Bleeding Heart, a prototype

I don't often make prototypes. I play. I experiment. I make forever WIPs (not on purpose!) to look at so I can wonder what the heck I actually did there and how I'm supposed to repeat or refine it.
I never write anything down. I don't make sketches. Not smart, I know, but that's not going to change now (wait, I once did, for my wire crochet Christmas balls, but I don't know where that note went which doesn't matter as I haven't made any of them in years).
I don't sit down and actively try to work something out. Measure and count. I don't have an analytical mind. Things come to me or they don't.

This time, I made one, a prototype, kind of.
I didn't want to show it to you yet because I wanted to get it right first, but that may take a while.

The 3D heart wasn't the difficult part, but the blood or tear drop (depending on your language) and the ends of the outer petals which curve up.
Here I used just size 11 and 15 seed beads to make the petals curve, but I didn't like them smaller and like this the heart was too small for my taste.
Right, therefore the size 8 that inspired the stash tackler post.

I didn't have enough white beads in the size 8 to try out if that would look more like what I was thinking of, though.
Postage has definitely become too high for ordering just one tube of beads. Now minimum for postage free shipping has gone up quite a bit as well. As if it wasn't difficult enough for me to put a bead order together!
Not that I wouldn't understand the bead stores, mind you, they have to deal with business realities and their finances just as we all do more and more, as I do as a matter of fact.
I have enough stash, so I can't really justify another bead order just yet.

I don't have any other bead colors in all three sizes, either. Similar maybe, but not the same.
There will be a bead order sometime, though, and the design is absolutely staying on my list, but as I said, it may take a while, so all you get to see for now is this rather tiny protoype, sorry.

And another picture in my hand to give you a better idea of its size.

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?

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.

Tassels

When I was a child, my grandma had a table cloth with long, heavy tassels. I loved them and could spend hours (actually probably not hours, but it seemed like it to me then) braiding them, unraveling the braids and braiding them again. They were so shiny and pretty.

Although I own a book about beaded tassels that a friend gave me to me, I never made anything from it because I didn't know what to do with a tassel. To make something with real thread tassels, never crossed my mind at all - until our JAC challenge mistress picked the topic "Tassels or PomPoms" for the November/December challenge.
Pompoms, pom-poms, pom-pons, pompons - feel free to choose your favorite spelling - were right out. I have pompom makers for two different sizes because I thought I could make some myself for Gundel and den Dekan to play with, but was never very good with the cardboard rings, but even with pro equipment I either suck at it or der Dekan is extremely good at disassembling pompoms. It's probably both. Anyway, I'm a bit miffed with pompoms now, so I had to pick tassels.

Of course I could have grabbed my book now and fight my way through instructions, something I don't have much patience for, also I remembered that all of the projects would have called for a bead order, another thing I didn't have the patience for at the moment (bead orders take me really long because I am obsessed with not forgetting anything, not that that ever works out).
I also didn't want to order a bunch of thread tassels most of which I would probably never use, and I definitely didn't want to make any myself if I didn't have to.

I know, that sounds as if I wasn't very motivated, but that wasn't it. I thought I would definitely do some kind of beaded tassel, only not quite as ambitious as the ones in the book.
Then, however, I remembered that I had bought a strand of beads sometime ago that had thread tassels on each end and that I had kept them after cutting up the strand. Lucky me because now I just had to come up with something for the top!

That's where my advent calendar from 2022 comes in, the Christmas Bells, to be precise. How about using their top part for inspiration and building something up from crystals - firepolished instead of bicones - and seed beads?
So that's what I did, with the help of a Christmas movie for background noise (Hallmark which one of our TV channels is running up and down right now, so I didn't have to worry about not catching important information, and guess what, there was a happy ending 🤣).
I think they fit the festive season quite well and I promise not to braid the threads!

Creative energy

Wow, it has been a while again, but that actually fits today's topic quite well.

