Which means you get to see what I sent her.
I started out by making these lampwork beads:
Then I added the supporting ingredients:
The clasp is a starfish from Green Girl Studios. The rest of the beads include Kyanite, Labradorite, Amethyst, fresh water pearls, and Czech glass.
All the designs will be revealed on March 3, so clear your calendar for the day and be prepared to see the magic happen at 200 different blogs.
I have had a FANTASTIC week! Over the weekend I officially found out I am a contributor for Lori Anderson’s Bead Soup book.
While this has been in the works for what felt like forEVER, there was always the possibility of last minute cutting of projects so I never assumed I would automatically be included even after submitting beads and a project. And sorry, no sneak peek of the project.
For the 2nd piece of exciting news, I found out just yesterday that the single piece I submitted to Lark for Showcase 500 Beaded Jewelry: Photographs of Beautiful Contemporary Beadwork was juried in! I could not be more excited.
After seeing posts on facebook from some of my beady friends having their work accepted, seeing the cover (gorgeous seed bead weaving), I was pretty sure my piece was not accepted because it’s nothing like this. I went ahead and checked my email just in case and was thrilled to discover an acceptance email in my inbox.
This piece I can show you. It’s titled Carnival and is completely made up of handmade/handformed components. I started with glass rods and sterling silver wire and this is what I came up with:
photo by Ken Rieves http://www.kenrieves.com/
I made tons and tons of single color transparent hollow beads.
Then wired each individual bead into it’s own pendant.
photo by Ken Rieves http://www.kenrieves.com/
I then formed the sterling silver neck wire they hang from. The best part of this necklace is the versatility. You can wear all the pendants on the neck wire and have a party around your neck. Or you can remove as many as you want for a sleeker or more professional look.
If you would like to own this necklace, you can find it in my etsy shop.
My partner Tania of Moobie Grace Designs is AMAZING! She sent me the most gorgeous polymer clay focal:
A matching and equally amazing polymer clay and copper key toggle clasp that will probably need it’s own design to show it off properly:
And sticking with the key theme, copper keys and key hole that could be focals as well:
These really neat vintage cotton pearls:
I had never heard of or seen cotton pearls before, but was instantly drawn to them before I knew what they were. My friend Grace went in search for info and found this in an etsy listing:
“Cotton pearls were manufactured in Japan in the 1940′s. They were formed with compressed cotton and then coated in a lacquer for a hard and durable finish, giving them the appearance of a ‘pearl’. Although coated in a hard lacquer which makes them very durable ,cotton pearls should never be exposed to water.”
And a group shot with the rest of the soup:
Tania has a very good labeled photograph posted on her blog of everything she sent:
A friend of mine posted a link to a tutorial for a cuff that involved knitting yarn onto a chain on facebook. I immediately fell head over heels and pinned it:
That wasn’t good enough. I needed to TRY it. I have a ton of large link sterling silver chain left over from a design phase I went through and decided to try using that chain. However, it was immediately apparent this chain is not the best choice since the links alternate directions. You can see how the cuff is a bit…wavy for lack of a better term. And yes, I did block it.
And even though I knew it was going to be a problem, I proceeded because I wanted it done that night. It didn’t turn out too bad in spite of the obvious issue:
However, there are defintely some thing I would change. The first is using curb chain or perhaps doing a simple chainmaille bracelet with large jumprings being held together with very small jumprings. The second thing I would change is the number of wraps per link because the cuff ended up with these pointy corners that flip up and just look icky (technical term).
I do like the openness of the links on my bracelet better than the other versions of this cuff. It’s also very nice to wear and I used a small bit of sock yarn I had left over from another project. I could still make at least a dozen more bracelets with that leftover yarn. Anyway, I plan on playing with this some more and perhaps adding some beads in there somewhere. What do you think?
I managed to list a few new beads on etsy last night.
Here’s a new Nightmare Insomnia bead:
And this one, which is much prettier in person:
One more…I will never tire of making this style bead:
Thanks for looking! See you all tomorrow with an exciting announcement.
Without going into tons of details here (because it is complicated), my friend Shirley Jump has a brother who needs a heart treatment that is not approved in the United States and is quite expensive. It involves having his blood drawn in Florida, transported and stem cells extracted and multiplied in Israel, then transported to the Dominican Republic and reinserted into the heart. You can visit and like his facebook page for more detailed info.
Anyway, Shirley is a book author and put out a call to her author friends on facebook for book donations to auction off at a benefit for her brother. I haven’t written any books, but I offered to make a piece of jewelry for the auction.
What I initially wanted to do was cut a heart shape out of copper, cut it in half then “sew” it back together with silver. I happened to flip through my copy of Mixed Metal Mania right before I was going to start and saw the copper heart St. Jean demos in the book. I loved that it was fold formed and the fold textured. It reminded me of a scar.
