Another bead soup story

"Bead soup doesn't scare me." I wrote that in the post about the winter comet ornament in my advent calendar.
Not even if it's ten years old, actually probably even older because I mixed it in my early bead looming days, for a project that never happened.
Every, now and then I picked beads from it, for the winter comet and for a pair of white elephant earrings, for example.

It was time to empty that little tin and I did it.
I had already had the plan to try out folded peyote earrings in a bead soup and a smaller size than the last ones, and I managed to use up the whole soup with the addition of a few more of the silver lined crystal beads.
I made four folded peyote components in two different sizes and turned one pair into earrings by hanging them from little beaded hearts.

Then I started playing with the second pair. I thought I could do something new with them (new to me, just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist). After breaking off a few end beads I could join the two components with beads and turn it into a folded peyote diamond.
Now what?
Well, in the same tin there was a little spike thingy with crystals that I improvised a few months ago and had just turned into a dangle with some crystal rondelles a few days before.
I attached it to the diamond and actually like it. It has a kind of archaic fantasy look to me now. What do you see in it?

Random Saturday - Soup memories

To me, spring cleaning doesn't necessarily mean pulling everything out of cupboards to put new lining in. Instead I am pulling tiny wire and thread bits out of beads, to be clearer, I am still in the process of ripping up old pieces.

Two of those were from my earliest days of bead looming, a choker and bracelet in the same design, vampire lips.

You could tell that I was still very much a newbie then. I still struggled with the right tension which made the pieces rather stiff, and in one of them I had used satin beads without knowing how easily they would cut through the thread I used.
The reasons to keep them both around for more than ten years were probably mostly sentimental, but it was also a reminder to pick the design up again eventually as an improved version.

Now the time seemed to be right to cut them up along with other old items on my list. Each time I had looked at them lying in my drawer, I had felt a pang of guilt that I hadn't made anything new yet.
Taking that into consideration, it was amazingly hard to cut them up. This large tube of bead soup - this bit is just part of it - is so much more than beads.

It's a beginner's journey to an own and original design, to trial and error and frustration (cue the satin beads again).
It's the joy of seeing a piece coming alive from a printed piece of paper after several hours.
It's the wish to share it with others to see if they also like it.
It's the memory of a personal disappointment.
It's the story of seeing your jewelry again and again, noticing every flaw and finally admitting to yourself that it needs a remake - and seeing it again and again and not getting yourself to actually do it.
And as the last step for now, it's the story of cutting it up and picking it apart - and thinking about what to do with this soup to honor the journey. So-to-speak.

I know it sounds terribly emotional, but I can assure you I didn't shed any tears.
It's just that I hadn't expected it to feel so different from the many other items I had ripped up over the years. Usually it's a relief, maybe with a bit of regret, this time it felt like setting myself a new task.
The old is gone, there will be something new, even if I can't say yet what it's going to be.

Would you have thought that someone could get so philosophical about bead soup on a Saturday night? ;-)

Tackle that stash - Beaded miniature tote bag with fringe

Usually I don't count my seed beads as stash in the sense of these posts. Yes, I do have a lot of colors, and there are definitely some that have been around for a long time, some because I didn't have an idea for them yet, some of which I only needed a few when I got them, but it's hard to tell apart what is what.

The beads for today's stash tackle project, however, were easy to pick.
A while ago I had ordered a lined pale lavender color. Unfortunately I found out it came out so pale that it got lost in the piece, so the tube went into the drawer where it stayed.
When I decided to use up some wild bead soup from very random colors that I had spilled into my bead tray over the time, but knew it wouldn't be enough, the pale lavender was just the right background.

This is the finished project now, a miniature tote bag with fringe, done in brick stitch. It's only part of a much bigger WIP. Do you want to guess what is it that it will belong to?

Saturday night ramblings - and wax crayons

Lately I have been watching English crime series. Lewis, Inspector Morse, Campion, and some others. I watched them find clues, wonder over letters and mysterious notes, and it made me think about my own notes that I tend to leave lying around.
Let's take this one for example. What would you read into it or try to deduce from it? Ok, so you are at an advantage because you know I'm a jewelry artisan.

On the other hand the detectives wouldn't take long to find that out, too. I'm almost certain that the jewelry, the bead stash and the fact that I have a little loom, crochet hooks and pliers on a pillow in my bed (don't judge me) would give me away. Who knows, they might have to pry my trusted 1.65 mm crochet hook from my cold, dead hand.
It's pretty obvious that it's not a code for my safe, simply because I don't own one, but what is it?