My creative energy tank had been not empty for some time, but locked, you could say.
I always have a list of ideas in my head some of which have been around for months or even longer, and I kept adding new ones.
That isn't new, I have always done that and my guess is that 90 % of them never got realized, either because I forget them again very quickly (as I usually don't write them down) or because something new caught my attention (oooh shiny) or because I couldn't figure out quickly how to do it (I can experiment forever once I get hooked, but I can also abandon stuff very quickly before even starting on it) or because they ended up in the infamous WIP drawer (which is actually the code word for drawers or cabinets all over my place).

For quite a while, though, I had absolutely no motivation or energy to get started on anything. At night, I would be lying in my bed and work out all kinds of fantastic stuff that would have revolutionized the craft world, no doubt ;-)
The next day, I would aimlessly click through websites or change TV channels and think I should really get started on something now, but couldn't get myself to do it most of the time.
It's not that I didn't make anything at all, and once I got into that almost meditative state, I would keep going, but it was still a far cry from how I used to work and I had no idea what was going on and really let it bring me down at times.

Maybe I should have realized earlier that it was kind of a jewelry burnout. I guess I was so used to making jewelry that I didn't even notice that not only did it not make me happy at the time, but it also squashed my urge to make anything else because I felt I needed to come up with new designs instead.
A generous portion of Weltschmerz on top of that didn't help.

So I decided to leave one of my very active sale groups, which sadly had not been successful for me for too long, to take some pressure off and do something for myself that had been on my list for almost 1 1/2 years! I'm planning an extra blog post for that because I want to take some detail pictures first.
Then of course there was something completely new on my list as well which I'd like to tell you about.

I have been intrigued by other crafts for a long time. I like to watch videos on pottery, sewing, weaving, and more, but two crafts really caught my interest - spinning and embroidery.
Now I had/have friends who spin - not nearby unfortunately - but I never thought I would want to give it a try and now I'm still struggling with a beginner's drop spindle after weeks without producing more than about five inch of usable yarn. I'm beginning to think that should have been a sign, but hey, der Dekan thoroughly enjoys helping and has fun! Not that it makes things any easier. I'm not giving up yet, though.

Hand embroidery is a different topic.
In elementary school we had what you could maybe call a stitch booklet. It wasn't a sampler, from what I remember it really looked like a little booklet and each page was for practising one particular stitch. I was absolutely terrible at it, maybe not unusual for a 6 or 7 year old, but on the other hand my school experiences made me think for a long time that I wasn't good at any kind of craft.
My second experience with embroidery came after being at a yarn shop - with about 17, I had discovered knitting for myself in my early 20s, way later than all the others in my circle - and not being able to resist a lovely tablecloth kit with little violets. 1 1/2 violets was my limit, my sister finally finished it.
That's it. I never touched embroidery yarn again. Then, many, many years later, I discovered metal threads on a British website - oooh shiny - while looking for a particular calendar, and even later a friend made a kit from RSN tutor Becky Hogg which I fell in love with, a little goldwork fox. It took me a long time to do the jump and order the kit myself, and then it took me even longer to start on it. I can't say how often I opened up that box, admiring the metal threads, but being too wimpy to give it a go.
A few months ago then, Deana from vuvu_ceramics wrote something in an Instagram post of hers that really gave me the kick I needed. I can't remember the exact words, but it was about just giving things a go and enjoy them, no matter how they turn out. I've heard that before, but the way she said it ... I can't tell you why, but I commented that I had a hard time with a kit I got because I was afraid messing it up, and then Lauren (Confesstress) chimed in with encouraging words and some help ... well, I actually started working on my kit.
I won't lie, it was hard. I had never heard of couching and punching threads and cutwork and purl and passing and all that. Also I hadn't expected my hands to hurt that much, but holding the embroidery ring and trying to shape the metal threads to sew them down at the same time was tough on them. I had to force myself to take breaks although I didn't always want to, being so determined to not let this become a WIP.
And I finished it. Is it perfect? Heavens, no. It has flaws and flaws and flaws which I'm not going to list (you can see them, anyway). But I finished it and was happier than I had even expected. Take that, stitch booklet!!
Actually there was one flaw that I felt I needed to hide, so instead of leaving the face without embroidery as intended, I added white seed beads in two sizes to it, so now my fox is squinting a little, probably surprised to finally see the light of day.
At first, I wanted to give Foxy some grass and flowers to sit in, in beads or in an ambitious attempt to use more embroidery stitches that I didn't really know (although someone who shall stay unnamed may have bought a lot of randomly chosen thread colors), but after coming so far I really didn't want to mess the fabric up.
So instead - and I really hope Becky will forgive me for changing the design, even if it's not a lot - I sprinkled small and tiny golden seed beads all around Foxy randomly. I guess I can't do without beads, also I love to combine techniques.