So I did a heart similar to the one in the book, punched holes in it and added the silver wire for “stitches”
I then looked up the ribbon color for heart disease, which is red. I created lampwork beads using a red base, some silvered ivory and sparkly aventurine to break up the red base, then encased in crystal clear. Using a brass paddle and controlled spot heating, I made the beads an irregular nugget shape rather than leaving them round.
Then I created the chain using a couple spiral links and a ton of jump rings and used Liver of Sulfur to patina. After the patina I used steel wool to remove some of the patina and then tumbled for several hours.
And while I should have technically pickled the heart to remove the black, I actually like the black and leaving the heart imperfect. Shirley picked it up a couple days ago and said she loved it. I’m hoping it gets big bucks for Fred at the auction.
I got all the ingredients together to send to my partner and mailed it off yesterday. I hope she loves it. Tell me what you think of it:
I had the most difficult time getting the focal I made to stay in the package. Mostly because I kept taking it out to keep for myself. I finally managed to let it go.
I am THRILLED to have been one of the lucky ones selected by Jo of Daisychain Jewelry to do the Poppy Challenge to celebrate her 500th blog post. I think these headpins are just darling and I can hardly wait to play with them.
Sometimes I come across some cool tips I’d like to share that don’t need an entire blog post. So whenever I get a few gathered together, I will share them in a random tips blog post. I only have 2 for today.
You can download a PDF of this sign in 3 different colors here: http://www.flamingotoes.com/2011/06/some-pinterest-love/
The first involves Pinterest. If you blog, you should be pinning some of your best blog posts. As an example, I always pin any free tutorials I write up. Keep in mind you don’t want to only pin your work. In my opinion it’s like spamming you followers and I’ve actually stopped following people who do that.
Anyway, you can see who has pinned or repinned from your blog by entering the URL: http://pinterest.com/source/ then adding your blog url after the slash. For example, if I want to see my blog, I would use: http://pinterest.com/source/glassaddictions.com
This has some limits if someone pins it from a feedburner or something like that. I found this out because someone pinned a tutorial and it was repinned several times, but didn’t show up in the source link. But at least it gives you a rough idea.
The next tip is twofold. First, if you haven’t seen the Pantone Colors for Spring 2012, here’s what’s supposed to be in this spring:
If you do enameling, Barbara Lewis and her Painting with Fire Team actually came up with a chart of enamel recipes to replicate these spring colors. I can’t imagine how long it took to come up with these recipes, but I will definitely be printing out the chart, taping it by my torch and trying them out.
If you need some of those colors, Barb is having a sale in her Etsy shop through Friday January 27th you get 18% off all enamels (price is already reduced).
Ever wonder how to use that gorgeous silk hand dyed silk ribbon without having to tie it? Then today is your lucky day.
Materials and Tools list:
-Hand Dyed Silk Ribbon
-20 or 21 gauge wire (I used sterling, but you can use whatever you want)
-something round approximately 4mm diameter. I used a steel mandrel.
-pendant
-beads, wire, or charms for embellishment and weight
Instructions:
Begin by hand coiling wire on your mandrel. You can work directly off the coil of wire to save materials. This particular mandrel seems to be the perfect size to allow the ribbon to move easily when tugged, but not to slip on its own.
Coil until you have about 1/2″ long coil. Cut tail about 3/4″ long.
Begin to spiral the end of wire toward the coil.
Continue until the spiral sits on top of the coil.
Repeat on the other side.
If you will not be attaching your pendant or beads with jump rings, you need to add those to the ribbon now before you add the coil.
Feed one end of the ribbon through the coil.
At this point, make sure the ribbon isn’t twisted in a manner you don’t like. The 2nd end of the ribbon needs to be fed into the coil from the OPPOSITE direction. This is a challenge. To aid me, I grab a piece of scrap wire sitting on my table and use it as a trocar (surgical reference. It’s the only thing I could think of to compare.) to guide it through the coil in the opposite direction without pushing out the other end of ribbon you already fed through the coil.
If you managed feeding both ends correctly through the coil, you just completed the most difficult part!
Now it’s time to embellish the ends. You could just do a knot on each end and call it good, but that’s not as much fun. Also, if you want to wear your necklace short and have the ends dangle in the back, it helps to have them slightly weighted. For this demo I slid a bead on each end then knotted the end.
Here’s the finished product (listed on Etsy if you want to see more photos):
For Lime Blueberry Fizz, I used some scrap sterling silver wire to make some fun spiral zig zag charms and tied them into the knot.
For this Nightmare Insomnia in the Garden Necklace (sold), I added small Hill Tribe flower charms to each end.
Have fun playing with this technique and make sure you show me pics of your creations.