Now let me show you what I did yesterday and today and tell you what inspired me.
Do you remember the pictures we used to do with wax crayons? First we used all colors we had, big spots, small spots, layers, stripes, and then we covered that with black crayon. Afterwards we scratched a picture into the black, making the colors come back out. I remember that in elementary school we did the deep ocean, with colorful plants and fish.
It would have been interesting to create and loom a panel in that kind of look, but while waiting for supplies (that haven't arrived yet) I went a different way.
I used bead soup on a black background. Just imagine I took off the black in circles. And here's where the note comes into action. It's the size of circle I decided on. Since I'm old and my brain can be weak and lose information while just moving from one room to the other, I wrote down the numbers of beads.
Count for yourself (don't forget you'd need to rotate the picture first, though).

For more color and a bit of fun I added a happy irregular bead soup and wooden beads fringe.

I'm not keen on experiencing this detective thing, by the way. It's just one of those train of thoughts my brain comes up with in the middle of the night or very early in the morning after only four hours of sleep (&/§%$§&/ those greedy cats). I'd rather prefer to stay alive and bead. Although I'd dig a visit by Sergeant Hathaway.

P.S. I know it's not exactly night, actually it's afternoon. Let's call it artistic freedom.

Bead soup and other disappointments of life

More time, more time ... my kingdom for more time! I'm so behind in telling you important things. Like what, you ask? Like the rain cloud I made (without dancing!), like the fact that my photo project came to a temporary stop, like what my vacation was like and and and ...

To make you see that it's actually not my fault, I'll tell you a little story.

One of my top priorities at the moment after work is pampering myself. That can be anything, a DVD, a new design idea, a long nap, a book, calling somebody, I just need that right now. And nowadays it can also be working on a loomed piece. I hear some people laughing who know what a big fight I put up to not get dragged into the bead net, well, yeah, I'm a weakling. There, I said it.

The cuff I'm working on at the moment only has two colors, and I'm not sure if I'll have enough beads. Of course I can buy more, but not around the corner and you know how it is, you don't want to wait for your beads or drive to Greenland for them. So you concentrate on believing that the number will be just right - as long as you don't lose any of the beads. You don't want to end up like with a puzzle that is missing one of its pieces.

I concentrated so hard that parts of my brain started smoking, so I can't be sure how it happened. One minute I was on my bed cross-legged looming along, the next minute I had beads all over the place. I was so shocked I forgot to take a picture, but look at this one, those things are really tiny! (Yes, they really are. This IS a macro! Do I have to explain everything? :-P)

Under surveillance of three interested cats I started picking up beads. They were everywhere and even had made their way under the pillows. Finally I figured I had found them all.

Let's now jump ahead to actual bedtime. I slept a few, but not enough, hours, then I woke up, played and snuggled with the cats (what else is there to do at 2 am?) and went to bed an hour later to give sleep one more shot. When another hour later I finally felt I was drifting off, I could feel something under my fingers. A bead! I blame it on my weary mind that I was convinced the world was doomed if I didn't hold on to this bead. We are not talking a one carat diamond here, we are talking a tiny glass bead. So I held it between two fingers and fell asleep. After a weird dream and about 25 minutes later I was woken up again and imagine my still dizzy brain's joy when I found I was still holding the holy bead!

I sat up and gathered my senses to have a look.

.

.

.

.

Guess what! It was a crumb from the cat kibbles!!!

The Rainbow Fairies

The idea was born when I started sorting a small plastic bag of bead soup. I can't call myself a seed beader although I have used beads more than once, and little did I know when I decided to separate the bead soup into his ingredients. I didn't do it all in one day, it took a few days, but finally I had all those neat little plastic bags with one bead color each.
So now what?
I held the bags next to each other, thinking about possible color combinations and the next thing I knew was me throwing together seed beads. I guess I should have thought about that earlier, it would have saved me some time.
The first necklace was the blue and green of the ocean and there it was, the crazy idea of making many in different color combinations - the necklaces for the Rainbow Fairies.

The Rainbow Fairies have their club in a treehouse on the highest tree you can find. When joining each of them got their own special necklace in their own special colors as you can see in this picture. I'm sure they'll attract new members over the time.


