Peacock Peyote

I stitched this 3-drop peacock feather peyote bracelet in July, 2013. I love peacocks!

Peacock feather 3-drop peyote bracelet

The pattern is from Bead and Button - it was an online extra, and the download included a zebra-striped bracelet, too (which I also stitched). I chose flashy silver and blue vitrail 3mm firepolish beads for the picot edging, which couldn't have been more perfect!

I was almost finished, and actually stitching the button onto the bracelet, when a friend came to visit at the bead shop. She fell in love with the bracelet, and insisted on having it, and I couldn't refuse! She let me take a couple of quick pics before she wore it home.

If you share my peacock love, I have a (growing) peacock-themed board on Pinterest - take a look!

A Little Christmas Present for Myself

A couple of months ago, as part of the Patterns for Tigger fundraiser on Facebook, Carol Dean Sharpe created a set of peyote pattern graphs from a picture I'd taken of Tigger. (Thanks again, CD!)

I loved the patterns, and all the colorways, so I set out to stitch them - since I couldn't pick a favorite, naturally, I stitched them all!

As I looked at them, I decided that rather than wear them as bracelets, I wanted to display them, so I took them to a local framer. They frame lots of needlepoint, but had never done beadwork, and once I told him each was made from glass beads, he was a bit leery about mounting them to the mat, so he sent me home with the matting. I tacked each one to the mat, then took them back to the frame shop to complete the process:

Framed set of 4 peyote stitch Tiggers

And now they are hanging on the wall in my shop, and they are gorgeous!

Here are the "bracelets" before I matted them:

colorful bracelets stitched from CD's peyote graphs

This is the picture of Tigger that the pattern was created from:

Tigger, 8/17/14

All 4 peyote graphs are available as in a bundled tutorial in my Etsy shop.

Thanks again to Carol Dean for her contribution to this, and for creating the Patterns for Tigger group on Facebook. Thanks to all who participated, Tigger is alive and thriving. He still has diarrhea and periodic abdominal pain and distress, and most likely will be diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. He's on a special diet, and is growing - he's a very active, happy 6 month old puppy, and just graduated from puppy obedience:

Tigger's graduation portrait, 12/14/14

He starts an intermediate obedience class this Sunday. He loves his school!

Tigger and I send warm Holiday greetings to all our friends, and special thanks to the wonderful Patterns for Tigger group!

All Peyoted Out

Yesterday I finally finished the peyote bracelet that has been bedeviling me for most of the summer:

Royal Ruffles

This is from Hannah Rosner's Royal Ruffles pattern, which I purchased on impulse back in May, because I wanted something new to do.

This peyote pattern is very similar to several I have purchased from Carol Dean Sharpe, like her Corrugated Ribbon Cuffs, in that all are even count peyote patterns that rely on changing bead shapes and sizes to give texture to the design.

The distinction with the Royal Ruffles is that the 11/0 triangles are positional - they must point one way for the "peaks" and another way for the "valleys" of the ruffles - and while I understood this thoroughly and completely, accomplishing it was another matter entirely - which resulted in this on my first attempt:

I don't know if you can really tell, but my ruffles aren't lining up correctly, because I didn't have the hang of how to make the triangles behave. I kept stitching, and decided (because this was days and days worth of stitching by this point) that I would just live with it. But then my OCD kicked in, and after I reached the point in the pic above, I ripped the whole thing apart, and declared that no 11/0 triangle would get the better of me!

Detail:

As soon as I started over, I instantly saw the answer to the triangle issue, and it was (almost) smooth sailing from then on. Except for 2 things: about halfway through, one of the triangles apparently cut the Fireline (even though I was working with it doubled, to prevent this), and the whole bracelet ripped apart along the row where the Fireline tore, just about 1.5 inches from the beginning, so I had to take apart the whole piece that had torn off, and basically start over again.

And then, just when I was almost done, I spotted a wayward triangle atop a peaking ruffle, about 3 ruffles back, and I just couldn't stand it, so I ripped out 3 ruffles (during which I had restarted my Fireline twice, so that was extra fun), and started forward progress. Again.

