The Great Flapper or How Christie got a new outfit - Part 1, The dress

A while ago I showed you my first Barbie doll project with a bead loomed outfit and promised you more.
Here I am now to tell you the story of Christie.
Think big this time.
In 1976 the only 18 inch Barbie doll was released. She had the new superstar face and wore a white and silver dress. In 1978 she came out in a bridal version and in 1979 she had super hair which could grow and be curled.
1977 was the year for Supersize Christie. Christie was an African American doll. She had long brown hair with copper streaks and wore a dusty pink and silver dress.

My Christie's story started at a fleamarket. I don't remember if she wore anything at all at the time or what I paid for her, but it can't have been much.
She was not in mint condition. Her hair was matted and had two little braids in front, her earrings and ring were missing, she had definitely been played with.
If she had something on which I threw away or if she had been naked from the start, fact is that she spent years in a drawer. I don't know if I had hoped to stumble upon an outfit or if I actually planned making something for her, but every time I went through that drawer, I felt her reproachful gaze upon me.
When my Flapper project worked out, the chance to make it up to her was there.
With the experience I had gained from "Little Flapper", I would make her into something special. As usual I was a little naive. There IS a difference between 11.5 and 18 inch, and not just in the number of the beads you need.

First I had to take Christie's measurements and design a pattern. Again I measured several times to be absolutely sure there would be no unpleasant surprises, then I started the pattern, first the outline, then the "fabric". I had looked at pictures on the net to get inspired and after several drafts in different colors I decided to use greens and gold.
This time I would have to make two pieces and join them later. The first piece went just fine. I liked the colors, a bright green (although I wanted to use a mint first that was out of stock, however) in combination with dark silver lined teal and gold lined crystal. I loomed it, I took it off, I re-wove, no problem.

Then came the second piece. I finished it and took it off the loom. There are different opinions about what exactly happened next, but the fact is that Ponder and I managed together to pull a warp thread out which of course resulted in a whole column of beads falling out. You have to imagine the feeling after working on this for a few hours, looming and measuring. I can't even describe it. My first impulse was to chuck the whole thing. There was no chance to get those beads back in and the thought of sewing it up anyway and hoping for the best was in my head for merely a few seconds. It wouldn't have worked. The only answer was to *sob* rip it up and sort the beads all over again.
By now I was a nervous wreck. It took me a while until I came back to the loom for the second try. This time I had done about half. Seriously, it was my own fault. I really should know better than to leave the room and let Ponder watch the loom if he is in a mischievous mood. I came back to warp threads ripped off the loom, and I'm not ashamed to say that I freaked out. This project was dead as a dodo. Enough. Sorry, Christie, it was not to be. I tried. At that moment I was so tired of this pattern. I couldn't do it all over again.
Some people say I'm stubborn. Often that's a weakness, but sometimes it's a good thing. After I calmed down, I came back even more determined. Again I ripped and sorted.

Third time's the charm. I finished the piece and started sewing up the sides.
This is the very first picture I took to show my best beady friends how big this doll was, in the background one of my fiercest critics.

After deciding on the exact length I sewed up the straps with accent rows of golden beads and added three rows of the same beads to the back to make sure the dress kept sitting right.
Up to that point about 15,200 beads had gone into this dress. You might have noticed that I didn't use Delicas this time, but seed beads, or there would have been even more.
For the luxurious fringe I used the golden beads and bright green dagger beads.

So this was what Christie looked like now. It was time to think about accessories and what to do about her hair, but that's the story for the next post.

Stay tuned!

P.S. Please forgive the bad pictures. Whenever I'm in the middle of a project, I tend to take pictures at the weirdest times and often in the dark which accounts for the colors not always looking the same, too. I'll make up for it with the last picture, promise!

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 4, The head

I know that it sounds creepy, but it's part of the process if you have a bald or an almost bald head.
I am not a doll artist, I'm not a painter, and I'm not a hair stylist. I prefer if the original face is still good enough to be left alone and it's hard work for me to re-root a Barbie head and give her a nice hairdo.
Again I'm glad to have my sister by my side who not only has good tips, but helps with the hairstyle as well.

