May Bead Journal Project

With winter a no-show in Atlanta this year, my May Bead Journal Project celebrates the earliest, longest-running, and  most colorful Spring in memory.

"Spring comes: the flowers learn their colored shapes."
- Maria Konopnicka

In April, a reader asked if my Bead Journal project  would be used as a pendant, and I thought, why not make that my goal for this month? I oriented May's project horizontally, pairing it with some enameled rounds, a bold crystal and some leafy chain. It's ready to bring a bright touch of Spring floral to the simplest of outfits.

April BJP-Remembering TKaM

My Bead Journal Project for April celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the making of the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird.  The book, by Harper Lee, is one of a handful of novels I read at least once every decade.  And I never tire of watching the movie. Who hasn’t fought back tears when, in the famous courtroom scene, Reverend Sykes says to Scout, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin'.”  Referring, of course, to Atticus Finch/Gregory Peck, just about the greatest fictional father of all time.

I’ve included some of my favorite images from the story in this piece – a mockingbird wing, picket fence, a tire swing mid-flight. In keeping with the black-and-white film, I’ve kept my colors to muted blacks, blues and grays, warming the palette up just a bit with the purple trail that wanders through the piece just like Harper Lee's words have woven their way through my life.

March BJP - Mad Men Edition

A kitchen remodel begun in February has expanded to a complete first-floor renovation, leaving precious little time for anything else. I did safeguard two things on my calendar - watching the Season 5 premiere of Mad Men and making my March Bead Journal deadline. Happily, I was able to combine the two!

This month's project takes its colors from a wonderful image of Mad Men's Betty Draper in her "sad clown" party dress, which she wore for days after a particularly dreadful row with husband, Don. (The image is from illustrator, Dyna Moe. You can see her set of Mad Men illustrations here.) I turned the colors into a fun, just-a-hint-of-psychedelia, mid-sixties swatch. I could see Betty wearing this pattern as a fitted blouse with some city shorts and a mod clutch, martini in hand, this season.

And finally, last Sunday, the Season 5 premiere! Was it worth the year-and-a-half wait to ogle the enthralling costumes of the men and women of Mad Men? Absolutely!

Harlequin Romance-February BJP

The idea for this month’s Bead Journal Project came to me on a visit to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to catch the Modern Art: Picasso to Warhol exhibition. I turned a corner in an exhibit space and was stopped short by a Picasso painting, rather dreary at first glance, until my eye caught a tall figure on the right edge wearing diamond patterned multi-colored tights, and my February idea was born: a focal heart (this one by Susan Barnes of Fire Goddess Beads) against a harlequin background.

We’re in the middle of a kitchen remodel and have been evicted from our house for a couple of days while our floors are being refinished. So my piece was finished today in a hotel room, photographed on the window sill with the air conditioner going full blast to minimize the fumes from the drying E-6000. The things we beaders will do to keep from missing a deadline!

Ups, Downs, and Beautiful Spaces

A new year. The chance to start fresh. Start over. Keep up. A burst of hope, and then we find ourselves in the thick of things, living a life and here come those ups and downs!

For my first Bead Journal project (first ever!), I chose a small section of Georgia O’Keefe’s Evening Star IV because I saw it as a colorful representation of the peaks and valleys that await all of us in the 366 days of 2012. Quiet stretches of calm purpose, surges of renewed energy, periods when new ideas are born and puzzling times when our creative process seems fallow.

Georgia O'Keefe's Evening Star IV

Georgia O’Keefe had not painted in several years when her sister persuaded her to visit an old friend and teacher, Alon Bement. Georgia considered him a very poor painter, but a brilliant teacher, and was much influenced with an idea he gave her: “The idea of filling a space in a beautiful way - where you have the windows and door in a house, how you address a letter and put on the stamp, what shoes you choose and how you comb your hair.” Her examples are very much of her generation, but still a valuable idea for us today. It sparked Georgia to say things with colors and shapes that she couldn’t say in any other way.

My first pendant, based on her painting, will remain on my bead table - a reminder to stay in balance with the rhythms of life – and to create beauty in the spaces.

2012 Bead Journal Project

December has not been a month for beading. Could not find a way to fit it in with all the holiday comings and goings. But I have been thinking about beads, and, with the final days of 2011 approaching, making plans for the new year.

It’s exciting to be participating in the Bead Journal Project for the first time. I’ve decided my journal pages will be 1 ½” x 2” pendants. Learning the properties of color was my focus in 2011. At the start of this year, if pressed, I might have been able to name the primary and secondary colors, but my knowledge of color relationships ended there. Now, since poring over the works of Margie Deeb, Beverly Ash Gilbert and others, I’ve added value and contrast, warm and cool, intensity and hue to my vocabulary.

I’ll be using my 2012 Bead Journal projects to explore the first of those, value, and try to better understand how bead finishes and textures contribute to the success of a piece. I cut out a viewfinder in my pendant size, and took a tour through our art books to frame out a composition.

For my first project I chose the bottom right corner of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Evening Star No. IV, starting the year off with the primary colors and a bit of green. After this long holiday break, it's time to head upstairs and reacquaint myself with my bead room!