still here, more or less.

Eleanor Roosevelt and me

Mrs. Roosevelt said that you should do something every day that scares you.  So I said yes when a friend of mine asked me if I'd like to teach a class on making beaded stitch markers.  I've got til September to finalize the instructions and make samples. I'm certainly nervous about it, as it will be my very first class, but I'm also really excited about doing it.

Prototype Gertrude

Around Christmas, my friend Colleen came over bearing Kenneth Branagh's magnificent Hamlet, which we watched. I was enthralled, but not so enthralled I didn't get distracted by a quick glimpse of Queen Gertrude's beautiful choker, which she was wearing in exactly one scene. I started thinking about shapes and colors, and beautiful queenly necks. Then I had to figure out how to make an open diamond, which counter-intuitively enough, ends up working only if started as a square. That took a week to figure out.

But then I had the basic shapes, stitched them together and promptly stalled out trying to figure out how to extend the piece around the neck. I decided on smaller diamonds, and then the necklace said to me, quite loudly and a little rudely, that it needed to be reversible. Reversible? Are you sure? It was sure. So then I stitched up doubles of the diamonds, and tried to attach them to the backside of the diamonds already in place.

The lesson there was that the time to make a necklace reversible is when it's still in a little pile of components on one's tray, not after said components are all stitched together. But it worked okay. Then there was the matter of a clasp. Which I decided would only work with the elegance of the rest of the piece if it was completely symmetrical and detachable (which also gives plenty of room for size customization, a little collection of 3 or 4 different length clasps is going to give you 3 or 4 different necklaces).


Then it was a matter of draping the wing parts, and dropping the dangles. That's when I realized that my diamonds were too big- or too big for my neck, at least, because the wings don't hang quite the way I envisioned- they sort of pool around the clavicles, which is a nice enough look, but not what I wanted. I think my next take will have the large central diamond, then decreasing diamonds all the way around. We'll see where this takes me. But here's the prototype.

Mermaid

And it's finished!  This is one of the more complicated necklaces I've ever made- it's a peyote stitch that adds two beads every other round- that's what gives it the interesting spiraling structure. It's finished off with clear glass drops. The toggle button bead thing is a right angle weave cluster of drops. Here's a closer look:

Really? Who runs out of those?

So I'm in the home stretch on the spiral peyote guy and I ran out of clear drops. Arggh! I can't wait for a shipment because the US has Thanksgiving this week with no mail and I really, really want to finish this. So I'm venturing out into the very cold craziness that is retail the day before Thanksgiving to find some beads. The good news is everyone else is going to be at the grocery store, right?

In other, totally unrelated and completely personal news, I shaved my head again. I wore my hair in a buzz cut for 10 years, then decided to see what it looked like and grew it out over the last 5. I am so glad to have my "real" hairdo back!

Here's a picture of another new pendant- my lampwork with sterling chains and Swarovski crystals. I'm really happy with it!

Surfacing

I've had a parade of house guests for over a month, with a just a few days in between them. I've been working on one piece the whole time, and I'm somewhere near done with it. It's going to be worth the wait, I think. It's a twisty spiral peyote necklace in soft raku green beads finished with clear drops that may be dew or may be ice. Stay tuned.

You Gotta Play Hurt

I've been having a run of injuries lately, mostly to my hands. This has resulted in me getting a lot less beadwork done than I'd like. I'm trying to be much, much more careful from here on out. As I heal, I'm trying to catch up on photography and blogging.
 

 
Here's a new pendant made with one of my lampworked beads, some gold-filled chain, and some Swarovski crystals.


Now I'm off to try to find a flat surface in my studio. I'm sure there's one in there somewhere...

The View From The Studio

I have been trying to teach myself to work with wire. I love the look of wrapped loops, and I'm currently head-over-heels in love with the new Sunshine color by Swarovski. So I made a pair of earrings. I took a photo of them right away, and after downloading the photo, realized that it says a lot about my process.  I seem most comfortable creating in the midst of chaos!

Anyway, here are the new earrings, amid the clutter.