Those of you who know vintage Mattel dolls, may have been surprised when I said in the second post that I chose a Midge doll for the project because the head in the picture is not a Midge head. Actually the first head was, but I messed it up gloriously after spending hours of re-rooting, trimming, styling, and re-painting the face. That girl had some heavy makeup on, I can tell you.
I had used the wrong glue to hold the hair strands from inside the head and I dropped the head in water to set the hair. Not the whole head obviously. I'm not sure what happened or what I missed, but my (not so) clever construction had failed miserably when I came back to a head that was swimming in a mix of water and dissolving glue. Quite a gruesome sight.
I am sorry to say that Midge was incredibly sticky afterwards, and I lacked the motivation to try all over again. I started looking for doll heads online.

That's when my sister came to the rescue for the first time. She gave me one of her Ponytail heads with a bad hair day, but good makeup. So I started all over again, only this time I had the right glue and settled for red lips instead of wiping the whole face.
My sister also had the idea to use a mascara brush to style the hair after I had cut it.

There you have it - the whole story of my Flapper Barbie.
I hope you enjoyed it a little because the word obsession in the title may already have told you that I am not done yet. I've licked blood and I don't intend to stop.
What I will do, however, is give you a break. Take a deep breath, I might be back with the next story sooner than you can imagine, and again I hope you'll be there with me.

You can find previous posts here:
Part 1, The introduction
Part 2, The dress
Part 3, The accessories


Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Tackle that stash - Nevermore

It has been years that I worked in polymer clay. The other day I made an attempt, but either was the clay too old or the toaster oven too weird, well, let's say it was pathetic, strange and eww. That's a story for a different post, though.

Today is about a portrait, my fondness for "shaped" bead loomed pendants, and a polymer clay charm.
The title may have given it away already or have you recognized him right away?

It's Edgar Allan Poe of course, accompanied by a polymer clay raven sitting on a black crystal.

The pendant is not in my shop yet.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 3, The accessories

As promised last time today's post is all about accessories.

What comes to mind when you think Flapper? Headbands, feathers, long necklaces, earrings, crystals, pearls, shoes, bracelets ....

These shoes were a donation by my sister. I didn't have an extra pair of vintage black heels and many of the modern shoes don't work well on the bigger and harder vinyl feet of the old dolls. Golden instead of silver sprinkles would have been perfect, but not only did they fit, Barbie could also stand in them on her own if you did it right. Of course I use a stand anyway.
To make the shoes more 20s, I sewed on straps from the beads that I had also used in the dress.

I didn't have to go far for the necklaces. In my stash I have tiny beads and pearls. For these four strands in two different lengths I chose black onyx and golden freshwater pearls to pick up the colors in the dress.

For the headband I made a simple brick stitch band and added some decorations.

And once again my sister pulled a rabbit out of her magician's hat ... or rather peacock feathers from an old carnival costume. Of course a whole feather would have been much too big, so I cut one up instead and sewed the parts to the headband.

I felt more would have been too much, so I did without more jewelry. Instead I just re-painted the fingernails and turned my attention the head.
That will be the story for the next post then. I hope I'll see you there again!

If you missed the earlier posts, you can find them here:
Part 1, The introduction
Part 2, The dress


Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Barbie and tiny glass beads, the story of a new obsession - Part 2, The dress

In part 1 of this series of posts I told you a little about how the "Bead loom a Barbie outfit" project got started.
So what was actually the first step?

Even without being a seamstress I know you can't just whip up a dress without some kind of pattern, and you can't make a pattern without having measurements.
Of course first of all I had to pick out the kind of Mattel doll I wanted to work with. I decided on a Straight Leg Midge with serious hair problems that had been waiting for a makeover far too long. I'll come to the head in a later post, though.