And here's Foxy now.
If you made it up to here, thank you very much for your patience!

These two pictures were taken under my daylight lamps, but look how beautiful Foxy is in warm light!

The Boho mermaid

Some years ago, I fell in love with the tiny Miyuki cubes. I got a whole bunch of colors and used some in wire crochet, some in bead looming and peyote rings.
When I put some bead tubes back into my stash drawers, I noticed tubes with cubes in a silver lined light blue and a matte green with AB finish which vaguely made me think of ocean (possibly having the Moana movie run for background noise influenced that). The green had been around for a long time and the blue was from one of my surprise bead orders.

At first, I didn't think there would be enough beads for earrings and I tried a pendant that I kind of half liked which was not sufficient to keep it, though. I ripped it up again and thought that if I made the folded peyote one bead slimmer than the last pieces, I would have more beads to get to a length which I could bend comfortably for earrings. That was important because the cubes made the strips a bit less flexible than if I had made them with Delicas.

Next I thought about a pattern - one layer or side green, one blue ... checkered ... striped ... but in the end I opted for a random mix for the "ocean waves", waves because the folded and twisted peyote results in a wave shape if you look at it from the side. Also I had less green than blue, so mixing them would help to get long enough peyote strips. In the end I had three blue beads left!
I actually like the contrast between the very shiny blue and the matte green, the effect in light is so pretty, but I wanted more, so I randomly added metallic silver seed beads.

A mermaid - and I just can't help thinking mermaid when thinking of ocean, probably because Andersen's fairy tale has been a (sad) favorite of mine since childhood - could well wear long earrings in her flowing hair.
If that wasn't an excuse to add pearls, I didn't know what would be, and now I feel the earrings have turned boho.

Therefore my question, can a mermaid have a boho style?

Light butterfly

In September last year I made a black moth. I have always been attracted to black animals, birds, dogs, bunnies, and of course cats (okay, so cockroaches may be an exception). I bead embroidered the moth with wings full of sequins in different black tones, shiny, matte, AB, it was so much fun.

Only a few weeks later I decided to translate the idea into color with a big exotic butterfly from a beautiful glass cab and many differently colored sequins.

Both pieces sold quite quickly and I never got around to blog about them (that's a euphemism for my being too lazy or not motivated enough to blog much at all).

A few days ago I went through one of my inspections again and chose another old piece for ripping up (I wish my mind wouldn't tell me that they are in that drawer crying for help "nooo, don't do it"). While I was busy doing that, I remembered how I made it. It's funny what people use to measure the time of working something. For me it's usually movies or episodes of TV shows, in this case X-Files and the 1960 version of "The Village of the Damned".
My thoughts kept roaming and finally led me to these two winged creatures, probably because in one of my FB sale groups our topic was "Butterflies" at that time.
I love to make wings and I love the effect of sequins.
Not black this time, no colors, how about white and silver? After all I had a whole bunch of seed beads in white tones and silver right before me.

