Sometimes you have to make a cut

The labradorite stones that I had or have are usually blue, grey and green, but labradorite can have so many more colors with the rarest being purple.
Months ago, I went through my cab drawer and noticed that one of my carved cabs which looked grey and green actually had a beautiful pinkish shimmer in a certain angle of light. That I haven't been able to catch well (yet?) in my pictures, but it's there, really.
And I knew just the beads to use with that.

For the bezel I chose my beloved "magic apple" coated seed beads. It will be a very sad day when they are all gone, I even love just looking at them in the tube. For the connection with the pinkish hue I chose a transparent dark red - another favorite of mine - and some pinkish 15s.

The bezel is the easy part. It's not so easy to decide what should come next, and this time I made the wrong decision.
I was looking forward to doing another freeform focal. I love freeform (and sometimes wonder how much Gary Larson's amoebas - google them if you don't know them - are to blame for that because I always think of them when I do it). I wanted to make it a mix of reds and pinks in different bead sizes, maybe with a touch of gold here and there.
When I do freeform, I like to cut the felt around the cab into shape first and then follow that with the beads. Usually I'm quite happy with that although I may have to trim the edges a bit here and there. In this case, though ... oh my, I hated it after the first three rows, I think, but kept going anyhow.
It's hard to explain my feelings when I continue working on something like that. It's like a drop of hope swimming in a sea of doubt,- there's still a tiny chance I'll manage thanks to a creative miracle - or more often a molecule of hope in a sea of anger (at myself), loss of motivation, and the voice of my muse yelling at me to give it up already.

That's the hard part. Sometimes you need to push on, sometimes you need to make smaller or bigger changes if possible - and sometimes you just have to cut.
The way I had cut the felt meant I wouldn't be able to use it for a regular design, but I liked the bezel and didn't want to do it over. Why should I, though? I just cut along the edges of the bezel and glued it all to a second piece of felt. Duh. Not that difficult, is it? So the cab sat higher than usual now because I like using thicker felt, but that was fine with me.

To hide the extra edge, I used beautiful large dark red/purple beads, then a row of gold for contrast and two rows of edging in a raspberry and the magic apple.

After that I was stuck. I have always had that problem with the drop shape, from the very first labradorite drop I ever used (remember I asked your opinion the other day - well, no answer, so I had to deal with it myself).
Do I want the tip up or do I follow my muse who always wants the tip down? As you can see, Mabel has won.
I added a large beaded peyote tube in the back for the twisted Herringbone rope I had woven in magic apple and dark red/purple. It makes the pendant sit at a slight angle instead of flat.

And if that wasn't enough, I had to give in to my asymmetric side. It had taken so long to develop, but it's here to stay now.
My first plan had been little brown glass flowers which I had used before and love a lot, but alas, I couldn't find them quickly.

I did find these leftover pearls, though, and liked the contrast they add to the pendant. Bold, maybe, but I felt the necklace could use some boldness to make it a bit less classic (and boring).

I cheated a little, by the way. At the moment that I'm writing this, the necklace doesn't have a clasp yet. I don't have a golden lobster clasp that is big enough, but I didn't want to wait taking pictures because I'm so happy this WIP that has been waiting in the workbox for a few months now is almost finished!

January - A challenge

I haven't been touching anything jewelry related in a while. I had to look it up, my last piece of jewelry was the pair of tassle earrings more than two months ago!

What's wrong with me, you want to know? I wish I knew. I have a whole list of ideas, but I'm still in the middle of an embroidery project, and while I used to have several projects on the go, it's something I can't seem to do right now.

Of course, it would be the easiest to blame my thumb joint again, but while it is part of it, it is, well, exactly that, part of it, but not everything.
Some of it is probably my overall mood, news-related, which sometimes seems to paralyze me. Some of it is feeling as if I have been chasing my right audience forever and doing that year after year tends to get mentally exhausting time and again. I'm by no means alone in that, I have seen it in other jewelry friends, but of course also in other creatives, no matter what the medium. Some of it might still be hibernation mode.

Usually it takes me a bit to get out of that and then I'm back happily experimenting and playing, but this time it seems to be harder for me to just grab something and give it a go although that is something that has always worked pretty well for me before. Just slap a cab on some backing and start stitching. Just take a wire and my crochet hook and do it.
Weird about it is that my brain is actually creating in theory and waits for my fingers to follow suit.