Back to the dress.
I wanted to loom it in one piece and then sew it together down the sides. Now that I knew what doll I would use, I could start measuring.
It being my first beaded dress project, I didn't want it to be too difficult, just a basic straight dress with straps, a rounded neckline and a low cut back. Sounds rather easy, doesn't it?
When I started measuring, it didn't seem that easy to me anymore. After all I couldn't keep taking the dress off the loom and try it on, so it had to be right from the beginning.

Barbie's bustline and hips were the basic measurements for the whole dress. As it was to be straight, I had to measure carefully to make sure it would fit around Barbie's body, but still wouldn't be too bulky.
The armholes would have to be big enough, but not so big to allow glimpses into the dress from the sides.
And of course the straps would have to sit just right which also depended on the size of the neckline, the back and the armholes.
To be on the safe side I rather made the pattern a little bigger than smaller. Many of us know the feeling when you want to button up a pair of jeans and there are just millimeters missing. I couldn't take that chance on Barbie, after all I am not that fond of ripping up a project.

After having fiddled with the outlines for many hours and almost obsessive measuring I was finally ready to design the pattern itself, done in black and metallic medium bronze AB which is an absolutely stunning color, inspired by pictures of dresses from the 20s.

Almost 7,700 beads and a few hours later - also due to the fact that I still kept measuring again and again - I could take the dress off the loom and drape it on the doll for the very first time if you can call pulling her head off and putting the dress on with her neck knob standing out between the warp threads draping, that is. Yes, it sounds terrible, but what can you do?
You should heard my sigh of relief when things looked promising!
The next big task was to weave in all of the warp threads, 196 of them to be precise, and to sew up the sides.

Not only was it a dress, but it also fit!!

I felt it needed a little decoration, though. I added two rows of beads in the back. They keep the straps from moving which might reveal just a little too much back.

The three rows of beads over the shoulders make sure the armholes don't open up too much, but mostly I just liked the look of it.
I am sure I'm not the only one who connects the 20s with lots of fringe, but for this dress I opted for a small fringe of dagger beads instead.

Wow. That was a long post, but designing and making the dress was a long process, too. Thank you if you made it all the way through.
Next week's post will be all about accessories (and shorter, I promise)!

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.

Decades

This month's JAC blog carnival is about decades. Pick a favorite decade and tell us about it, make something in the style of your favorite decade or even in a favorite style of a not so favorite decade.
The task wasn't as easy at it may sound.
I was born in the 60s and still remember the mod style vividly. So much color! Or how about the classic elegance of the 50s or the rock'n'roll style? Let's be honest, though, I am totally in love with the style of the 20s and 30s. Art Nouveau and Art Deco are fascinating to me, design, architecture and fashion.

After thinking for a while I remembered Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect, designer, water colorist and artist. I had made a little wall hanging for a friend before that had been inspired by his work and featured a font that he developed, part of a chair design of his and the well known Mackintosh rose, and always had wanted to make more in this style.

This is my take on a Mackintosh design, a bead loomed pendant featuring the rose and the buds on a cream background, adorned with a fringe of beads and crystals. I put the pendant on a bronze tone chain for now, but I am thinking about getting a silk cord in a matching purple tone for it.
What do you think?

Mackintosh rose inspired pendant in my Zibbet shop

Please check out the other members' posts, too. I'll add the links as they come in.

The Crafty Chimp
Jewelry Art by Dawn 

P.S. If you want to know more about Mackintosh, visit the page of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society.

How much is the do..., erm, kitty in the window?

Actually it's not a doggie I'm talking about today. Remember how I started experimenting with windows a while ago? I said there was more to come and here it is.
I'm weird about cats and windows. I live on the first floor and I don't trust my cats from 12 to noon, Ponder in particular. He tends to get excited and I wouldn't be surprised if he thought he could fly if he sees a juicy pigeon. Cat screens for my folk.

These cats, however, look pretty safe in their windows and well behaved.
You may already know from the HeatherCats and other bead loomed pieces of mine that I like to work with shapes and extensions. This was taking it a little further.