That's how the light butterfly came to life. I don't know if he was born from light or if he's bearing light, but I could easily spin a few fantasy stories around him.

Now don't worry, my dark side hasn't disappeared, actually I grabbed two of the black skulls right after. More wings, I'm afraid.
Who knows, though, what will come after those? Maybe another ripped up piece will talk to me and tell me something completely new!

Ready for spring

The last time I had expressed the hope that I would be ready to show something new soon, based on one of the designs I had shared.
For this I used some beads that I have probably had around almost from the start of my jewelry making. It was at a Sunday market in a small town nearby where I found a strand of blue goldstone. Back then, I had only seen red goldstone before, and I really loved that deep blue. If only I had known that these beads would haunt me for years, I am almost sure that these haven't been the last ones because they have been hiding in old pieces that I set aside for ripping up before.
My problem was that I never had a really good idea for them.
I finally found a good use for them, though, even if it meant that I was shamelessly hiding that beautiful blue in the process.

They are perfect to incorporate them in these beaded buds, and as I had three of them, I decided against another pair of earrings and instead made this necklace
With the necklace, I'm also once again embracing my asymmetric side which doesn't happen that often, both with the position of the buds and with the different colors.
Originally, the third bud was supposed to be bronze colored, but I didn't have the necessary size 15 seed beads for that, and I simply couldn't wait for an order because I was afraid the necklace would end up in the infamous WIP drawer.
Now I'm thinking the gunmetal makes for a very nice contrast, too. What do you think?

Tackle that stash - Bead embroidered "Elizabethan" lady

In early November, I have told you why I have been missing from my blog for a while. One of the reasons was der Dekan, my kitten. He has grown to be a little less demonic, but of course still needs a lot of attention, so the only way to get creative is to shut him out or wait until he is very tired and then be prepared for that moment.
If I'm working on something, it can take me a few hours, and at this point, I would really feel bad about locking myself in for that long leaving the little demon outside waiting, especially since Gundel has demanded alone time of her own for some hours of undisturbed sleep. So I tried for the sleep mode time instead. It turned out that I'm never prepared because, well, I never know what I'm going to need when going on a creative adventure. Standing up, however, means that der Dekan is going from sleep mode to "let's play, throw that ball, can I attack you, no, don't pet me, here's the ball back, look what I found, can we play some more" mode.
Of course it's not just a matter of attention. Der Dekan is obsessed with my beads and thread and wire, just as any kitten would be, and he's so fast that I don't trust him around my stuff unless I can tell he's too tired to move. This is a matter of safety, that of the beads, but much more his own.

Yesterday, though, the unthinkable happened. Not only did der Dekan decide to give me hours to play by passing out cold next to me in a way only cats can do it, but I had everything I needed.
It was great. I hadn't even known how much I had missed my beads and the calming effect that playing with them has on me. I have been quite stressed out lately and while beading doesn't make the stress appear, it gave me a much needed timeout.
Not knowing at all where a design will be going can mess things up if you get stuck, but seeing something finished and not having the slightest idea where that design has come from is what I love most about being creative.

This lady started out with a carved face glued to a piece of Lacy's Stiff Stuff and a peyote bezel. This particular transparent dark red with AB finish has become a huge favorite of mine, especially in a combination with the metallic bronze.
I think my first idea was to give her hair, but with the red bezel all around her face it turned into some kind of embellished headdress instead that reminded me of an Elizabethan hairstyle which probably inspired the collar like part which led to the sequins - in a different color in order to add a bit more depth to the design - and pearls in the end.
Is she a little over the top? She sure is, but I guess she - and I ;-) - needed that!

Miss Francie Bennet - Part 1, The doll and the dress

Some projects take a little longer than others. In this case, little means more than five years. That's how long Francie had to wait for her beaded outfit.
I think it was worth the wait. My first try at looming her a particular style of outfit went completely wrong, but now I knew how to use different techniques to give her her (or rather my ;-)) dream outfit.

