The Dragonfly

I have always loved dragonflies. They are like small flying jewels.
I know they sew your lips together if you believe Snoopy ;-) but actually this is just an old superstition as the Britannica tells us: "The term devil’s darning needle is derived from a superstition that dragonflies may sew up the eyes, ears, or mouth of a sleeping child, especially one who has misbehaved." I've never heard of this superstition in my area, but I know that some people thought a dragonfly could sting or would drill into your eyes.

At the Jewelry Artisans Community we have a bimonthly challenge and the first one of this year - take a look here - was to try out something new, a new material, technique, or tool.
My first thought had been to finally use my Kumihimo disks, but somehow I just didn't feel like it. I don't have the right weights or spools and on top of that I have been too lazy to check out how exactly it's done.

Then, inspired by a documentary about embroiderers in India that I have watched a while ago, I thought of sequins. As I don't sew, I had never used sequins before except in a very short polymer clay jewelry venture with a friend 30 years ago. In fact I'm not even sure if I used them, but I had some scattered in my old stash boxes at some time.

What to do with sequins, though? Well, I love dragonflies ...
I looked through dragonfly pictures and I looked through my stash to decide on a color combination.
There was this acrylic cab on which I then based my choice of seed beads. Luckily I had everything except the sequins in my stash and could start right away while I was waiting for the sequins to arrive. It was more difficult than I had expected to find what I wanted, 4 mm clear AB sequins.
I had already decided not to make the body from single bigger beads, but to embroider the whole piece. For the wings and body I used seed beads in different sizes and different gold tones plus black and alabaster white, also gold lined bugles, and for the head I used gold coated hematite beads and bronze Twin Bead eyes.

To enhance the overall golden look, I chose to sew the sequins on using the method of adding a bead on top.
This is the end result. Almost.
I took this picture in my hand to show the size. Now what? I didn't trust an ordinary small needle to work. I hate big brooches with small needles. A necklace?

A friend convinced me that my dragonfly would make a good pin and advised me to check out hat needles etc., and that's what I did.
I found some that had larger filigree disks attached to the pin which I could sew to the backing easily and, which is much more important, safely.

Unfortunatley it's a rather grey day today and although I could see a beautiful green shimmer in the sequins at one moment, my camera wasn't able to pick it up. You'll have to believe me when I'm saying that the wings shine in different colors and are more beautiful in the pictures.
Here's a closer look at them, by the way, to show you how the sequins are sewn on.

I have to admit it was much more fun to work with sequins than I had expected, so much actually that I already used them again on a second project that you will get to see soon, I hope!

Oldies but Goodies - Hot

Last week we were cold, this week we are smoking hot at the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge. This is a kind of heat even I can get behind!
Sorry for keeping it so short today, but the needle is calling me to a project and I have to get out of this procastinating mode! ;-)
So, without further delay, here are our hot beauties.

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

Oldies but Goodies - Cold

Last week there wasn't a blog post because I was not able to create a collage. I have been using an online photo editor for many years now, but with their new Flash free version the developers have gone into a direction that caused endless frustration. When working on last week's collage, I finally had enough. My subscription was about to end shortly, so I decided to end it right there and then. It made me very sad because of my favorite features, but it can't be helped, sometimes you just have to know when to say goodbye.
Why am I telling you this? I'm trying out a new editor which in parts still is a Beta version as well, though, and the collage templates don't offer the possibilities (yet, I hope?) that I need and used to have. So I'm asking you to bear with me as I have to work with what I have.

This week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge was all about the cold. I chose the topic on a cold day when I was tired and grumpy and couldn't seem to warm up. Isn't it nice how something beautiful can be the result of a grumpy day?
Please enjoy my small selection. You better do or Jack Frost might get you! ;-)

1 My Bijou Life
2 Cat's Wire
3 and 6 RioRita
4 and 7 The Crafty Chimp
5 Jewelry Art by Dawn

Oldies but Goodies - More fireworks

Do you like fireworks? To be honest, I would be a much bigger fan if I could have just the colors without the noise. I know that traditionally the noise was supposed to drive out evil spirits, but the older I get, the more I hate it. Maybe I'm turning into a cat after all.
On New Year's Eve we hardly had any fireworks in my neighborhood, due to Covid regulations. Gundel and I definitely approved, especially because we usually don't get many colors, but all the more noise.