The ruffles make this bracelet want to rotate:

You may have to click on the pic to see, but when you pull on both ends of the bracelet, the ruffles open up while the bracelet rotates - as I was stitching (and stitching, and stitching!) this bracelet, I kept draping it on my wrist while expanded, and mulling over the idea of wearing it like this (like in the pic above). It sure would have saved me a lot of stitching! (including that last do-over, because I never would have had to kept stitching to the point of that mis-directed triangle!) - But, try as I might, and I tried many, many times, it just wasn't comfortable to wear this way, so I kept stitching. Can you see that the bracelet is already 11 inches long, and I haven't added the clasp loop?


Several times over the course of making this bracelet I just had to take a break from it - after several days, the repetition just got boring. Some customers had asked me to teach them odd-count peyote so they could make a bracelet in the August 2013 issue of Bead and Button, and since I had never done odd-count peyote, I decided to teach myself by making the same bracelet - and here it is:

Another view:

This was a fun bracelet to make, but again, lots and lots of stitching. Note to self: do NOT take a break from peyote to stitch more peyote.

Back to the ruffles:

Here is the almost finished bracelet, ruffles contracted, next to the ruler:

I love this button I found to match the bracelet:

And here are my 2 summer peyote projects side by side:

Whew!


I thought I would be bead-woven out, and could get back to some metalsmithing, but I still have the fever, and have already started something new!

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!

Circular Peyote Earrings

These earrings are each made from 2 circular peyote triangles which were then stitched together. One triangle is large, and the other is slightly smaller - they are joined at the widest part of the earring as you see them hanging in the pic above.

Bronze Peyote with Stripe

Peyote remains one of my favorite stitches. This is a bracelet I created using bronze 8/0s, with a thin, off-center stripe of matte cobalt blue 8/0s:

I've been getting very lucky lately with finding matching buttons in my super-secret button stash, and I scored again for this bracelet:

I added a small picot border around the bracelet with 15/0s.

I love using buttons for bracelet closures, because there's such a fun choice of buttons right now, and they are so easy and quick to attach (as opposed to stitching a clasp from scrap!) Easy to operate, too!

What kind of closures do you prefer on your bracelets?

Spinner Ring Redux

Remember the crystal spinner ring I created for the Bead Soup Blog Party?

I guess the heat affected the ring after all, because a few days after the BSBP reveal, the crystal just split in half and fell off the ring.

This is what I was left with:

I briefly considered leaving it like this.

Then I started pondering what I could put on the pin. Which isn't detachable, by the way.

Can't get another bead on there.
Jumprings - yeah, they'll go on there. Big deal.
Coiled wire - I could do it, but it didn't really float my boat.

Here's what I finally did:

I was going to do a multicolored peyote bead or similar beaded bead, stitching it directly to the pin, and using several different bead sizes to get a nice, bumpy texture. I tried several different seed bead combos, but they weren't really making me happy.

I finally decided to make a burgundy peyote tube base with 11/0s, and then a narrower, larger diameter copper peyote tube around the burgundy one, using 8/0s. Both the peyote tubes spin, independently of each other. I like it!

Start your Engines

Reflecting my love for black and white, I designed this black and white checkerboard bracelet in peyote - and then realized how much it reminds me of the old days, living in Indianapolis, in May - looks like the checkered flag, right?

I love the way the silver button closure goes with the bracelet perfectly!

Ladies (and gentlemen), Start your engines!

Geometric Peyote Bracelet

As I said yesterday, I allowed myself to start a new project Tuesday afternoon only because I finished this peyote cuff earlier that day - I try to not start a new project until I finish another design because I already have almost 100 partially completed projects, and I have to put some limits on myself, or I'll never finish anything! Why is it that starting new projects is so much more exciting than finishing them?

So anyway, this is the original pattern I designed for this cuff:

There was an earlier iteration in 3 shades of blue-green, which just didn't have enough contrast between them to do the pattern justice, despite photographic evidence to the contrary:

This particular attempt already shows some deviation from the original pattern, because I decided I wanted to make the bracelet a little wider than the pattern.