Let's talk about Francie first, however, because this one is special.
"Colored Francie" (#1100) came in two issues in 1967 and 1968. She had a twist waist, bendable knees, and rooted eyelashes. The difference between the two issues were the hair and eyes. The first one had red hair and reddish-brown eyes, the second one had dark brown hair and eyes and a darker skin tone.
There was just one problem. "Black Francie" as she is known among collectors may have had the skin, but she didn't have the features of a true African American doll because the mold of the Caucasian doll had been used. The doll didn't sell well and so wasn't produced in large numbers. Probably African American children just couldn't identify with her which is understandable. It's why Christie is often regarded as the first real African American doll.
That makes her one of the most sought after Francie dolls (after the Japanese specials).

My girl (Francie is supposed to be a teenager) is the first issue. She has a few problems - so do I and after all she's just two years younger than me! She has some nicks on her foot, some light scratches here and there, and not only has she lost some of her hair over the years, but some of it looks like it has become burnt and has shriveled up and some of it is kind of orangey.

I was not brave enough to risk the hair she does have, so she didn't get a new hairstyle. I didn't touch her bangs and for the ponytail didn't dare playing with beads, but used just a bit of string because even light combing cost her more hair. Re-rooting was not an option, though, I would only have done that if she had been mostly bald, also I had planned a hat for her.
It's not as if the outfit is historically correct 100 %, anyway. There are things that are hard to recreate in beads, but I have done my best.

Now why do I call her Francie Bennet?
I'm a fan of Georgette Heyer's books, especially the ones set in the Regency period (1811 - 1820), and I love Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". From the start I wanted this special doll to wear something special although I knew it would be a bit of a challenge. Her name is of course inspired by Miss Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of "Pride and Prejudice".

Today I'll show you her dress.
My original choice of color had been pink and grey. Although I'm not necessarily a big fan of pink, pink and grey has been a favorite color combination of mine ever since I had to crochet my very first chain stitch string bag in elementary school.
Like I said, I had already tried a loomed version with Delicas, but although I had measured more than once, it just didn't work out. I took the parts of the loom and left them in a drawer to die. Yes, I was mad. Eventually I gave myself a good kick, cut the parts up and used the beads in both my Flapper Dawn's and 80s Barbie's outfits.
For the next attempt, I chose seed beads instead of Delicas because they look nicer in Herringbone. Don't look for the grey beads, in the end I decided the contrast was too much and I'd rather play with colors in the accessories (as a matter of fact, however, the grey beads are hidden under the dress in some kind of underpants, shhh).

Miss Bennet's dress is made from pink lined crystal beads. I love them, in the light the crystal parts sparkle so beautifully! Unfortunately I didn't quite manage to catch that in pictures.
For a very subtle contrast I chose sparkly rose colored 15/0 seed beads for the ruffles around the neckline, the lace at the bottom of the dress and the ribbon that is sitting right under the bust and ends in a bow at the back which is hidden by the shawl, though, which you will see tomorrow.
I couldn't believe how long it took me to make the dress, but Mattel dolls do have long legs and here it seemed even longer because of the high waistline!

A real problem were the shoes.
Had Francie stayed inside, she would have worn shoes with a very pointy tip, a side seam, a rounded kitten heel ... all things that I couldn't recreate in beads or things that wouldn't stay on Francie's feet, and of course there were still her foot problems.
So I settled for some boots instead, in honor of the scene in the famous 1995 mini series "Pride and Prejudice" in which Lizzy Bennet is walking across the fields through the mud to visit her sick sister in Netherfield Park.
I was even a little tempted to add brown beads for mud to the seam of Francie's dress *lol*
Of course these boots are by no means perfect, but they were the best I could do, and believe me, I tried. I think I made at least six shoe versions once again and there was massive cursing. I tried 15/0 beads to make the "leather" look thinner, I tried slippers that went high up to hide the feet, to no avail.
If Francie wants to wear brown basketball boots, so be it. I wear comfy shoes myself. Maybe I'll have an amazing idea one day, but actually you can hardly see them under the dress, anyway. For this picture I pulled the dress up.