Let's start this new year (and you will notice I don't wish you a good one because I don't trust it yet) with a firework of colors from the latest Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge.
We had the same topic before, but that was years ago.

I want to thank my friend Dawn again for graciously taking care of the December posts.

1 RioRita
2 Cat's Wire
3 The Crafty Chimp
4 My Bijou Life

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 4, Summer Dreaming

For those who missed the first three parts - which you can find here, here, and here - and those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started.

I hadn't expected to finish the last part of the shoes so quickly. With the holidays and vacation days, however, and nothing else to do (that I wanted to do, at least ;-)), I concentrated on binge watching - or hearing, rather - crime shows and beading.
Oh, and some crafty documentaries which show in detail how someone is making something, a hat, a wooden inlay chessboard, a barrel or a church window, for example.
It may sound silly, but if my brain refuses to shut off, it helps me to pretend that I'm in one of those documentaries and someone else is watching me. It makes me concentrate on each stitch, each bead even more, the sounds of the thread going through the denim, the snipping sound of the scissors. It doesn't always work, but if it does, it's perfect.
It helps me to calm down and shut the outside world and its problems out for at least a while which is something I really need at the moment.

Back to the shoe, though.
For this side I had chosen another sleeping cat. Now I have three sleeping cats under blue sky and only one caterpillar, but they were so perfect in size and they all have their own charm. Maybe I'll have to get high top sneakers next time, so I can use Heather's vertical designs as well.
"Summer dreaming" is a white cat sleeping on a fence. The position reminds me a lot of the way my Merlin and Greebo liked to sleep which makes me smile every time. I can also imagine that this is my White Dude sleeping under a California sun before those crazy people dragged him off to Germany (if you don't know the story, it was for his best, really).

Just like the caterpillar, this little fellow was not easy to fit onto the shoe. I think I tried the pattern three times before I finally found the right size and position to get his tail on there and still not lose one of his legs to a hole. The sun wasn't as lucky, it had to squeeze into the corner.

If you wonder, by the way, what happened to the rest for my hands, well, I found that I happened to have one tube of the color that is still on backorder after all, so I couldn't stop myself. It went surprisingly well most of the time.
I mislaid the some of the blue for the sky instead, but I ordered so much that that didn't matter. Someone also ordered much too much brown, no idea how long I thought that fence would be. Maybe watching Tom Sawyer's famous fence painting scene had confused me.
So I guess I'll have to think of a design in brown, blue and white now. Any ideas? ;-)

And here's our cat now. I bet he's dreaming of chasing mice and his favorite treats!
I even managed to clean off the blood that had been shed. My friends told me to see it as blood sacrifice to the bead goddess. She has to be really happy because I sacrificed more than once, not to mention all the needles that gave their lives for this project.

This is what the shoes look like worn. I have been asked if I am going to wear them outside, and I keep joking that I don't even know when the chance will come up again with Covid around. Let's say that I won't wear them on a regular basis to avoid dirt and damage, but I will definitely show them off eventually.

Sorry that I couldn't take better pictures, but it's hard enough to get my big feet into a picture - they are a EU 43 which translates to a US 11 1/2 and a UK 9 ;-)

Now what will be next?

Creativity in Covid times

First I called this topic suggestion for the Jewelry Artisans Community blog carnival a personal one and then I forgot about it completely. Mind you, that was on November 1, and on the next day something happened that managed to make this year even worse than it had been the months before.
It's hard for me to be clinical about this year. When hearing 2020, all I want to do is swear in the worst words I know, but I have never done that on my blog and won't start it now. I also won't tell you everything that happened because most of it is very personal, and not all of it has to do with Covid.
Covid, however, has been hanging above me like Damocles' Sword, waiting to make everything more difficult, more scary, more uncertain.

Being immunocompromised, I have rarely left the house since March. I am lucky, I have wonderful people running important chores for me and bringing me groceries (which makes me feel grateful, but also guilty sometimes), and I had turned into a homebody in the last few years, anyway.
Working in home office suited me very well, too. Not having to commute saved me a lot of time.
Sounds perfect, doesn't it?
Even a homebody like me can become restless eventually, though, or feel trapped. I didn't embrace the same things as others. I don't cook or bake much, and Covid wouldn't make me change that. I don't follow video workouts. I don't like video chats. I did talk a lot on the phone, however, in fact I don't think I have ever been on the phone so much before, not even as a teenager. A lot of it had to do with the private matters I mentioned, though.

