2 New Resin Bottlecap Pendants

I have been working on a new beadwoven bracelet for a few weeks now, and I like it - I like the colors, I like the pattern, but now that I have done one repetition of the pattern (there are about 12 repetitions in the finished bracelet), I am mind-numbingly bored with it, and just want it to be DONE WITH IT. Not the first time a tedious peyote pattern has affected me this way (I even have one in my Zombie box that is 6 years old: it is so tediously repetitive, with a really hard-to-read pattern graph, that I doubt I will ever finish it. It will probably remain 3/4 inch long forever!) Do y'all ever get this way? So attracted by a bright, shiny, new project, you have to dive right in, only to find it bores you to tears?

Anyway, I work on the new bracelet for an hour or so, and need a break. Yesterday I just couldn't even stand to work on it, so I started something new.

I had found these cute bottlecap bezels at Michael's a couple of years ago, and decided I needed to buy them and squirrel them away, because someday I'd figure out what to do with them.

I stumbled across them again when I taught the Cold Connections Workshop last month, and figured that if I'm never going to use them myself, maybe I should work them into a class, so I started thinking on some different ideas for a new class.

We already offer Ice Resin classes, so I wanted to go in a different direction - maybe with embossing powder? Who knows; give it a whirl, anyway.

So, fully and completely bored with my peyote bracelet, I put the seed beads away, and started trying to figure out what to try in my bottlecap bezels. I punched holes in each one for hanging, since they didn't come pre-punched.

resin bottlecap pendants

The bezels came in 2 colors: white (with a funky zebra design on the back) and antique copper.

The zebra one could obviously be reversible, so I decided to use black and white objects in the bezel. I played around with lots of different thing, but only 3 objects really fit in the cup at a time, and while I liked the cute brads (lower right, with the zebra pattern) - and had them in an assortment of 6 different black and white designs (another scrapbooking item I had impulsively purchased at Michael's and hoarded away) - no matter how I arranged them in the cup, they looked like a face staring back at me: 2 eyes, and an open mouth. Ugh.

I found some pink and white zebra striped scrapbook paper (you know the drill: another squirreled-away impulse buy from Michael's), and liked how it echoed the zebra print on the back of the cap, so I cut out a circle of it and placed it in the cup. I looked around for other black and white stuff; what I really wanted was a feather, but alas, I didn't have any feathers - at least, not in black - squirreled away. I finally chose a black button with a sparkly rhinestone center, and a half-drilled freshwater pearl. I carefully placed these on the paper in the cup, and filled the cup with clear embossing powder.

The antique copper cup was much easier - I had these pretty paper scrapbooking flowers, and fit them into the cup, and then added some ground-up malachite that I had made for a previous foray into resin bezels. (The pendant I made during that class, with the ground malachite, sold right away, and didn't even make it to the blog post!). The idea was for the flowers to look like a flowering tree (they were supposed to be pink dogwoods), and the malachite is the grass underneath them. When I was ready to pour the embossing powder into the cup, I noticed that I had carefully put everything into the bezel without noting the hole placement, and they were in there almost perfectly upside down. So I rearranged them, and poured in the powder.

Using my embossing gun, I heated them from the back, and they both liquefied fairly quickly:

waterlily pendant

The paper flower bezel generated a LOT of air bubbles - not sure why. I really like the end result - it looks like waterlilies on a pond to me, very Monet.

pink zebra resin pendant

My pink zebra cup didn't bubble, and once it cooled, I noticed that the scrapbooking paper had a glitter effect on it, which has given a very sparkly look to the pendant. Love it!

pink zebra pendant, reverse side

This is the back of the pink zebra pendant: The center has discolored a tiny bit from the intense heat of the embossing gun.

I think this will make a pretty fun class, and something students can easily do on their own at home, with minimal supply outlay!

And now that I have wasted 2 hours taking pics and creating this blog post, I am going to try to slog my way through another inch or so on that peyote bracelet!

Cold Connections Class

I taught a Cold Connections Class yesterday - this was the class project:

copper pendant

This is the pendant I made back in October as a demo for yesterday's class. We had 3 wonderful students in the class yesterday, and their pendants are all beautiful, and unique, as they all used different stamps for etching, different hammers for texturing, and different patterns and metals for the woven portion.

2 of my students: that's Karin, of Backstory Beads, on the left, and Stephanie on the right.

Materials table: tools, acid, Liver of Sulfur

I put all the tools and chemicals on one table, separate from the students' workstations - the classroom suddenly gets very small when we fill it with people (!), so it's good to be able to keep this stuff out of the way when you're working.

Students' work table

Bailey and his purple monkey snooze through the class

Everyone had a great time, and learned a lot!

And note to my friend Deborah up in Canada: it was 75 degrees and sunny here yesterday - just gorgeous! Sorry you missed it!

Copper Pendant

This is the copper pendant I made yesterday:

I want to be able to offer a "Mini-Metal" workshop, as an alternative to the 3-day workshop I normally teach. I wanted to include as many skills as I could in one project - and this one has quite a few! I needed to know all materials I'd have to pull for the pendant, and how long it would take a beginner to make - and I think this will be a great class!

This class will be offered Sunday, December 2 (10 AM) at YaYa Beads, Augusta, GA - check it out! We'd love to have you in the class!

Wednesday Worktable

Today isn't a normal workday, because today I'm teaching a Kumihimo class.

The students will be using 8/0 seed beads, but I will be making a kumihimo rope with these gorgeous black Picasso lentils:

I have been branching out with my kumihimo lately, using a variety of different sizes and shapes of beads, and this will be my first one with lentils. Can't wait to see how it turns out!

Wednesday Worktable

I still have the ubiquitous zombie iolite fringe necklace on my workbench this morning.

