5/18/12

Old is New Again

As evidenced by my dwindling blog posts, beading has taken a back seat for awhile. After 25 years and much use, our kitchen was begging for a makeover. Dan and I would both put cooking near the top of our favorites list, but we'd been making do with a cooktop that only had two functioning burners for years! We began renovating every square inch of our kitchen in February, and once it was finished, we knew we wanted to dive back in and update the rest of the rooms on the first floor. With our two youngest graduated and moved to new cities and jobs, creating spaces that reflected our new lifestyle was an important factor, but fitting in a place to bead in each space was essential, too!


Replacing our multi-tiered island with a single-level design opened up the room. Lots of windows provide great natural light, which I can supplement with new can lights when needed. My new favorite place to bead!

Office: Organization is a key factor in any room, but for me, an uncluttered office is essential  to getting any work done!  A coat closet off the main hallway serves as a file room, and my tendency to file or recycle whatever hits my desk daily helps keep me humming along and my office neat and tidy.

Living Room: This room had been essentially empty for the last year, since giving our living room furniture to our son for his first apartment. That made repainting easy, and relocating our old family room furniture here turned this space into a cozy and relaxing retreat. In fact, it’s now one of our favorite rooms in the house!

The family room got a much-needed facelift with new seating, a retiled fireplace and neutral-colored walls. That green square on the floor? It marks the place for a black leather ottoman/coffee table/ bead table, due next month. This space is not quite finished, but the remaining tile, paint and carpeting are on Dan’s to-do-list.  It's back to beading for me!
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5/5/12

It's the One Crayon Color Hop!


When Sally Russick of the Studio Sublime announced her One Crayon Color Challenge, I immediately joined in, choosing to create a design using the tints, tones and shades of black.

I challenged myself to finally use this pendant and string of rutilated quartz. When I purchased them nearly two years ago, I knew the pendant would make a dramatic focal piece, but despite much experimenting, hadn’t found just the right design for it.

Once I framed the pendant in a beaded bezel, I was stumped by the top center-drilled hole. After trying and discarding several beaded embellishments, I settled on a simple daisy spacer topped by a marcasite square. The marcasite added a little extra shine without full-bore bling, a perfect complement to the creamy sheen of the stone.


Keeping to the tints and shades of black, a beaded bead (from a tutorial by Sharri Moroshok) and quartz drop add some color contrast to the focal without grabbing the spotlight. To complete the design, I hung the focal from a black and gray herringbone neckstrap, finished with a bit of etched chain to echo the silver in the daisy spacer.
Much thanks to Sally for dreaming up this challenge and hosting our hop, and for inspiring me to conquer my design dilemma. If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to click the links below and take in the designs of all the One Crayon Color participants.






Hosted by:



Red







Orange













Yellow







Blue







Alicia Marinache http://allprettythings.ca








Green








Jenny Davies Reazor http://www.jdaviesreazor.com






Purple



Jennifer Judd Velasquez http://jenjuddrocks.blogspot.com










Brown






Black







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4/26/12

April BJP-Remembering TKaM

My Bead Journal Project for April celebrates the 50th 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.

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4/14/12

Old Design, New Stitch

I came up with a crisscross necklace design earlier in the year for an Art Bead Challenge, using herringbone stitch. While I really liked the resulting piece, it didn't turn out quite as I envisioned it.

I decided to try again using similarly shaped stones from my stash and cubic right angle weave. Worked in CRAW, which results in a rope with supple drape but more structure than herringbone, this necklace is exactly what I had in mind!
Wish I knew what these stones are - the string is  marked simply "freeform flat nuggets," but they are slightly iridescent and change from gray to green to silver to blue with the shifting light of day. And the stripes in the Czech glass accent beads really are that magnificent blue!

The length is 16”, and it’s perfect as a choker, but for those occasions when I’d like it a bit longer, I finished it with one of my favorite adjustable closures, a design I picked up from Melinda Barta’s excellent Custom Clasps video.
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3/30/12

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!
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3/13/12

Crazy for CRAW

I am totally hooked on cubic right angle weave! It’s a mesmerizing stitch that results in beadwork that has great structure and at the same time is amazingly soft and fluid.

When I was asked by an area bead store if I had an interest in teaching a beadweaving course,  I immediately thought of CRAW because it can be a difficult stitch to learn from written instructions.  Here are a few pieces I stitched up as class samples.

These lampwork beads with their bold expression of color were meant for a rope woven in size 8 seed beads and finished with a Vintaj clasp and chain. The rope is embellished with size 11's, with 2.5mm crystals surrounding the lampwork beads.

 This lighter, softer version in size 11’s features a dichroic glass focal framed with vintage Czech glass and drop beads. I  finished this necklace with a toggle of tubular RAW, which is a first cousin of CRAW.

This fun and fabulous finishing touch is from Rachel Nelson-Smith’s Bead Riffs.


The lampwork beads and dichroic glass were a recent find on a trip to South Carolina to meet up with my sisters-in-law for a yoga retreat. I stopped in to visit Lesley at YaYa Beads in Augusta. I love Lesley’s blog, Sweet Freedom Designs, where her posts always inspire, entertain or educate (oftentimes all three in a single post!) Her store is home to an amazing collection of artfully purveyed beads, findings and pendants. Oh, and her fabulous finished pieces, which I could have ogled for hours! And a store dog! I spent such a fun hour at YaYa, and brought home a small bag chock full of inspiration. Now, if I can just finish up this kitchen remodel so I can dig into the rest of those beads!
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2/29/12

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!
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