Of course it's not possible to loom all of this in one piece. You weave parts of the pattern and then join them, and afterwards there is a lot of re-weaving to do.
The white kitty did test my patience because there were so many threads, now which one goes where?! ;-)

I hope to experiment more with this eventually. What would you like to see?

Available in my Zibbet shop

Samhain

The Jewelry Artisans Community blog carnival is back! Sorry for skipping one or the other month.
This month's topic probably doesn't come as a surprise for you. Halloween is only a few days away, but so is Dia de los Muertos and Samhain.
I picked Samhain for today's post. I have to admit that I didn't know much about Samhain except that it marks the end of the harvest season and is a day to honor the dead. On Samhain the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is so thin that the fairies can pass through easily and the dead can revisit their homes. Celebrating starts on the 31st of October, Samhain Eve, while Samhain itself, the 1st of November, was the Celtic New Year.

In the last few days I read more about Samhain than ever before, about mumming and guising and souling, and to be honest, it was a little confusing, and I'm not sure if I know so much more now, a feeling that I often have when browsing on the internet.
Maybe I got you interested in doing a bit of browsing yourself?

For this post I not only looked up rituals, but also symbols, and I spontaneously made this pentacle pendant, a symbol that you still find in Neo-Paganism today.
The star represents the five elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit.

Bead loomed pentacle pendant

Wanna see what our other members have to say? Check it out here! I will add more links as they follow.

The Crafty Chimp

Jewelry Art by Dawn
Ponder - the Cat

Windows #1

Lately I've been playing with bead loomed pendants of different shapes and with cutouts. I have done it for several HeatherCats and had so much fun that I just kept going.

This pendant has been my first "window experiment". The pendant is square and loomed from beautiful blue AB and galvanised silver beads, one of my favorite color combinations.
There's a cutout in the middle that obviously had to be filled, and I found the perfect filling, tiny peacock colored freshwater pearls.
This is just the beginning, you know. Stay tuned for more!

Available in my DaWanda shop

The HeatherCat news ticker

It has been a while that I talked about the HeatherCats. I have a pile of finished projects that still need pictures or need to be listed, and I have been in a bit of beading frenzy with some wire thrown in during the breaks. Too many ideas and no one volunteering to do the work that comes after the beading ;-)

Remember Heather's stamps one of which is the Dalicat? Petcat is another one of them and I fell in love with it right when I saw it first. I wasn't sure how to fit the hand in, though. After talking to Heather we made the decision to make Petcat a sleeping cat. Sleeping cats around me and I relax to the point where I can't keep my eyes open. Actually I wrote about "cat sleeping gas" a few years ago.
These are not the news I wanted to tell you, though.
I wanted to talk a little about my work to give you an idea what is behind pieces like these.

1. Color decisions ^..^
I love black cats, that's not new. I am always tempted to make each cat black to the extent that I am running after Greebo to paint him. Ok, the last part is not true, but the first part is if it relates to beaded cats. Heather's cats are often colorful, though, and their bright and happy colors make me smile (a little hint, there's pink on my next bead order list).
So why did I choose white, silver and black this time? I guess what I liked about the pendants was the contrast of the shimmering white with the beautiful AB finish and the black that I so love.
The transparent silver luster is one of my favorite colors at the moment, and I thought it would make a great contrast color with the background and the shiny rug.
 
Also ....
2. Thread colors ^..^
It's not new and not difficult to understand that transparent beads change their color a little with the thread you use. I like to use black thread to darken a grey background a little for example, like in a night scene, a white thread lets the transparent colors stick out more. You have to look at the single bead, though. I have a lovely transparent purple on hand, and all pearls together in their tube don't look very light, but white thread washes the color out so much that you hardly see it which is a pity (more so because I had to rip up a piece once).
The transparent silver luster, however, oh man, I don't even know where to start. It has quickly become one of the colors I don't want to do without.
I used it as accent color for the white Petcat and as fur color for the bracelet, with white thread on the left and black thread on the right. Can you tell the difference?