It suffered a little setback last week, when I passed the halfway point and started fringing up the other side - I had worried about this, because I knew that the 2 halves needed to match, and I thought I was measuring and compensating for the decrease, but after I powered through 4 inches of fringing on Friday, it was time to change thread. I held the necklace up, and the entire 4 inches I had just finished was too long, and it was obvious. So I spent Saturday taking out the 4 inches, and I started this section again yesterday.

So I will be working on the fringe today, but...

I'll have to take a little break to work on this:

This is a repair - the customer brought in a very old garnet necklace (these are 4mm garnet rounds). It had been woven, in some variation of netting, on silk thread. The silk was filthy, and had stretched out over 2 inches - so repair was definitely called for.
I didn't want to attempt to re-weave it, so we decided to turn it into a multistrand twisted torsade, which she  is very excited about.

It took several days to string all these garnets - it was slow and tedious, so I'd work for a few hours and then go on to something else. I started to dread stringing the garnets! My friend Sonya actually finished the last of it for me - yay!

I delayed finishing the necklace because I am teaching a class in multistrand finishing this afternoon, and it is SO much easier to teach a stringing class when you actually have a project to demo on! So I saved this project for class this afternoon - I'll have 5 strands to demonstrate with, so I hope that suffices!

It's always something

Down at the bottom of this post, I showed a picture of a project I was hoping to fiddle with the next day.

But I had forgotten that I was teaching a class the next day - so that day was shot.

Then, I got bead shipments, and had to sort beads, price beads, etc - this is ongoing and endless, it seems.

And then I took stock of the inventory on Friday, and realized I needed to place orders for findings and such - so the whole week was basically gone. And I think I spent a whole 30 minutes last week on my little fun project. I really, truly hope I can play with it tomorrow.


I actually took a class on Saturday - and made this:

It is technically finished (according to the teacher's instructions) - but I am not happy with it. The wire-coiling frame looks too dainty for this giant piece of impression jasper, and it actually isn't even stable - it will flop around the stone, because nothing anchors it but the wire going through the center of the bead. So basically, it is a flimsy, spinning, bead frame - which was not the plan.

So I am going to smack it with a little Sweet Freedom Magic, hopefully tomorrow or Wednesday, and make it better!

If nothing else comes up, you understand....

Something tells me both of these projects are going to end up in that HUGE box of half-finished projects in the back room - the ones I was all excited about starting, and then I got interrupted, and then I got distracted by a new project, and now my poor babies are abandoned.

It's not just me, right - does this happen to anyone else?

Is there a 12-step program for this?

Oh - Bailey is running a little poll over on his blog - if you get a chance, take a look - he fancies himself a big investigative journalist now. In fact, he posted some pictures on Flickr that may get his daily treat privileges revoked!

Thanks!

Yesterday's Wire-Wrap Class

So, we had a great, great wire-wrapping class at my bead shop yesterday.

The class was supposed to be an earring class, and this was the

first pair we made:

This is my pair - it's a mixture of sterling silver and gold fill - the circle is silver, the curved dangles are gold, and the beaded dangle has a mixture of gold and silver beads.

This is the pair made by another student - she also mixed sterling and gold-fill, but she twisted the sterling for her circle, which looks great!

This is a really versatile pattern, and a lot of fun, and pretty easy, so I look forward to having some free time (HA!) and making a few more pairs.

This is a bracelet I made in one of our wire-wrapping classes last fall. I love this bracelet - it is also a mixture of sterling and gold-fill. I love it's simplicity, and it is so comfortable, and I wear it almost everyday.

So, we (I) decided that the second pair of earrings we would feature in yesterday's class would be a pair to match this bracelet.

This is how they looked early on in the process.

And this is my finished pair.

Perfect match for my bracelet!

And because I have such a fabulous wire-wrapping teacher (thanks, Daniel!) I had convinced and cajoled him into also teaching the matching ring yesterday, so this is my finished ring:

None of my projects from yesterday have been tumbled yet, so they will look even better once I tumble them tomorrow.

I don't know why I continue to be amazed that all these things look so great and match so well - that's the whole point of the classes, after all... but I'm still so thrilled and surprised when my new projects turn out.

And I am grateful that I have found such a talented and patient wire-wrapping teacher for the shop - everyone always learns a lot, and has a great time, and is so thrilled with their projects!

It is actually supposed to, maybe, snow here tonight.

60% chance.

That's about a 61% more chance than usual - the last time it snowed here was about 10 years ago. We actually got 3 inches that time, and it stayed around for a few hours. It just warms up so quickly here in the afternoon, that any snow we ever get, never lasts.

I think it has snowed here twice since I moved here in 1989.

Of course, dogs love the snow, and I wish/hope that there will be some snow when I get up in the morning, so I can go out with Bailey and enjoy it. Instead of getting up at my usual

8:45, I am going to set the alarm for earlier, just in case. Because I have to leave the house by 9:20 to get to the shop in time to open by 10AM.

Why can't it almost maybe snow on my day off - which is today???

I moved away from Indiana because I hated the snow and the cold (and a bunch of other Hoosier-related stuff), but I wouldn't mind one snow day every year or so!

And I have blogged 3 days in a row now, which I think is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, though I could be wrong.

Just a Quickie Tonight

Made you look! Ha!

Here are some shots from the wire-wrapping class we had at my bead shop today.

That's my seat at the far end of the table, with my ab-fab Lindstrom tools, and my coffee cup.

This pic is taken from my end, and that's the teacher down there at the other end - he is just the best! He is so patient with all of us, and so skilled and knowledgeable.

And FYI - he cut his finger last weekend while pruning the shrubbery at his house - NOT while wire-wrapping!

So, we made 3 projects today - 2 different pairs of earrings, and then a ring.

And those will be the subject of my next post.