And there are those last leftover seed beads in the bag that didn't match any of the other colors. How about a Fairy of Color? ;-)

They are already listed in my Zibbet shop by the way, but are supposed to move into my other shops as well soon.

Mabel's gift

I can hear you sigh now - ANOTHER muse post? "Lady, you are getting boring!"

Drop the overripe tomatoes, people, and calm down! Don't worry, it's about my latest piece and I'll make it short because I feel the need to search the kitchen for some cookies and chai.

The start - a leftover piece of 12 gauge silver plated copper wire.
Next step - hands that can't keep still while a movie is on. Bending back and forth.
Step 3 - Hey, look! That's like a drop! Maybe if I make bead soup from different blues and clear and just a few brownish ones to pep it up (the only soup I'm better at making is pumpkin and potato soup) and put them on that dark blue wire and then ...

Silence with the odd mumbling thrown in.

Less silence, slight cussing. On many stitches I need to go through with my smallest hook to make them wide enough for the larger hooks.

Yawning. Ok, this is taking longer than I thought, I'll continue tomorrow.

Tomorrow:
Silence. Getting into the routine. Small hook, big hook, small hook, big hook.

Done! Here you go. Mabel's gift, in my Zibbet shop now :-)


And was that soooo bad now? ;-)

Playing with money and glass

I haven't posted for a while.
My beloved computer has a virus. Nothing I did helped. I told him (yes, he's male and he even has a name, but I have forgotten it) to drink a lot, take two aspirin and see me again in the morning, I checked out special virus forums, conferred with my personal IT gurus and finally gave up wanting to try anything on my own. I lost all motivation and now I am waiting for IT guru #1 to come by and put him to sleep before he'll raise him out of the ashes again. That phoenix motif is really following me ...

Now I have to use the tall guy's computer. It's old and slow and is driving me nuts. To upload a picture takes forever because it's so hard to reach the USB slot where the card reader goes.
I had to install all kinds of new versions of programs that I use, but the tall guy never does.
I also never knew I actually use most of the bookmarks on my computer.

Nevertheless I'm here today to show you what I have been up to jewelry-wise in the last days.
It started with me rolling up small change. It's not like I need to collect "pfennige" to buy my bridal shoes from that anymore, it would be a little too late for it and thinking about it now I don't even know if that is also still done with the Euro cents. So it was rolling up and taking to the bank eventually.
Somewhere in this glass full of coins I found a rupee. What to do with a single coin like that? Crochet a bezel for it, of course!


Now didn't I have a "pfennig" somewhere? And a coin from the Scotland vacation? And good old Lincoln.


Here is the backside of the rupee, the others are made the same way. I had thought about leaving it open in the back, but it didn't feel safe to me. Which side to use for the front is an easy decision, I just throw a coin! So the only problem left is what wire color to use for the best contrast.
I use four to five different sizes of hooks on these, by the way!


I love lampwork beads, but I never quite knew how to incorporate them into my designs. Now I got a few to play with, focals and spacers and this is my first finished attempt. Another one is still on the wire for me to have a second look at.

I took a quick picture, please excuse my hand looking slightly dirty. I pushed some of my new prop stoness away and part of the "dust" came off. I only saw it when cropping the picture and as it was already uploaded (you remember the USB slot?), I didn't want to take another one.


Healing thoughts for my computer are appreciated! ;-)

Come on over for the bead soup party!

It had to happen some day, I guess. And I can't even blame it on the cats. Of course Ponder was sitting on the pinball machine yelling for me to hurry up with whatever I was doing at the moment and of course he tried to jump my shoulder, but the fact that I pulled out one of the drawers of my plastic storage case and hit the bead box with it is only the fault of my own stupidness and carelessness.
He sure loved the sound - clickety, clackety - of beads flying everywhere and was eager to help me clean them up, but I threw him out of the room and closed the door.
Only when I already had retrieved most of them from the corners of a big room (isn't it amazing how far these fellows can fly?), the thought to take a picture came to me. I also didn't feel like dropping the box again, so all you get to see is the epicenter which really was the easiest area to clean up.
I can be more than glad that these were not the really small beads.



A few ones tried to hide inside my armchair. Not with me. No bead will roam free in this house if I can prevent it! ;-)


This was a sign to me I desperately need to organise again, also the cheap beads like these ones *sigh*