Okay then, that's it for today.
Tomorrow I'd like to show you the accessories I made - besides the pompadour that already sneaked in with the second picture.
I hope to see you then!


Francie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel in any way.

The mix

I always try to plan my bead orders and I still forget something every single time.
It reminds me of the old days when we went to the big town to visit the record store chain "Lerche" (which means lark in English). They had four shops in the long pedestrian zone leading from the main station to the castle and beyond that. I have never been a big shopper, but right now I miss the feeling of going for a walk there, go into this or that shop, have something quick to eat, spend some money and look at your treasure once you are home again.
Trips to the big town were hardly ever spontaneous, and yet I was never prepared. I always thought I would definitely remember which records I needed in my life badly, but then I'd stand in the store, 1000s of records all around me, and I would not remember a single one, except the two that they never had, anyway. It was just too overwhelming. Usually it would come back to me when we were on the way home.

Bead orders are simpler, I can, well, actually have to do them online because there's no bead store in my town, so I can order anytime. I try to plan them, however, to be prepared for the next project(s), to fill up a color, to anticipate colors that I might need, and of course to save postage.
This time I forgot some size 15 silver seedies which I could have used so well just now. So much for planning.
What I have always ordered the last few times, though, was a surprise mix. Not bead soup, just a mix of colors and shapes. I think the idea really appeals to the child in me. When I was small, we had something that was called "Wundertüte" = "miracle bag" with chewing gum and a little figure in it. It was the same excitement that I am feeling now when I open my bead parcel. I always try to get out the things first that I know I've ordered and get to the surprise at the end. I'm such a child, I know!

Of course it can be a risk. Once I got some bead shapes that I have never used before or have a hard time using. I'm still struggling with a few of these. Just like the risk of getting colors you usually don't prefer, though, it can spark the creativity which is the second reason I'm getting these. Maybe you even get colors that you never before thought of using, but which quickly become a favorite.
The latest bead order surprised me with a beautiful dark red. The tube is already almost empty, I hope you'll get to see pictures of that project soon. I'm also sure I won't have any trouble to use up all the lovely blues.

What was really funny, however, was that there is a tube of pink and grey each. The funny part is that it's exactly the pink and grey that I have chosen for a project I have already started, but which got put on the backburner because I was missing some matching size 15 beads - that I found just yesterday. Maybe you think the shop owner still remembered that I had ordered these two colors before, but actually I got them from a different shop ...
Talk about coincidence!

What sparks your creativity?

Headband or tiara?

I think I mentioned it before, when I was a child, we had those plastic disks in several colors which reminded of flowers and which you could connect to each other and build all kinds of things. The most easiest thing to make was a tiara because the different colors were different gems for us.

When I found a metal headband blank in my stash, I didn't think of that, though. I thought of bead embroidery because I had just found another dichroic glass cab. It was a dark blue with green and I had all those bugles in ocean colors lying around and seed beads to go with them and I could add pearls (coins and Biwa) and crystals, oh and those two opalite cabs, too!
Once I had a few bugles on there, however, I didn't like the stripey look together with the rounded shapes of the cabs and beads, so I ripped all of them back out and picked different seed beads instead.

Embroidering took its time, but like bead looming it has a meditative effect on me, so that was okay.
Lately I have been trying to get away from strict symmetry, so this piece isn't symmetrical either as you can tell if you look closely.