3. Pattern ^..^
Why is the tail up on the bracelet and down on the pendants and why is it different from the stamp design?
Part of it is just artistic whim. Yes, the stamp has a really cool design, but can you imagine it in beads? Not with an extension. I want the HeatherCats not only to look good, but also to be good to wear without parts falling off. The bigger tail is safer. Again, I don't change anything without talking with Heather about it first.
On the pendants the tail going down means the pendant is not as wide and therefore better to wear, and yes, I really did want to do that little hole to make it look interesting!

Did you also notice that there are differences in how the cat looks in the bracelet compared to the pendants?
The pendants were loomed in a different direction, but I didn't change the pattern. Since the beads are not square, that changes the proportion.

4. Re-weaving ^..^
Most of the times I re-weave my warp threads back into the piece. The bigger a piece, the more warps to weave back in.
Extensions like the ear and tail on the bracelet that are loomed - I have also done them in brick stitch before - mean more warps, more re-weaving.
The little holes formed by the tail on the pendants going down instead of up ... more warps. If I make something like this, I have to make sure I have enough thread on my loom to be able to weave them in on all sides, quite fiddly, but strangely relaxing to me most of the time. You'll hear more about re-weaving when I'll be talking about my latest experiment, by the way.

That was a long post, sorry about that, but hopefully it gave you a bit of an idea of what I do.
Oh, and don't forget that you can find all HeatherCats including the Petcats in my Zibbet shop!

A new HeatherCat or The moustache

I can almost hear you. "Wait. You told us HeatherCats don't have whiskers, and now what ... there's one with a whole moustache?"

Yup, there is, a very fine moustache even, obviously well cared for.

Heather was inspired by someone famous when she created this design for a stamp. Can you tell who it was?

****cat (no spoilers) in this silver and black version will be in my Zibbet shop soon, of course in the HeatherCats section.

HeatherKittens!!

The HeatherKittens made their entrance into the HeatherCats universe and they are so cute!
You know that the HeatherCats are bead loomed after the paintings of Heather, sometimes with little changes - always approved by her of course - what you probably do not know, however, is Heather's new line of stamps that you can find here.
One of them inspired these little fellows.

If you look closely, you can see that there are actually two different designs.

The grey and the golden one do look a little miffed, on the other hand no one ever really knows what cats think, right? Maybe they are concentrating on that one important pounce to wrestle down their toy mouse.

The funky lilac and fuchsia kitten and the one that is pearly white - I like to refer to it as the Ghost Kitten - are obviously in a good mood. Look at those contagious smiles, they make me smile every time.

Of course there is no saying yet in what other color combinations they will turn up. Maybe you even want to tell me your favorite colors?

And no HeatherCats post without the original!

You can find all HeatherKittens in the HeatherCats section of my Zibbet shop.

Slider necklaces or How to deal with mistakes

Everyone knows this. You do something and while your brain is still screaming "nooooooo", your fingers have already done it (and start bleeding from the bread knife cut, true story). Or you merrily work along, a happy song on your lips, and suddenly you notice THE MISTAKE.
Mistakes can be very small, they can be big. Once I didn't notice that I had lost a stitch in one of the first rows of a wire knit bracelet. Not only did it escaped, but it also cleverly hid behind a big bead.
Sometimes you can save your project easily, sometimes you have to be creative, and sometimes all is lost and you have to start again which is what I had to do with the bracelet.

The other day I loomed a new tile pattern inspired by a picture of a floor taken by my friend Susanne. I took the pendant off the loom and started sewing up the bail. I was almost done when I noticed that I was sewing on the wrong side.
It doesn't matter much on a geometric pattern, you will think now, turn it around and no will ever notice it wasn't planned that way, right? You are right, but I didn't like it that much the other way round. Silly enough, after all it's not as if people always see a tile floor from the same direction.
Then an idea came to me. I did turn the pendant around after all, but not all the way, made a second bail and pulled bronze tone chain through both to match the muted colors. As a small highlight and to avoid the pendant coming off the chain I added red crystal drops to the ends.
The nice thing about this is that you can change the look of the necklace by sliding the bead loomed part up or down to let the crystals dangle more or less. I was definitely hooked on the idea.

