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.

Springtime

One of my favorite flowers are Bleeding Hearts (they are actually perennials). The most popular name here is "Tränende Herzen" - Crying Hearts.
Where my grandmother lived, there was a small meadow with three buildings around it, and along the walls of those buildings, there were Bleeding Hearts. I still see myself sitting down beside them to admire the little pink hearts which were so perfect.
Probably my memory deceives me and there wasn't the mass of blossoms I seem to remember, but that doesn't change anything about my thinking of my grandmother every time I see one of those plants.

Picture via pxhere

Then one day I stumbled upon a picture on deviantArt which surprised me, not sure why it did because I love looking at flowers, but don't know the next thing about them.
It was a white Bleeding Hearts plant and it looked beautiful. I had seen black and blue ones on the web before and knew those weren't real, but white ones are and I immediately fell in love. So when I met the neighbor the next day and he told me he was off to the garden center, I jokingly asked him to bring me white Bleeding Hearts and he did!

It has been in our little garden for some years now and while it's not blooming in abundance, it makes me smile every year.
Last week Monday, there were no blossoms yet, but when I went down two days later to fill up the bird feeder, I was happy to see two little rows of white.
From what I read, April is rather early for Bleeding Hearts to bloom. Part of the blossoms were still quite delicate and I just hoped the predicted rain wouldn't be too hard on them because it was already too dark to get a good picture.

The next morning I checked from the window and saw a blossom peek out from under the green, so I went down - without much hope because it was a really grey day, just how I love it, but not good for pictures with my little old camera - and found them alive and well.
Welcome spring!

If you want to know more about Bleeding Hearts, where they come from, and an old tale behind the name, check out
Bleeding heart: origin, properties and flowering time

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!

Oldies but Goodies - More black and white

Black and white - a classic combination. Of course it would have been mean to demand from our members only to show black AND white pieces for the new Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge, but if black or white (with merely a hint of color here and there), the collage all brings them together nicely, don't you think? Of course there's more to see if you click through to the challenge.

1 Cat's Wire
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 RioRita
4 My Bijou Life
5 The Crafty Chimp

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - White

White. Claire's topic for December's design challenge at Art Elements was white. I'm not very good with white. I don't wear white, I don't have white walls (only ceilings), I don't own white furniture. If there's a choice, I'll never pick white.
Thinking back I also haven't made much jewelry in white. There was a choker, a silver tree on a white rock, and there's the white Petcat, but that's different because I love white cats.

Our first cat, Dude (actually White Dude, there's a story behind that name, but that would lead too far now) was white with a blue and a yellow eye.

White. My first thought was winter and snow. That reminded me of a link a friend of mine had shared just recently, a snowglobe ornament design by Cheri Carlson on Artbeads, done in brick stitch. My friend knows I love looming shaped pieces from beads and indeed it was the perfect inspiration.
Of course I wouldn't copy the snowman, but choose something more typical for me. What's typical for me? Well, cats of course. Cat. Snow. SnowCat!
This was one of the very first HeatherCats, the picture shows my friend Heather's original painting and my take on it.

So how about combining the idea of SnowCat and a snowglobe and making it a small tribute to the cat that was practically responsible for my life never again being without cat hair since 1991?
And how about trying to use just white and grey tones for it? Yeah, that was being too ambitious, it didn't work out, not with the beads that I had in my stash. There may have been some light cursing when I ripped it out again.
What a shame. That meant it had to be a night sky after all. I can't help it, I love night scenes, and "you don’t need to work monochromatic, just take white as inspiration either literally or figuratively." There.

After a very short digression to a different project that will need more planning, though, I wove in the last threads, and here we go. Snow Dude in his snowglobe.
He could be worn as a pendant or used as an ornament.

Please also visit all the other blog hoppers!
 
Guests

Alysen - Anita - Beth - Cat (that's me!) - Divya - Elaine - Hope - Jill - Karin - Kathy - Rozantia - Sarajo - Susan - Tammy

AE Team

Caroline - Cathy - Claire - Laney - Lesley - Marsha - Susan

Oldies but Goodies - Winter White

There's a window behind my bed, and I just have to turn my head a little and I can see the sky. I love watching the moon wander across the night sky, sometimes in the middle of the night if I wake up. Last night, however, we had a new moon. Instead I saw fat snowflakes coming down. When I got up to have a look at the street, I saw they had already settled on the roofs, the cars, and the ground. Although I'm not a fan of snow - to put it nicely - it looked peaceful. No one was out there, it was completely quiet, and only here and there I could see a light from a window in the neighborhood.
This morning I didn't wake up from the scratching of shovels on the ground, so I knew it had to have stopped snowing, and indeed the snow had gone as if it had only been a dream.

After a break the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge is back in this new year now, this week with the topic Winter White. Enjoy.

1 and 4 Cat's Wire
2 and 5 RioRita
3 and 6 MC Stoneworks

Oldies but Goodies - White

This week the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge was inspired by a song again - A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum. I never understood the text, but love the song anyway.
Whatever it really means, the challenge is about the achromatic color white.

"Wait", you will say now. "She's starting to ramble. She has no idea what to write." You are right. It's 5,000° C out there, my brain has run off to the beach and I feel I AM starting to ramble just to introduce "white" to you.
So why not letting the picture do that for me? Here you go.

1 and 4 MC Stoneworks
2 and 7 Cat's Wire
3 and 5 Jewelry Art by Dawn
6 and 8 Violetmoon's Corner

Oldies but Goodies - Black and White

Normally I would tell you to not just see things black or white, but today I got nothing but black and white for you!
If you want see everything from this week's Oldies but Goodies Challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community, you find it here. You are more than welcome to join us to play!

1 Robin's Jewelry, Antiques, & Collectibles
2 RioRita
3 Cat's Wire
4 MC Stoneworks
5 Violetmoon's Corner
6 Jewelry Art by Dawn

Raiders of the lost stash

I'm getting old rapidly. Hurting here and there, brain cells diminishing by the minute and let's not even talk about the urge to tell young people how much better the old times were when we still had winters with 10 feet of snow for three months and ate cake made from water and sand because we didn't have eggs and flour. It's what time does with you, I guess. Sometimes at least. I'm not sure, I just lost another brain cell, you know.

And still there is a little adventurous mood left in this old body. Follow me if you are game. We might encounter cobwebs and wild beasts with big fangs and sharp claws. We'll dive into depths man hasn't seen for, well, months. The treasure waiting for us at the end of the road will be worth it, though.

Can you see it? Purple, brown, green, red, black and white!

Yup, I found beads and pearls in my travel bag that I had totally forgotten about. It's nice to find stuff. Next I'll go through my books hoping for some nice crisp banknotes.

Of course I had to make something from this treasure before my memory goes down the drain even more and I forget about it again! Don't worry, the beads are not in the travel bag anymore, so that's progress ;-)

So here it is, a beautiful pearl surrounded by red carnelian, now in my Zibbet shop.

The twenty-fifth door - White Christmas

When I was a child, I got a book called "Christmas stories of our time". The editor wrote in her foreword that she challenged her fellow authors to write about Christmas and the result was a collection of happy, sad and thoughtful stories.

My favorite story that I shared with many others over the year is the one of the Christmas elf. He has to fulfil three tasks to make Christmas a white one.

This year the Christmas elf and his friend, the unicorn, seem to have done very well. They have found the nine bullfinches on a branch, they rung the bells of the abandoned church in the Five Lords Ground and they led Jack Frost back home to the Yew Forest.

And now we have loads of snow out there again ...