Now came the hard part. How to get this piece onto the metal blank? I had a vague idea, but I wasn't sure. The ending of this video tutorial by Lidia Sapronova helped me confirm what I had to do.
First I glued a piece of thicker paper to the bead embroidery strip to strengthen it as the blank itself is very slim. Then I took my ultrasuede, measured and cut two little slits, one on each side a few centimeters from the edge through which I put the ends of the blank. Now I could glue the ultrasuede to the blank which sounds much easier than it was for someone who is as glue challenged as me and then the bead embroidery to the blank and ultrasuede which resulted in some minor cursing.
I just wasn't sure if the glue could really hold all of this together, so when it had dried, I decided that for safety I'd sew all those layers together not just at the edges, but also along the edges of the blank, so that it wouldn't be able to move around in there. Somehow I hadn't expected it to take so long, but I'm still glad I did it.
The last step was of course the edging for which I chose pearly white seed beads to enhance the ocean feeling, sea foam and all that, you know.

There are examples in which both the embroidery and the ultrasuede go all around the metal blank. In my case that means there would have been hair over it and would definitely get tangled in it, so I didn't chose that variation. Also I would have had to add a piece of ultrasuede as the pieces I have wouldn't have been long enough.
In other pieces in there was an extra piece of ultrasuede all around the metal ends, but I admit that I didn't think myself capable of sewing that on and make it look good, too. Don't forget, this was my first attempt at something like this in the first place.

There's no doubt about it, this is no lightweight.
That's not my personal problem with it, however. I have never been that good with those kinds of headbands because I don't like the feeling behind my ears. Also with my straight hair they always slipped down when I looked down. A friend said I should try to attach some combs. I'll have to look into that, but actually I think it looks much better worn as a tiara ...
I deserve a tiara, don't I? And funnily enough worn like that it doesn't slip down even if I curtsy before Mylady Gundel ;-) Seriously, I can look down and it will still stay in my hair.
Now my wardrobe is not exactly very regal, but we'll see. It was another challenge and I did it and am proud of it.

So this is what the finished tiara is looking like from all sides and worn by my model Jacqueline.

Tackle that stash - The caterpillar

Actually you are welcome to see whatever you want in this bracelet. I find that I tend to see animals of all kinds where others see completely different things, and this reminds me of a happy little caterpillar. Or not so little seeing that he makes it almost around the wrist.

In the beginning there was no plan of a caterpillar whatsoever, though. You may have come to think that I'm not being serious about stumbling upon stash, but it's true. I am sadly disorganized in these things.
These glass lentils that a friend had given me practically jumped at me. They had tried that a few times before and went from drawer to drawer because I had no spontaneous idea how to use lentils that were not side drilled. It must have been frustrating for them ;-)

After playing with different kinds and shapes of beads on the loom - like in my dagger pieces - I saw that the solution was so easy. I loomed a strip from gunmetal colored seed beads and the amethyst glass lentils, with short black strips on both ends to use the same bars as last week (told you they'd be back).

You know me, I often change a design spontaneously, and this is what I did here as well. After I had woven in the warp threads I thought it would be cool to make the lentils stick out even more, in different directions rather than just straight up from a flat surface.
So I rolled the strip into a tube and stitched it up using some big seed beads that had been left over from another project - except for the black ends for which I used the bars after all. That way the seam doesn't show because they hold the bracelet in place and the seam on the inside.
Voilà!
 

What caterpillar colors would you like to see in the future?

Tackle that stash - Wire knit eggs with seed beads

Why does my brain come up with these things in the last minute? I doubt I will ever know.
Today's stash tackler is about gifts. Wouldn't it be nice to make some wire knit eggs for the neighbors? Maybe with seed beads? I could use those deco eggs and knit around them like I did around the Christmas baubles. Oh, these eggs actually do look rather nice. The matte surface makes them look a little like real eggs, even more so if you see them through their extra wire shells.

Three eggs down and my wrists hurt. Just as much as I doubt I will know why my brain does that to me, though, I doubt it (and I) will ever learn from it.
The seed beads were a gift a few years ago. They were too irregular to use them in a design before, but the pastel and pearly colors are so perfect here. I love when things finally come together.

