Showing posts with label ammonite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ammonite. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Tuesday Tangle: Mosaic Ammonites

"Mosaic Ammonites"

This zentangle was inspired by "Not Atoll," a mosaic by Sonia King. I love her mosaics, and this particular one had elements I thought would translate well to zentangling. (Her website was down at the time of this writing, so here is an alternate link to "Not Atoll").

"Not Atoll", a mosaic by Sonia King

Unfortunately, the pic of my Zentangle doesn't show the effect I achieved by using Sargent Art Metallic Markers for the blue and silver - they gave a wonderful metallic shine to the piece!

Here's a little recap of my weekend full of "Possibilities:"

Naturally, beading won out. No surprise there. I had taken home a pattern from an old, old Beadwork Magazine - I had torn the page out of the magazine way back when it came out, and the page doesn't even have the date on it. Sorry!

So this is how I spent Sunday afternoon: The pattern is called "Beaded Pillow Beads" - and basically calls for stitching up 2 peyote/herringbone triangles, and then stitching them together to make a puffy beaded bead.

This is the same pattern I played with weekend before last, but I had chosen galvanized beads, and the colors were coming off on my fingers (leaving no color on the beads!) - so I had chosen some non-galvanized beads this time.

Here is my bead:
The pattern called for making the triangles have 13 rounds; I stopped at 11 (it has to be an odd number of rounds, in order for the triangles to stitch together properly). I'm glad I stopped at 11, and didn't waste any time making these any bigger, because I'm not real thrilled with the result.

It's cute, and a clever idea, but if you look at the pics, you can pretty quickly see that these "beads" don't have any holes for stringing.

My plan had been to make 5 of them: 1 larger than this one, 2 this size, and 2 smaller, and then string them as the centerpiece of a beadwoven rope. But I don't want to mess with trying to string beads with no holes - I know it can be done, I just don't choose to. Plus, the triangles are really tricky to sew together; if you look at the last pic (click to enlarge), you can see my thread showing at the lower left, where the corner of the bottom triangle (the dark blue beads) meets the middle of the side of the top triangle - I should have pulled harder and reinforced this stitch, but I didn't see it until this macro shot called it to my attention!.

So I have a little, lone, novelty peyote puffy bead.

But wait .... there's more!

I naturally spent several hours Sunday and Monday morning on Pinterest (which was on my list of possibilities). Check!

Sunday afternoon I made the bead. Check!

Monday afternoon (hold on to your hats...) I vacuumed and mopped my whole downstairs. That's a big deal for me. I wanted to do the upstairs, but once I had finished the downstairs, I was over it.

Clean house - partial Check!

Then I spent several hours finishing my Zentangle. Check!

So I was surprisingly productive! I even squeezed in a little reading. Yay!

Now, back to work on my freeform netting, which is almost finished - double yay!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

4 Treasuries in one day!


I arrived home from work today, logged onto Etsy, and discovered that my designs had been featured in 3 separate treasuries - what an honor!

My Starfish Spiral Necklace is featured in this stunning collection by countryrustic. The colors in this treasury are gorgeous, and it is fun to see all the different ways Etsy artists have worked starfish into their designs.

Makes me want to go scuba diving - now!


My friend and fellow bead-weaver, Carol Dean Sharpe, aka SandFibers, curated this absolutely sublime peach-themed treasury, and included my Just Peachy Earrings, which were designed as a tribute to independent lampwork artisans.

CD always does such a fabulous job with her treasuries, and this one reminds me of peach ice-cream, which would be delicious right now - in this 98 degree weather!

Thanks for including my earrings in this collection, CD!


Sharon, of manamoonstudios, curated this beautiful treasury, and included my wire-wrapped Vintage Crystal Ring. The colors she chose for this fabulous collection are lovely, as always!



Thanks for thinking of me, again, Sharon!




Another beadweaving friend, totallytwisted, included my wire-wrapped Ammonite Pendant in this collection she curated on 7/1/08. Who knew this many fabulous ammonites could be found on Etsy?
What a great theme for a treasury! Thanks, Jean!

This treasury has not expired yet (as of this post), so that makes 4 treasuries at once for me - a new record.

Thank you ladies so much for making my day!

I hope my readers will take a few minutes to visit the shops of these fabulous artists!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!