So I thought a stash tackler would be perfect.
Nothing super experimental, just something to get myself kick started.
I took one of my labradorite cabs, glued it on, picked some colors for the bezel and started stitching. It's amazing how good that felt already although it was not very creative.
Bezel done, I started looking for beads to add and as the lab looked a bit gloomy so far, I went for a sparkly blue, separated by tiny hematite beads which created small open spaces between the crystals which I could fill up with button beads and how about some tiny silver beads on the other side ... yes, it seems the kick start had worked!

That's when it hit me - the January/February challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community.
What had our challenge mistress written?
Symbols: Snowflakes, icicles, evergreen trees
Colors: White, silver, blue, dark green
Herbs and Flowers: Sage, pine, juniper, snowdrop
Crystals: Garnet, clear quartz, hematite
Themes: Reflection, introspection, purification, new beginnings

I had "ice" from the button beads, I had silver and blue beads, the lab is shimmering in blue and green, I had hematite, and this was my new beginning for jewelry this year - and nothing of it had been planned.
It was downright perfect ... until I cut the edges. Don't ask me how it happened, but snip snip, there went not one, but two important threads. Honestly, am I jinxed? Are my eyes too crooked to see a thread? I didn't know if I should cry or laugh like a madwoman. Crying wouldn't have helped much, though, so I saved what I could meaning I cut it down to the bezel, glued and sewed on another piece of backing and started all over again hoping for the best.
In the end it turned out just a tad different because I didn't remember exactly how I had placed the tiny silver seed beads and the hematite it the first time round, so maybe there is a tiny bit of experimenting in it after all.
It's so shiny and sparkly, the pictures can hardly do it justice, especially because I took them when it was already dark. I just couldn't wait until tomorrow to show that I'm back! Hopefully, that is.

Birdie

I am stressed and I'm anxious these days. I'm a pro at both, but this is no competition and even if it were, being the winner would be a pretty dubious honor.
Right now I'm just happy about my furnace not having gone out since Mr. Heater was here yesterday, for a slurpy kitty to one side - Gundel is the loudest groomer ever - and another one feeling like the weight of a standard sandbag on my feet which beats a weighted blanket and a hot-water bottle (no, he's not really as heavy as a sandbag, but cats manage to change gravity, I'm sure, still remembering how incredibly heavy Ponder's head on my wrist used to be).

I have two personal solutions for being stressed.
Sleeping to block out the world. Too bad if it creeps into my dreams, but usually they are just very weird and not nightmares ... snippets of the one this morning are coming back to me right now which make me wonder when I got a dog? There have been cats, from my own to huge lions and of course black panthers in my dreams, also other animals like wolves, but never a dog. Interesting.
The other one is hoping for my muse to jump in and give me not only an idea - I have enough of those - but also the energy to work on something.
If you are wondering, I know about those people who fight stress with cleaning their whole house, but I can safely say no amount of stress or worry in the world has ever managed to make me do that, despite my half-Swabian ancestry.

As my blog is mostly about crafting, I will not go into my dreams in detail, lucky you, but talk about my last piece.
This is the second bead embroidery piece that started out on my embroidery hoop. It also inspired me to write another nostalgia post, but I'm still waiting for something to finish that one, just this much, it's about shapes, as is my pendant.

Give me a drop and I will see a bird body.
It has happened before, in my paint cabochon and Cantera opal bird pin for example.

And this time it happened with a labradorite drop. This time, however, I wanted to be a bit less neutral with my colors. So I chose a light amethyst for the head, gold accents, and a bright purple as a contrast to the body.
Yeah, and then I was stuck because I put the head on differently than in the pin and couldn't decide if I wanted to add legs or not. I did some hand embroidery instead, but kept coming back to my birdie apologizing for leaving it on that hoop for so long. Then I worked on the sparkly heart and apologized to my birdie for leaving it in a drawer for so long. I'm weird, I really do talk to my WIPs and I often talk to myself while working on something because it helps me think.

When I finally got the bird back out of the drawer, we sat down for a serious talk ;-)
In order to make a decision about the legs, I first had to think about the tail. Did I want it short or long? Why did I even have to think about it, everyone knows I can't resist a fringe! Having a fringe for the tail, though, meant that dangly legs were out and Birdie needed something to perch on.