Tackle that stash - The Manatee

Did you hear that it has been proposed to take manatees off the US endangered species list?
The first thought is of course "oh good, that means that they are doing better, right" and then you start thinking about what exactly it might mean. Will they be less protected? What does "endangered" mean anyhow? What is the next level if they are downgraded? It's "threatened". Oh, doesn't sound THAT much better, does it? Here's an article if you want to know more.

Now you may wonder what that has to do with my stash and why I break my rule to keep this a crafty blog, even if just for a small introduction?
First came a stash of bigger, irregular seed beads in ocean colors. Dark blue with a hint of AB luster, a transparent sky blue and a silver-lined light blue. I couldn't have found any other design for to use them, so I crocheted a long rope from wire.
Then I came upon the news about the manatee and remembered the beautiful lampwork pendant by Tom Heath from Sanctuary Glass Designs that I still had in one of my treasure boxes. Actually it's more than beautiful. It's clear glass over a base that gives you the feeling as if you are looking into water with light playing on it.

Now I'll have to think of some way to use Tom's shark pendant that has also been waiting in the box for too long ...

Tackle that stash - Digging into those seed beads!

It's my sister's fault or maybe it's the fault of the girls at her workplace.
Some of them have found the way to beading. In a future post I will show you a few of their pieces. When sis had the idea that my Francie had to wear a daisy chain headband, I had to look up the stitch. I passed it on to her, she passed it on to the girls and they started making daisy chains.
When I made Herringbone bracelets and necklaces with Twin Beads to use up some of my stash, I passed it on to her, she passed it on to the girls - and more, but as I said already that will be topic of another post - and they made Twin Bead bracelets.

I guess it was a natural consequence that we had to branch out. Me and off loom stitching? Unbelievable.
While my sister explored the St. Petersburg stitch, I started with RAW, the right angle weave.
I used crystals, seed beads, cube beads and varied the number of beads between my accent beads.

Together with the Daydreamer rope bangles after a design by Jill Wiseman I used up tons of my Czech seed bead stash.
The bangles are great for stacking in these bright colors, by the way!

What do you think which stitch I should be trying to learn next?

P.S. The first bracelet is in my DaWanda shop, the others are still waiting for their photoshoot.

Tackle that stash - Kumihimo cord and beads bracelet

This bracelet really made me dig into my stash drawers!

At first I only wanted to loom a slim bracelet. I had some bead soup mixed from gold lined crystal, transparent topaz, and transparent topaz AB cube beads and I had ordered some gold lined crystal and transparent topaz seed beads for a piece in a series not long ago of which I still had some leftovers.
I really like the look of alternating cube and seed beads in a row - as I did in the O beads bracelet and pendant - which reminds me of tweed. Great structure.
When I had finished looming, however, I knew this needed something more, but what? I went through my drawers and found some golden Kumihimo cord that seemed just perfect and that I had used in looming before.

I sewed one strand on along the middle of the bracelet. Not only did it give the piece even more structure, but the red thread also added some contrast.
The sides did look a little naked now, though, so I added two more cords.
It's a bit of challenge what to do with the cord ends if you use ribbon crimps. Did I want crimps? What if I didn't use a clasp at all? What if I just braided those strands tightly, so they could be used for tying the bracelet onto the wrist in two different ways depending on the wrist size?

I was so close to leave it at that, but somehow it still needed something else. It needed some embellishment on the sides because it was slim, maybe a row of seed beads? Okay. Not on both sides, however. How about a seed beads fringe - I had already used up the cube bead mix except for one lonely cube - or maybe ... wait, I still had crystals that would be perfect in color! I knew I didn't have that many left, would there be enough? It turned out I did, in fact I had one too much.

Didn't that work out nicely? ;-)
And an extra bonus is that I could use the bracelet for the monthly JAC challenge which was about fiber art/mixed media AND that it gave me more ideas!