On My Beading Tray April 12th Edition

It's been a while since I did an "On My beading Tray" post! Here's my current project... still beading away on my rick-rack bracelet! But I only have a few rows left, and then I decide how to embellish and fasten it. I think I'm going to thread a ribbon through it, and there may be some 2mm crystals involved in the embellishment stage. We'll see.

I'm glad to be almost done with this piece. I want to be able to wear it already! And also to start making something else. I have so many ideas waiting for me to get around to them, so many beads that need to be used up.

Contemporary Geometric Beadwork Review

 It's finally here! Well, actually, it's been here for over a week and I'm finally blogging about. Let me start by saying that this isn't really an unbiased review, since I've been popping over to Kate's house periodically to bead along with Jean Power, drop off beadwork to be photographed, ooh and aah over the contributions coming in from various beaders, and bellydance at her gem show party. So I've been a little involved. In fact...

 Look! I made that! Squeee! My 2mm crystal adorned olivine green Power Puff bracelet is in the triangles section.

 And what am I working on first? A rick rack bracelet! I need to master the rick rack technique before moving on to some of the other projects in the big, so I decided to make a nice big double-sided one, though mine won't be a bangle because I didn't feel like futzing with sizing. Because emerald is the 2013 color of the year according to Pantone, I decided that everything I make for the next little while will involve some shade of emerald green instead of olive, which has allowed me to explore with different secondary colors. This one has pale mint green, sky blue, and an edging of robin's egg blue which you can't really see in these pics because I was only a few beads into it. Anyway, the robin's egg was part of my pre-order swag so it seemed only fair that I use it in the first project I did from the book.

As you can see, I have been moving right through this zig-zaggy bracelet. Between the instructions and the diagrams it was pretty easy to get it started, even with splitting my time between beading and watching a DVD. The spiral binding means I can lay the book open on the arm of the couch and consult it as needed.

Spiral binding is just one of the things that separates this book from more mainstream bead book offerings. Another is the honest, conversational tone about topics like thread and needle preferences. There's no sanitized generic terms here, the book discusses actual brands so you know what to actually look for or avoid. This chatty tone continues throughout the book. There's a lot of text, making it a bead book you can actually READ!

As you can see, the photos are nice and clear on white backgrounds, so you can really see what an entire project looks like. I mean, I enjoy taking macro shots like the one above, but it's less than ideal for showing the whole of a piece and helping you decide whether you want to make it. Likewise this one below:

Great detail shots are ideal for selling beadwork on-line, but not really for beading books. Give me the full picture so I can really see what I'm making and know what it looks like.

Although beginners could do some of the projects in this book (and work their way up to the rest if they're good at going in order), I feel like it's best-suited to intermediate and advanced beaders with a love of beadweaving and thinking for themselves. There's some basic technique and a good amount of projects, and also photos of other peoples' projects and discussions of what they did differently, without actually stepping it out. It serves as a springboard for designing your own work -- which you can then send pictures of to Kate to see if she wants to include it in Volume 2 (by the way, since I do live just around the park from Kate, I've already seen some of what will be in V. 2 and I have to say it is AWESOME work. Lot of clever beaders out there!).

To learn more and/or order your copy of Volume 1 or pre-order Volume 2, visit the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork blog.

On my beading tray -- Jan 9th Edition

Welcome to the first edition of On my beading tray, a new blog feature where I will show you what I've got in the works!

Today there are three projects on my tray:

1. I'm embroidering away on the cabochon pendant that I'm making with the bead mix from Allegory Gallery. The onyx cab has been bezeled with bronze Delicas and matte crystal AB size 15 Japanese seed beads. Now I'm adding a row of embroidery using the bead mix. I was frustrated to find that I don't have size 11s to match any of the red beads in the mix, which shows me that I should really buy more red 11s at gem show this year.

2. The marbled green leaves were my first attempt at making beaded leaves using this particular technique, and I will be turning them into dangly earrings. If I like how the earrings wear, I'll make them in different colors for the shop.

