Chain of hearts

The beads have been calling to me quite loudly for a while, but with my thumb being stupid, the big projects on my list were still out, so I thought it needed something simple for them to be satisfied for now.
Simple usually means something familiar that I don't have to think much about - experimenting often means ripping out and several attempts - and which I can easily take a break from without risking it turning into a case for the infamous WIP drawer.

This chain of hearts was a perfect little project for that.
Earrings are not my strong suit because I often don't remember what exactly I did with the first one (experiments!) to repeat it for the second one or I'm just getting bored after the first one.
For these earrings I only made one heart at a time over the last few weeks, quick enough to not get bored or stress out my hand. 

I used pearly white seed beads in the sizes 8, 11, and 15 seed beads.
Originally, I had planned to use tiny ceramic hearts made by my friend for the bottom. I had put them in a safe place specifically for this ... Erm, does anyone know where that safe place is? I found the tiny stars, the owls, the foxes, the blueberries ... I found everything but the hearts. So I decided to try size 15 hearts for the first time and although it was a bit fiddly, I think they turned out very cute.

I have no doubt that the hearts are going to turn up in the next few days now that they are not needed immediately.
As that touch of color from the ceramic hearts was missing now, I added a silver bead embellishment instead.
Do you think I should have added tiny hearts in a completely different color?

Tackle that stash - A handful of hearts

This is just a short post.
Hearts are probably boring you by now, but I offered to make a bunch of simple ones as gift for children.
The bonus for me is that I can use some leftovers and try out patterns.
Mostly I'm showing you these, though, as an addition to the Tuesday post because that is just what I meant when I said I needed to make it work for me.

I hope these tiny hearts will make children smile a bit when they get them as a surprise, and while making a small piece  which can be finished rather quickly every, now and then - although there have been moments when I seriously doubted my counting skills (up to 8 beads in some rows! 😂) - may not be super creative, it's something. Sometimes a little something just has to be enough.

No worries, though, it will not be all hearts from now on. Even if I plan to move along the color wheel some more, I'm not going to make look at all of them, promise.

Tackle that stash - Hearts, hearts, hearts

There's something I never bought on purpose, seed beads bigger than size 11. I don't usually feel the need for bigger ones in my bead embroidery, I never tried a Cellini spiral, and I don't string seed beads for chains.
So when my first size 6 and 8 seed beads arrived in one of the surprise mixes I order every, now and then, I had absolutely no idea what to do with them at first.
I finally used some of them in bead embroidery, but still had a bunch left over.

When I started fiddling around with a Bleeding Heart design, I thought size 8 beads would probably work better than size 11. I will still need different bead sizes in matching colors, though, which I don't have (yet).
Seeing, however, how many colors I had of the big seed beads, I decided to take a little break from fiddling, just play around with some hearts instead and maybe use up one or the other color.

Picasso finishes often remind me of natural stones.
Therefore, these hearts made me think of the phrase "getting blood from a stone", so I added just a little drop of "blood".
This is not the kind of bleeding heart design I'm fiddling with, by the way.

You may remember that there can also be leftovers in the surprise mixes, so I didn't always have enough of one color to make a pair of earrings or even a pendant.
Multicolor hearts were the solution, like these ombré ones for which I used a tiny drop of "water" instead of "blood".

This metallic mint is a fun color, but I had only enough beads for a pendant.
Which color is your favorite?

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?