The second piece features the Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, made of shiny gold lined crystal on a matte blue-grey background teamed up with a gold tone chain and dark blue crystals.

I guess I was lucky. This was so much better than having to cut up a cuff! ;-)
Both pieces are available in my Zibbet shop. Maybe there's a symbol that has a special meaning to you? I already know what my next pattern will be. A little hint ... it's also Egyptian and has to do with my name!

Inspired by a magnet

I'm sure I am not the only one to have magnets on her fridge. Some of mine are more than 20 years old. I got cats (of course), I got commercials like His Master's Voice or Pez, I got the X-Files, and I also have a few that I got at museum shops like the little Monet.

Three years ago we went to Cambridge for vacation. I loved it. We visited the Fitzwilliam Museum twice, in fact we went back for one painting. If they had had a little magnet of it at the shop, I would have gotten it for sure.
Instead I went for a sheet of small tile magnets in Art Nouveau style. These are a few of them.

Yesterday morning - early, early morning - one of them caught my eye and inspired me to make a bead looming pattern.

Here is the result. I have to say I've licked blood and am already trying to decide which one will be the next!

This pendant is available in my Zibbet shop now.

A mermaid's braid

The other day Gwen Fisher from beAd Infinitum posted this on her page. Usually when I see the word "math", I run in the opposite direction. This time I watched the video and of course I had to try this.




First I loomed three strips in white lined AB beads, emerald green, teal and capri blue for an ocean look.

After reweaving the warp threads into the strips, I started braiding using the instructions from the video (thank you, James Tanton).

Ocean colors - I'm even reminded of waves here - request pearls. So I added one white button freshwater pearl on each of the crossings. That way they also keep the braid from slipping.
I'm really happy with the outcome, what do you think?

Mermaid's braid in my Zibbet shop

Tiles, tiles, tiles

First of all let me say that I know next to nothing about tiles, neither cement nor ceramics. I have admired them where I happened to see them, no matter if vintage or at a shop, but I never saw them as inspiration for my own work, mostly because I don't carry a notebook and usually forget right pretty quickly what I saw.

All is not lost, though, thanks to my friend Susanne. She lives in Spain, she collects cement tiles and does research if she gets a chance, and she has even written a book about José Maria Tejera, a tile producer.
Her blog about cement tiles can be found here, and there are pictures of wonderful and inspiring patterns.
She suggested that I should use tile patterns in my bead looming. For the longest time I didn't do that, for several reasons.
My brain is old and often unable to deal with the flood of inspiration. I keep forgetting that I wanted to try this or that.
A more practical reason is that Delicas and seed beads are not square, no matter what you try. Tiles are not only square most of the time, but also often radially symmetrical as Susanne told me, and that is something that I can't translate into a piece of wearable jewelry of an ordinary size, especially not for the complex patterns.

From Susanne's blog

What I can do is use the simpler geometric designs that also look good as rectangles, and change colors.

Lilac, eggplant and silver tile pendant

I can pretend to have used four tiles - can you see them in the pattern? - and use warm and earthy colors.

Tile pendant in oranges and reds

I can go wild with the colors and really make a piece shine ... silver lined beads all over ... and add matching dagger dangles.

Shiny red, golden and orange on grey tile pendant with dangles

And I can take a basic design and play with it until I get something different.

Opal white and blue tile pendant

I'm nowhere near being done with this. I can make bracelets, and I will try to find something that will work for earrings.

Let me bow to the tile makers and to Susanne for creating a new addiction. I hope this will be the beginning of a collaboration!! 