3. The three silver-y green leaves will be part of a necklace. There's also a partial matte green leaf. It didn't turn out well and the matte green doesn't go at all with the other green (inside the tubes, they were lovely together).

Allegory Gallery Seed Bead Fun

 In order to make things more interesting around here, I'm going to be posting more in-progress pictures of projects. I plan to do a lot of seed beading in 2013, so there should be a lot of fun projects for me to document.

My first project involves the Black Beach Bonfire seed bead mix from Allegory Gallery. I shamelessly stole the above photo from their website because it shows the full range of this beautiful mix, whereas my pic below has it in a tube where it looks a little blah.

Because there are so many colors in the mix I decided to go with a simple black onyx cabochon for the focal piece. I'm not sure yet what else I'll be using, but I think there will be some golden key charms to pull out the gold in the mix, and to make it appropriate for Wild Wild West Con in March. I really need to beef up my steampunk stock, and this will have cross appeal for Goths, too. Plus I just really like keys!

Disclaimer: Some items in this blog post were provided for promotional consideration. I am receiving no other compensation for my blogging.

Wings of the Morrigan, Progress Post 4

It's been a long time since I posted about Wings of the Morrigan, mostly because I've been too busy to really work on it. This is where I'm at currently. Unfortunately, I have to once again shelve it for a bit so I can work on custom orders and new stock for my shop.

So far this necklace includes:
-1 Black Kyanite specimen
-2 Swarovski Elements Pegasus Pendants
-1 Color of Czech size 11 seed beads
-Many Colors of Japanese size 11 seed beads, including permanent galvanized and hybrids.
-1 Color of Japanese size 15 seed beads
-1 Color of size 15 Charlottes
-8 Flat-backed freshwater pearls
-3mm Swarovski crystal bicones in Crystal Silver Night
-2mm Swarovski crystals rounds in Black Diamond.

Disclaimer: FTC regulations require me to mention that the Pegasus pendants in this necklace were provided for promotional consideration by Artbeads.com.

Shop news!

Today I listed Blue Heart, a spiral bracelet in my shop.

And today is the last full day to use coupon code loveandsparkles for 15% off anything at Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs. I'll shut it off when I get up tomorrow, so you can also use it tomorrow morning -- I'm a late sleeper!

Wings of the Morrigan, Progress Post 3

Most of this new beading was done on Saturday. I beaded a lot on Saturday. Then I got sick and I haven't really beaded since. We can also thank whichever one of my pets bumped my beading palette, mixing the beads up and spilling some of them on the couch. I haven't sorted that mess out yet.

But anyway, about the new beading. Because of the rough, organic shape of the central focal, I've been drawn towards rounded shapes and flowing lines in this collar. On Saturday, I took a meandering path up one side of the collar, like a stream of ink flowing around silver stones. The stones in the stream are actually gorgeous flat-backed pearls.
This close-up isn't really good, but it gives a sense of the detail.

So far this necklace includes:
-1 Black Kyanite specimen
-2 Swarovski Elements Pegasus Pendants
-1 Color of Czech size 11 seed beads
-4 Colors of Japanese size 11 seed beads, including permanent galvanized.
-1 Color of Japanese size 15 seed beads
-1 Color of size 15 Charlottes
-4 Flat-backed freshwater pearls

Want to support my beading habit? Please visit my shop Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs.

Disclaimer: FTC regulations require me to mention that the Pegasus pendants in this necklace were provided for promotional consideration by Artbeads.com.

Wings of the Morrigan, Progress Post 2

The problem with doing black bead embroidery on black felt is that it's hard to photograph the progress. But this is where I'm at! And this is where you can start to see that I have decided not to make this necklace symmetrical. Balanced, yes, but not entirely symmetrical. It would have been boring to do the exact same thing on both sides!

I hope to get a lot more work done on this project over the holiday weekend. I don't have a lot of big plans -- small family gathering at my house, no Black Friday shopping, a little work on my business Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs, and lots of dance practice. But that leaves plenty of time for beading.