So basically, I have been working on this bracelet for 3 weeks. Sort of. What you don't know is that I actually created the pattern 2 years ago, printed it off, and stuck it in my project cabinet, finally hauling it out 2 months ago and choosing beads, and then actually starting it 3 weeks ago, as part of my quest to finish uncompleted projects! But it sounds really bad to say it took me over 2 years to finish a peyote bracelet. I guess I can live with it taking me 3 weeks. (And in my defense, I did actually get a lot of other stuff done during that 3 weeks...)

Here is the geometric cuff:

I deviated again from the pattern, making it a little wider than the blue-green version, and I decided to hide the button closure underneath the bracelet, so that the full geometric design shows.

So, there she is. I like it!

The oil light started coming on intermittently in my car last night, my car that hit 150,000 miles last weekend. So I'm off to (hopefully) get the car successfully serviced before my shop opens this morning - and maybe even squeeze in a visit to Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon ..... fingers crossed!

Worktable Wednesday

Here's what's on the workbench today:

This is the peyote bracelet I started last week. It is slowly progressing; I have lots of stuff pop up that interrupts me, and I decided not to take it home last weekend, so I have only spent a couple of days on it since last week. It is now just over halfway stitched. Patterns like this involve lots of counting, so I tend to take frequent breaks - it tires my poor old eyes out!
I hope to finish the stitching of the bracelet itself by tomorrow, and then start stitching the clasp. Fingers crossed! Unless the shop gets real busy - which would be terrific, too!

This is a custom necklace I need to work on today; a customer who frequently requests custom work brought in 2 of her necklaces, and a brass pendant from a 3rd necklace, and asked me to combine all these pieces and beads into one necklace. There's some coral, some onyx, and some brass beads to play with here.

This is custom job #2 I need to complete today - these freshwater pearl crosses belong to a new customer, who'd like them made into 2 bracelets (one white, one brown).

So, once I complete the 2 custom orders, I can move on to my peyote bracelet! Gonna eat some breakfast, and some yummy Diet Coke, first though!

And BTW, I put earwires in all those earrings yesterday, so I'll post pics of the completed pairs tomorrow.

Before and After

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Yes, you read that right.

The top pic is a peyote bracelet I designed and began stitching this week. I loved the 3 colors of green and blue Delicas I put together, but as I stitched, I noticed there just wasn't enough contrast between the 3 colors to allow the geometric pattern to be visible .... except with very specific lighting conditions.

I noticed this after stitching less than an inch, but (and I have made this mistake before!) I thought that maybe if I kept stitching, the more beads I added, and the longer it got, the more visible the colors would be.

WRONG. And I have witnesses, too - under normal room lighting, it just looked like a greenish blue strip of peyote.

So once I had 4 inches stitched, I let it sit for 2 days, and kept looking at it in different lighting, and even with my Optivisor, but the colors still didn't show. So I finally tore it apart and separated the Delicas (fun!) and re-tubed them and put them away.

But I decided to photograph the bracelet before I ripped it up, and imagine my surprise when the photographs showed the colors perfectly. Don't believe those lying photos!!

I have selected 3 new colors for the pattern, and will get started on this one again soon.

A true beadweaver can't be afraid to rip stuff up, right?

The Latest

Still staying really busy with the shop!

Yay!

We had a holiday party last week at the shop, and may I just say: Champagne punch. We had some kick-ass champagne punch. And a lot of fun! It was absolutely pouring rain, complete with thunder and lightning, but we had a great turnout, and a terrific time.

I have very little time to be creative, but I spent about an hour yesterday photographing the things I have made since I bought the shop - and over the next few days, I hope to have these listed either on Etsy or Artfire.

In the meantime, here's a preview:

I love this beaded byzantine bracelet! I used 16 gauge copper rings, and gorgeous cobalt blue lampwork beads.

I made this Sunday as a sample for the chainmaille class I'm scheduled to teach in January.

Love that chainmaille!

Classic black and white herringbone bracelet, made with white 4mm glass cubes, and black size 6 seed beads, and then embellished with black size 11s. Then I found this great vintage black and white button to use as a closure.