And here's the link to her blog again, it's in English, German and Spanish.
Cement tiles / Zementfliesen / Mosaicos hidráulicos

Love

Love comes in all sizes, colors and shapes. We love cheese, our favorite actor and the color blue. We love our family, our friends and our pets. We love from afar, silently, secretly and too much. We love flowers, songs and our new outfit.
Don't roll your eyes, I am actually going somewhere with this and it's neither philosophical nor heavy stuff ;-)

This month's subject for the blog carnival at the Jewelry Artisans Community was love, in honor of the Valentine's Day. Our February challenge was to make something related to that day, but without the use of red or pink. What usually comes to mind next are hearts. I have a personal reason of not being fond of Valentine's Day, so I struggled a bit with the subject.
Then my dear Heather came up with a brand new painting. When I saw it, I knew I not only had a new HeatherCat on my to-do list, but also the perfect piece for both the challenge and the blog carnival .... what do you think?

For more posts please check out the other members' blogs!

Bead Sophisticate
Jewelry Art by Dawn
Ponder the Cat

Lurking in the shadows

How many times have I tripped over a cat mysteriously turning up before my feet? How many times have I been close to a heart attack because a cat suddenly came out of nowhere? Or even worse, how many times have I been about to panic because one of my (inside!!) cats have been missing, then said cat was right behind me when I was ready to run out into the night yelling for it? And had probably been on my trail like that for the whole time I was trying to look under closets, the fridge, armchairs and the washing machine?
Many, many, MANY times.

Maybe that's the reason why I reacted to Heather's Shadycat with such passion. A camouflaging cat in the shadows probably brought up memories from the time I searched for Dude, a very visible white cat (I finally found him in a dark corner behind the armchair which was standing next to the wall), to the time I was convinced Esme had escaped through an intact cat screen and was running around on the scaffold at one side of the house (it was probably one of the crows, heck, both are black, it's an easy to make mistake, isn't it?).

I couldn't stop at just one color combination and although I made three of the Shadycat pendants until now, I am by no means done with it.

Tell me which color combinations you would like to see and who knows? If I have the beads, I might just make it!

All of these are available in my Zibbet shop now, the grey/white one, the metallic matte one and the silver lined shiny one.
The black and white one is of course Heather's original painting.

The Golden Cat - A HeatherCat giveaway!

Last week I told you about my new loom. By now we have made our first piece together and just as I promised, I'll have a giveaway. One of you will own a very special HeatherCat pretty soon.
Meet the Golden Cat, a variation of the Black Cat.
Golden Cat comes as a bead loomed (obviously!) pendant.
She is from golden Duracoat Delicas with some matte dark golden shadows. Her eyes remind me of the sea, a transparent bluegreen. The background is a beautiful misty blue grey, one of my favorite colors. She comes with a golden ball chain of 23.5 inch or 60 cm length.

Now, what do you have to do to enter my giveaway? It's actually pretty easy. Hop over to my Zibbet shop where the HeatherCats are sold exclusively, pick your favorite among them and let me know in a comment to this post.
Don't forget to give me an e-mail address or some way I can contact you if you are the lucky one!
You have time until next week Saturday midnight my time (the time zone is called UTC +1 if you need look up the difference), well, actually until Sunday morning when I get up, but that depends on my cats, so you may be lucky or not. It's the 22nd of February.
Better do it right away if you want the Golden Cat, so you won't forget.
Once I am up on Sunday and have survived the feeding of the monsters, I will give each comment a number and then draw the winner with the help of Random.org.

Good luck!

It's a ...

JaLa! I can't tell you the whole story, it would be too long anyway, so I'll just give you the short version.

A JaLa is a bead loom, sturdy, well made and adjustable. I have been wanting one for quite some time. Karma has been very good to me, but that's part of the long story.
To keep it really short .... tadaaaaaaaa!
Please give a warm welcome to Magica De Spell, my new bead loom!! Isn't she a beauty?

She is named after a Disney witch whose character was created by Carl Barks whose cartoons I love. I'm digressing, however.
In honor of Magica I want to pass some of the good karma along. The first piece she and I made together is a special HeatherCat. It's almost finished and there will be a giveaway soon. How does that sound??