So far this necklace includes:
-1 Black Kyanite specimen
-2 Swarovski Elements Pegasus Pendants
-1 Color of Czech size 11 seed beads
-4 Colors of Japanese size 11 seed beads, including permanent galvanized.
-1 Color of Japanese size 15 seed beads

Disclaimer: FTC Regulations require me to tell you when I get beads for free. I got the Pegasus pendants from Artbeads.com and I already reviewed them last year, but I am making a disclaimer just in case. They were free. I like them. Happy, FTC?

Wings of the Morrigan, Progress Post 1

This project is long overdue -- I got the Swarovski Pegasus pendants as part of the Artbeads.com Beads for Bloggers program last September, and the central piece of black kyanite at the neat little metaphysical gift shop in Squaw Village during the Tahoe Bead Retreat last October. After purchasing the kyanite, and seeing it with the pegasus wings, I knew it had to be part of my first bead embroidered collar. Then I procrastinated. For over a year.

Well, no more putting it off! I want to wear Wings of the Morrigan to the Swarovski party at the gem show this year, which means that I have less than 3 months to finish. The past two years, I've put off my gem show necklace project to the last minute, finishing it during the show. This time I'm giving myself more time, because it's a huge project and I want to do it right.

So I researched how to make a collar, and on Friday night I drew my outline (which I'll probably adhere to only loosely) and glued down the focals. Yesterday and today were spent outlining the focals with backstitch. The kyanite was really tricky. In the past I've always embroidered around nice round and oval objects -- this piece is a real challenge because not only is it big, but I'm working with weird shapes. Of course, from a design standpoint, that was the easy part. Now I have to decide how to fill in the rest of the space!

This project is going to involve a lot of different types of beads. Each progress post will include a list of beads/objects added so far.
-1 Black Kyanite specimen
-2 Swarovski Elements Pegasus Pendants
-1 Color of Czech size 11 seed beads
-3 Colors of Japanese size 11 seed beads, including permanent galvanized.

Future progress pictures will be nicer, as I'll take them at the same time that I photograph new items, with all my nice photo stuff, but I wanted to start recording this before I got too far into it!

More Progress

Don't they look so much prettier when they're all together, instead of spread out across my work surface? The two smallest rivolis aren't actually attached to the main piece yet, but they should be sometime tomorrow... then it's time to figure out the neck strap. No rush, it only has to be finished, photographed, packaged up and mailed by MONDAY! Oh yes, I've procrastinated quite a bit this year!

It's not quite as grand as I first envisioned, but I'm still pretty happy with this lovely grouping of rivolis.

Super sparkly progress shot

Here's a progress picture of my 2011 LL-BFAC project. I took it yesterday, so there's actually been more progress since then. I've finished the fringe on the big center crystal, which is the only one that will get fringe (I guess the little crystal picots could count as fringe, but I don't think of them as such because they don't have movement like long fringe). The next step is connecting them all!

My additions to the kit are the 7 Swarovski rivolis in Crystal Golden Shadow and Ultra Purple AB, as well as the Honey Opal Silver Lined Delicas that I used to bezel the crystals... Not that you can really see those, under the layer of bronze teardrops!

I love this year's kit, as I find the purple and bronze color scheme to be very elegant. All of the finished products that I've seen on-line so far have looked very rich and sumptuous. I hope they raise tons of money in the auctions next year!

Stuck with it!

This is my current project. I abandoned the failed beaded motifs, and decided to go with my current beading love, embroidery! The problem with my inspiration is that I had to glue the precious faerie pendant down to the felt to embroider around her. There's no going back now! If this idea doesn't work on, she'll be all besmirched with glue and felt, and I may not be able to salvage her -- short of cutting away most of the felt and never letting anyone see her back!

The cabochon was sent to me by my secret birthday buddy last year. I'm pretty sure that it's petrified wood. The warm honey color with traces of rust nicely fits with the color scheme I had picked. It's a very thick cab, so I need to bead fast to get it properly bezeled into place before I can move on to the rest of the embroidery.

I left the faerie's wing-tip-loop below the felt, because a bezeled rivoli will be hanging from the bottom.

Did I mention that I have a week to finish this before gem show starts?