I beaded a twig and added some embellishments in form of blossoms.
As I planned to make the tail pick up the colors of the head with golden seed and matte amethyst beads, I wanted the twig to be more subdued using bronze tone flower beads topped with tiny amethysts. Birds have so many different colors and sometimes they only partially have brightly colored spots to get attention; and I wanted him to get the attention, not the twig.
Also my first idea had been berries for the twig, but again I didn't want the colors to compete with the tail.

I guess Birdie is ready to fly!

Labradorite and amethyst

About two months ago I blogged about my "jewelry burnout" and what I did instead. So far things haven't changed much. I am struggling my way through my second embroidery kit, but only touched beads once during the last month to loom a custom bracelet.

Are there sounds you like in crafting? I love the tiny pop in bead looming when pushing the beads into the space between the warps (not just the sound, but also the way it feels) and I love the sound of a needle and thread going through bead embroidery foundation - so much that I started missing them more than actually making jewelry. They have something deeply satisfying to me.
I know, it's really weird, isn't it?
However, that is what finally did the trick and made me grab a labradorite cabochon from my stash without any plan whatsoever. Just glueing the cab onto the foundation felt like a good start, even if der Dekan tried to steal the cap of the glue tube once again.

I picked some bead colors for the bezel that I thought would work well with the colors of the labradorite, a grey shimmering kind of golden, metallic silver, and - maybe a bit surprising - a kind of green-golden metallic.
After doing the bezel, which was the easy part, I was completely lost.
I would have wanted to make some unusual, playful, but all I could think of was quite classic and, to me, not very imaginative and a bit boring.
In the end, I just succumbed to the idea of a classic bead embroidery pendant. I still have some lovely frosted amethyst in my stash from years ago which actually was another color working beautifully with the stone, but this edging looked a little bland to me, so I added another layer to it with tiny silver "rays".

This pendant developed over a few days which is pretty slow for me, but the heat and a hurting thumb joint didn't help and there were quite a few breaks.
So I'm still not sure if it has been enough to give me a good kick in the butt, so I will finally be tackling my list of ideas again (without forgetting about my embroidery which came to a stop due to heat and a mistake which means there will have to be some ripping out, argh). We will see, I guess ;-)

Tackle that stash - First bead embroidered pendant

First, I have to make a confession. There were times when I wasn't a fan of bead embroidery. In a time where I was all about airy wire crochet and knit, the only bead embroidered pieces I got to see were huge bangles. Don't get me wrong, I always admired the technique as such, the colors, the craftsmanship, but those bangles looked so heavy to me.
Over the years I got to see more and more very different pieces, though, and I noticed how the look began growing on me. I think I hadn't even been aware that some things were bead embroidered, and obviously I didn't remember that I (had?) owned a pendant myself that my best friend had given me as a gift when I was about 11.

The other day when I went to look for some beads, I noticed a box on my storage boxes. My storage boxes are in shelves, so a flat white box is rather inconspicuous. I opened it and found two sheets of "Stiff Stuff" which is used for bead embroidery. I very vaguely remembered ordering it months ago, but why? It probably had to do with a project that I am actually working on now.
Having nothing better to do at the moment I decided spontaneously to make my first embroidered pendant and picked a labradorite cab, round because it seemed the easiest to do as a beginner. Then I watched about three minutes of a 45 minute video to see if it was done the way I thought. This is not supposed to be showing off, but after all I already knew basic peyote bezels, so I just needed to make sure about what stitch to use for the start and how to finish the edges for the backing in the end.

I gathered some beads that seemed to work well with the lab and played around. This was actually rather fun to do and I even found some more beads I had completely forgotten about.
When it was time for the final backing, however, I noticed that I hadn't ordered of that.
After looking around on eBay and finding one piece of Ultrasuede, a bargain at £9.999 (it was obviously a typo) I turned to my trusted bead advisors - everyone should have at least one of those - and asked them what they preferred to use. Then I ordered something that looked right to me from the picture. When it arrived a few days later I found it wasn't the right thing. After banging my head on the desk a few times I looked around again and found a new bead store in the process. Nothing wrong about that, is it? :-D
Well, and when my order arrived, I glued on the Ultrasuede (with a little much too glue it seems, now I have some small spots on the back, but given the strained relationship between glue and me it could have been much worse), did the edging and couldn't resist a few more tiny seed beads around the firepolished crystals before adding a brick stitch bail.