This is one of the more popular beadweaving classes I teach.

I came upon this gorgeous freeform carnelian cab which had been set in a sterling silver bezel.

I paired it with carnelian rounds, big chunks of citrine, and big silver Bali spacers.

These are the matching earrings.

I taught myself the Dutch spiral, and this is my first attempt - I used size 8 Delicas, in a rich mauve color, and dark pink galvanized elevens.

It started out to be a simple rope, but then I saw how well it went with this gorgeous painted jasper focal, and here's the result.

I stiched a large bail with the same beads as the rope, and added some embellishing fringe.

This is a fun bracelet - simple peyote stitch using 3 different sizes of seed beads, which gives a ruffle effect.

This bracelet is royal purple, but purple never photographs well for me - maybe I'll learn the secret one day.

This wire wrapped bracelet was a nightmare!

I love the colorful ruby in zoisite focal bead. I love the bracelet, and it fits like a dream, and is very comfortable.

But it is truly one-of-a-kind for me, because it was the hardest thing I have ever done, and I will never make another one!

These aren't the only things I have made over the last 5 months, because several things have actually already sold, but I still hate that my creative time is so reduced by the amount of time and energy it takes to run a small business!

So, Happy Holidays to everyone, in case I can't get back here anytime soon!

I'm baaaaaack...!

My poor neglected blog! I can't believe how long it has been and how much has happened since I was here last!

The big big news: I am no longer a struggling, independent jewelry designer... now I am a struggling small business owner! I bought a bead shop on August 1, and it is really keeping me hopping! But talk about the fox guarding the henhouse!

This pic shows my gorgeous, spacious solid oak work table. This is where I am most of the time - doing repairs, creating, or teaching small beading and beadweaving classes.

In the far back you can make out the wall of Czech glass, and behind those curtains is my classroom area, for the larger structured classes like Art Clay Silver, Glass Fusing, Wire-Wrapping, Chainmaille, etc. I can only teach class on Sundays, since I am also my sole employee, and someone has to work the front, but I also have contracted a group of fabulous instructors who come in to teach. I love my teachers!

This shot is taken from the back, and shows how some of the finished pieces are displayed, as well as some gemstones for sale, and against the left wall, all the seed beads, which are arranged by size and color.

This pic is also from the back, and shows the gemstone display, the vintage jewelry (in the glass displays), my findings, and the register area.

I have a great buyer who stalks estate sales for me, and brings in fabulous vintage finds!

This is a slightly different view of the seed bead wall - So many beads, so little time!

I love my bright and cheery shop!

Sales in my Etsy shop have been a little slow, but I have sold SO many of my finished pieces in my bead shop - so if you had your eye on something in my Etsy shop, and it has disappeared, it probably sold from my actual shop!

The opportunity to purchase the shop happened rather suddenly, and I had to fly into high gear, getting business licenses, bank accounts, tax IDs and vendor accounts, and all that other business-related red tape, and I have just now been able to settle down a bit.

I was so busy the first 6 weeks that I didn't even get to THINK about doing anything creative. That really bothered me, because in my head, I saw myself being able to sit there all day long and just bead Bead BEAD, like a kid in a candy shop! Ha!

When one of my vendors brought in these great turquoise donuts, I squirreled them away for myself, and finally had a few spare hours to play with them, and I came up with this macrame design.

October was fast approaching, and I have always been heavily involved with breast cancer awareness, so I wanted to create something special. My goal was to have it finished by October 1, and I didn't even get to start it until October 8, but I am SO pleased with the finished bracelet!

I had a small setback last week - I had to have cervical disc surgery. I had fallen back in April and ruptured a disc in my neck, and tried all the usual non-surgical methods to relieve the pain, but I finally had to bite the bullet and have the surgery last Thursday. The doctor told me I would be out of work 4-6 weeks, but that would have crippled my new business, so I went back this morning. I'm really sore right now from holding my head up all day long, but it'll be OK. The huge bruised, swollen gash on my neck did frighten a few customers, though!

Happy October!