So I had time for being creative like crazy, right? Theoretically yes, but it didn't work out that way.
One side effect of Covid were shipping restrictions to other countries. My business which is mostly aimed overseas was practically non-existent this year, and once restrictions were lifted, shipping overseas was so delayed not just across the ocean, but also within the destination countries that I didn't feel like taking chances.
I'm not complaining about my business per se as it's not that big, and I have an income from my part-time job. I'm so sorry for those people who are not as lucky.
I'm just mentioning it because not being able to sell influenced my creativity more than I would have expected.
My motivation was at a low and so was my creativity at first. It simply didn't make any sense to me to create something under these circumstances, it felt as if that part of my brain also had gone into lockdown. Of course I had had creative blocks before, but this was worse. I questioned everything and I'm pretty sure I got on quite a few nerves with my whining about it.

Looking back, however, I noticed that I got a few things done after all although not many of them were jewelry.
I finally started trying out a new technique, bead embroidery. I made some jewelry first, and then bead embroidery took me on a new journey, big projects like The Box, The Tiara/Headband, and finally The Sneakers. Yes, in capital letters because these felt BIG.
I also beaded two more doll outfits, and lately I have been working on another pair of sneakers.
It's actually a little surprising to me that I managed to pull all of these through. On the other hand I ignored my wire almost completely and jewelry was suddenly on the backburner.
These are a few of the things I made.

Don't ask me what that means because I don't know.
Will things become normal again eventually? Will my creativity change back, completely, in parts or not at all?
Has my interest shifted from making jewelry to making, well, whatever? What does that mean for my business? I have never sold any of my bigger non-jewelry projects because there was so much of my time and heart in them that I didn't manage to part with them, not even mentioning that I don't intend to underprice myself, but also don't believe in people wanting to pay the prices I would have to ask.
The conclusion is that I don't have the slightest idea at the moment, and you are probably already tired of my rambling, anyway ;-)

For now I'll just be waiting for what's going to happen next. Will the situation improve with the vaccines, if so, when? When will I have to leave home office and commute again? What else will the new year bring me?
Interesting times ...

What are other JAC members' experiences? Check it out here.

Jewelry Art by Dawn
My Bijou Life

The HeatherCat shoes - Part 3, The CATerpillar

For those who missed the first two parts - which you can find here and here - and those who don't know the HeatherCats yet, here's a little explanation.
"Heather is a friend of mine, a painter from New Zealand. I met her on deviantART and got to know the Essencestudios. I couldn't even tell you in what group it was, but among her talents Heather has a talent for bright, whimsical paintings, many of which are cats, so how could I not be fascinated the moment I saw the first one?" This is from the first blog post I wrote about the HeatherCats and in which you will find the whole story how it started.

As you know if you follow this blog, I had taken a break after the first shoe was finished. I often have to do that after a big project to regather motivation and to give my hands some rest, so I did my bauble project instead. I also sneaked in the wire fairy mouse which was nice as this year has been very much about beads and a bead embroidered snowman ornament for a gift.
On the 11th I officially announced the start on the first side of the second shoe, though, and I finished it last night around 2 am. Two weeks, that's not too bad. Now, however, my hands definitely need a bit of rest, my left wrist is hurting, and I decided I really have to look for a thimble for my right hand. The last small section of the shoe tested my patience and my fingers big time!

For the motif I had chosen one of my absolute favorites of Heather's cats. The original gouache is on my wall looking down on me. It's the CATerpillar. I have never asked Heather where she got the idea for this one, I'll just imagine New Zealand has brightly colored caterpillars with little cat heads ;-)

One of the difficulties was to fit him onto the shoe without the holes cutting into him. I'm actually quite proud of myself for fitting the head and antennae so neatly between those holes.
I'll let the picture speak for itself and hope you are going to stay around for side #4. The pattern is chosen, but not transferred to the shoe yet, also one important bead color is on backorder, so my hands will get their little break ... if I can't think of anything else to do, that is ...