For evenings and weekends

During "business hours" I try to work on jewelry for my shop. But on evenings and weekends, I've been working on this. It's called Twinkle, Twinkle and it's Beki Haley's class project from the Tahoe retreat. Those four pinwheel-looking stars will eventually be hanging from the ends of the spiraling herringbone rope. I did 4" of rope yesterday while waiting for Chris, adding onto the 10" I already had, so there's not too much longer to go.

Both this necklace and the Mushroom Pixie are woven with a new-ish thread called One-G. Made in Japan and distrubuted by the Toho company, it's a bonded Nylon thread. It has everything I love about Nymo (drape, ease of threading) and less of what I hate (fraying and knotting). It also costs 3 times as much, so I probably won't switch over to it entirely (after all, I still have most of a huge spool of black size B Nymo), but it's definitely fun to work with.

A little preview

This is one of my current projects! A little vintage faerie button, in a peyote-stitch bezel. Next up comes the accents! Red and white is not a palette I do very often, but I decided that I really wanted to stick with it for this piece (without drawing the blue, green, yellow or black into it) because of the iconic white-spotted red mushrooms. I hope to finish it early next week.

The Face of Evil!

After reaching the end of the thread I was using to work on the top of Cthulhu's head, I decided I should really put some more work into his face, even though it's difficult and annoying. I actually made a bit of progress before reaching the end of that thread as well, and can probably do the rest of the face in one go, if I'm feeling particularly patient. I need to push onward, as there are only 5 weeks left until the retreat, and a whole lot of Cthulhu left in need of beads.

By the way, if you are a fan of Cthulhu, even when he's not covered in beads, you should probably check out the Indie Squid Kid blog, where they're having Cthulhu week!

I'm making a bra!

Well, technically the bra is already made, and I'm just making it better. I decided that I wanted to make my own coin bra. Chris is out of town for 3 days, I'm going to have a lot of free time to kill, and really, it's just time to do something a little different. So bra embellishment it is!

I set out with Chris on Friday night determined to get the necessary supplies. Our first stop was JoAnn's, for heavy-duty thread (to hold the coins on) and ribbon. I wanted a black and silver jacquard/brocade type ribbon. My coins are silver, most of my dance jewelry has silver as the primary metal, so a silver ribbon seemed like a must. Unfortunately, JoAnn's didn't have a single black and silver ribbon.

So I'm making a mixed metal bra. I have a black and gold ribbon, and a trim that is black and a metallic that is somewhere between silver and gold. Plus silver coins, a gunmetal pendant that I might put at the center to hide the strip of cloth joining the cups, and I might even add some metal sequins if I'm feeling adventurous.

The plain black ribbon is for turning the bra into a halter-strapped bra instead, for a slightly less obviously-lingerie look. This will be good for those times when I'm not wearing a ghawazee coat or Turkish vest to cover the straps. Although, I'm torn on making this alteration -- I couldn't find any detailed instructions on-line for doing it, and it seems like it would be less secure than the straps the bra comes with. It would be incredibly embarrassing if my bra flew off when I was dancing, you know.

Whatever I decide to do, I'll post more pictures when it's done!

(By the way, today's Daily Special is Underworld! Awesome Gothic earrings, only $25)

Bracelet in progress.

Here's an in-progress picture of the bracelet I'm making from a kit. Since taking this picture, I've added one more medallion. I really haven't been beading much lately!

I'm not at all happy with this picture. Way too much light for these super-sparkly beads. In fact, I think most of the photos from that shoot look a little washed-out. This is why I usually prefer to rely on lighting and not use my flash. Ah well.

Once I've finished this bracelet, I want to make a necklace with the same technique, but less bright colors. I just haven't decided what colors yet. I'm leaning towards my old stand-by of earthy greens, but I could also go with browns for a steampunk look, or maybe saturated teal and chartreuse, a color I've been wearing a lot, or maybe purple to go with the purple top I bought last month. I may even wait until after gem show, and buy some beads specifically for it. It uses Japanese 15s, which I was planning on buying a lot of anyway.