There's no stopping me now! ;-)

Tackle that stash - Agate and labradorite

Last month I really struggled with getting anything done. That doesn't mean I didn't try, but things didn't work out so well. Of course I was quite preoccupied with Ponder, his vet visits, and trying out one diet food after the other because the gang refused to eat. I'm the only one in this flat who hasn't lost weight!
Things have calmed down a little *knocking on wood* and Mabel (my invisible muse) has dared to come back.
So today while diving into the world of Pride and Prejudice on DVD once again I decided to have a look through my stash.

I found some rather short copper wires, leftovers from other projects, and a small agate cab that looked as if it might work nicely with the lengths of wire. The hardest part is always to decide on a weave. Sometimes I start, then pull the working wire off again and try something else, and of course the first idea might get changed completely during work, anyway.
This time I surprised myself again, I didn't know that the pendant would come out like this!
I even got to use one of my faceted labradorite onions which I have hoarded for years now because it fits the slightly subdued look and gives it that bit of shine and sparkle when the light is right.

P.S. Of course I thought of adding a dangle as well at first, I always do, but when I chose the labradorite instead of a tiny bead at the top, the dangle was out, it would have been too much, at least for my taste.

Help me name my dragon!

This morning I saw her again.


She wasn't hiding and she had brought me a new nest.


I guess that means she is going to stay and that means she needs a name now. I asked my friends and my coworkers, I played around with a dragon name generator one of my Plurk friends recommended and still I can't decide.


I need your help and you shall not go unrewarded, well, at least not the winner. You will get five names that have come from different sources. There would have been so many more I liked, but five it is now. Pick your favorite. The majority will then decide what name my girl will carry from now on.
I will then randomly draw a winner who will get the latest little dragon nest!


Poll will be open for a month, so the nest will definitely arrive in time for Christmas.

And go! Please don't forget to comment, so I'll know who voted and can draw a winner!

By the way - if you like my dragon girl (and how couldn't you??), you should really go and check out the shop and blog of ColtPixy. She is one talented lady with polymer clay and it's her merit the dragon flew to my house! ;-)

Banglemania!!!

This is so addictive! Yes, I watch Bollywood, yes, I own a saree that I have never worn and yes, I love bangles, but I have to admit I have a problem with the sound they are making if you wear many and bangles have to be worn in abundance, right?
So I was sitting there looking at my colored wire, looking at my stone beads and the small candle in my brain started to shine, a little flickering at first - which is why the first one became a children's bangle - but then I really felt I was on to something here.
I hope I won't be the only one to think that. Do you know this feeling? You are all enthusiastic about something, you do a little happy dance and all your soul and thoughts go into this project, no matter what kind it is. You are excited to show others and then the bubble blows because you get a polite "Ah yes", "Mmh-mmh" or something else along that line. Sometimes these experiences stick to you like glue, sometimes you shake them off. I learned it is important to always do something for yourself in the first place and then maybe the spark is gonna flow.
I had fun making these bangles and I am sure they won't be my last, I'll just have to stock up on beads and wire. What a sacrifice! Shopping for beads and wire is one of the hardest thing to do, well, at least if you don't have the money to say you take everything ;-)
Today we were at a minerals and fossils fair. I took the tall guy along because of his wallet, eh, I mean because he is the perfect companion for this. He headed off to hall 7 immediately where there was an antique fair. He found something, I found something, we are both broke, but happy :-P

And here are the first bangles with round beads, I also made some with chips. Not Doritos! Red goldstone and rock crystal. Not as tasty, but they sparkle more ... Eventually they will pop up in one of my shops, too - in a few days, I guess.

Sterling silver wire and labradorite



Copper wire and brown tiger's eye



Copper wire and red tiger's eye



Green coated wire and light green Chinese jade



Hot pink coated wire and rose quartz, bangle plus hoops with copper earwires



I am sure the banglemania will go on now that I have new beads ... gotta hurry, my hook is calling me!! :-D