It's just over 2 weeks until gem show! I can't wait.

Hey look, a turtle!

I thought I'd post a little in-progress picture of my turtle project. As you can see, I liked those green satin beads from Mr. Skully-Man so much that I used them here, too. I thought it was a nice break from the size 15s I was using, adds a little more visual interest. Then I spent a while doing a brick stitch edge to hold the base and backing together, which gave me a headache and sore fingers. Next, I shall experiment with fringe! I'm still trying to decide exactly what to do for the actual necklace, too.

Last night's gaming went fairly well. Everyone seemed to enjoy playing at our place, and the dogs definitely liked having us home all night, along with extra people to shower them with affection. We did have a small problem as people were arriving. Maggie had managed to step on a nasty goat-head thorn, and didn't want to hold still to let me get it out -- she was more interested in limping around the yard to greet all of our guests. Our friend Casey was quick to help me hold her down while Chris searched for good thorn-removing tools, and as soon as I pulled it out, she was back to her usual happy self. I just need to figure out what plant is throwing those thorns and get it out of my yard! I hate those things.

By the way, I am part of this fun "Buy and Replace" Treasury on Etsy. I bought a pretty Japanese paper and glass pendant, and in return, got my earrings featured to replace it. Check out the items on display! The ring at the bottom is made by one of my Facebook pals, and she's the one who told me about the treasury.

Becoming a necklace -- Locked Away, Part 9

Please pardon the glare, I'd never used my friend's table as a backdrop before and so this picture is a little wonky. However, you can start to see what I'm doing for the neck chain on Locked Away. The row of chain that you see now will have more chain woven through it, which makes for a simple but attractive piece. It's not actually attached to the pendant yet, I just laid it out to give an idea of where it will be.

I went a little overboard weaving the base strip and may have to shorten it by a couple of inches, but that's no big deal.

Now the question on my mind is... button clasp, or beaded toggle? Button clasps are kind of my "thing," but I'd also like to give a beaded toggle a try, and I think it might go well with this design. Of course, I'm thinking of making it adjustable, which would be easier to do with a button-and-loop. I'll have to play around with it once the chain is done.

New Territory -- Locked Away, Part 7

Once again, it feels good to be beading a lot. Last night I finished stitching down the rest of the teal beads, and then today I did all of the amber. I finished that early enough in the afternoon that I was also able to cut it out and glue the backing on. There's also a piece of cardboard to help keep it stiff, and a secret message hidden inside. There's something about the sandwich-y layers of bead embroidery that drives me to hide things inside. And by things, I mean cookie fortunes! I'm weird, I know, but at least it's a harmless weird.

I find this current stage very exciting. All that excess felt has been cut away and the shape has been allowed to fully emerge. And next, I move into new territory -- edging the piece! I've never gotten this far on a large bead embroidery project. I'll probably wait and move onto that tomorrow. It's getting a little late, and I like to be fresh when I try out something new.

And by the way, The Art of Bead Embroidery by Serafini and Kummli has been invaluable to this project. I already had a couple of books on the technique, but this one is just a cut above the rest. While all of my other beading books have been packed away for the impending move, I kept it out to make sure I could progress nicely on my project.

Wings and Gods -- Locked Away, Part 6

As I worked to fill in the background around the wing here, I was struck with an different inspiration for these colors. They remind me of Incan and Mayan jewelry, with the turquoise set in gold. The wing shape that I was stitching put me in mind of Quetzalcoatl.

Anyway, I kind of had to stitch in weird ways to fill in the empty space, but I think it turned out well, I've decided to be OK with tiny bits of black showing, because otherwise I'd drive myself crazy. I realized that what I could have done was started at the middle and worked out to the edge, but if I'd done that, I never would have made these wings.

I probably won't post any in-progress pictures for a bit, as they'll just be a repeat of what I've done on this side. I do hope to bead a little more quickly now that I know that I'm doing and won't be undoing so many stitched or pondering design ideas. Ok, I will be pondering, but only in a thinking-ahead sort of way. I have to consider the necklace and the fringe and the edging, and the possibility of earrings.