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!

Wednesday Worktable

I finally finished de-fringing my Zombie Iolite Fringe Necklace late yesterday. Tedious, but not as tedious as I had thought it would be.

Here is the unfringed, sterling silver-crocheted iolite, freshwater pearl, and Czech firepolish necklace:

It's pretty, but a little too bare-bones for me, the queen of embellishing. I just feel like it needs a little something extra.

Here is a detail shot - showing the beads, and the silver crochet:

Would you believe I had completely forgotten that there were any freshwater pearl in this necklace? After all, I made it 5 years ago, but the fringing had really obscured the pearls in the crochet spine of this necklace, and since I hadn't chosen to include any pearls in the fringe, they were just ... invisible.

And here is what I am left with for today's worktable:

Thousands and thousands of beads to sort before I can start fringing again. That pile doesn't look all that big, but I raked them all together so they would fit in one shot - I estimate there are about 120 grams of seed beads there, based on the number of empty seed-bead containers I have waiting on the workbench! There are a few iolite briolettes, some 4mm cubes, and then comes the real fun: silver-lined crystal seed beads in both 8/0, 11/0 AND 15/0; tanzanite seed beads in both 8/0 and 11/0; pearl white seed beads in both 11/0 and 15/0; and THREE colors of 15/0 Charlottes: purple iris, pearl white, and pearl white AB. I am struggling with telling the last 2 apart - I suppose, technically, it doesn't matter (especially if I just re-fringe them all onto the necklace), but there are 3 flaws with that logic:

1) I have an obsessive need to know which color bead I am stitching with at all times!!
2) If I have any left over when I finish, I have a super-obsessive need for them to go back into the correct container!
3) I have rethought my original design, and am going to switch up the design a little - I am going to taper the fringe, so it's longer in the front than on the sides and back; I'm going to add some pearls; and I want to avoid obscuring the pretty, basic crochet structure of the necklace, so the fringe is not going to be quite so dense. That's the plan, anyway.

So, once the seed beads are sorted, I will start fringing, again! And that's my Wednesday - hope you have a great day!

Waves on the Beach - a Handwoven Spiral

Sometimes you luck into the most stunning focal beads - like this one. Undulating waves of blues, whites, and browns, with bubbles, and sparkles in the browns - it instantly reminded me of turquoise waves lapping on a sun-kissed sandy beach!

I decided to create a beadwoven spiral rope to pull out the stunning colors in this glass bead. I used several colors and sizes of seed beads, some pinch beads, and some bronze freshwater pearls, and this is the result:

A peyote bail with a pinch bead ruffle acts as a slider for the lampwork focal.

This stunning, summery, beachy necklace is now available in my Etsy shop!

Mysterious color-changing beads

Yesterday, I told you about a new, square stitch pattern I had worked with. I actually made 2 bracelets with this pattern; one purple, and one olive green, but the big difference between the two was the size of the Delica I used to stitch the design.

But the wider bracelet, the one made from size 8 Delicas (DBLs) didn't start out to be green, at all.

These are the DBLs I chose for this particular bracelet:

There are actually 2 different colors mixed together here - the solid black arrows near the bottom of the picture are pointing to the DBLs that I call "raku". The vendor calls this color "matte metallic blue iris" - and that hits 3 of my personal seed bead buttons: I am a sucker for metallics, for mattes, and for ANY color with "iris" in its name! So I couldn't wait to work with these beads! Look at the pretty blues, mauves, roses, greens, and bronze in these beads! Delicious! And, some of my favorite colors to work with, of course... 
The open arrow in the pic above points to the second tube of beads I added to this mix - a matte blue DBL that matches the blue in the "raku" DBLs perfectly. Right?

Until I started stitching, that is:

I mixed the beads together in one big pile, and started pulling them randomly as I stitched. By about the 3rd row, I noticed that all the "raku" DBLS were turning green or brown, but I kept stitching, thinking that I just needed to work up more of them, and their gorgeous raku-ness would blossom. After I had about an inch stitched, I convinced myself that something was wrong with the beads, like maybe they were mislabeled - I don't know what I was thinking. But I ripped out my stitching, sorted the two colors (Fun!) and put the raku ones back in their tube, and grabbed another tube of the same color. And started again.

Same result.

This really had me stumped. You can see the solid blue matte DBLs easily - amid all those olive green and coppery brown beads! Where did all the blue and the burgundy go? What was I doing wrong?

So I took the bracelet apart again, sorted the beads, again, and started over - for the last time.

I finished the bracelet, and had to change the size 11 seed bead I had chosen for the picot (my original choice was a vivid metallic burgundy seed bead that really highlighted the burgundies and roses in the pile of raku seed beads), and I chose an olive green 11 for the edging.

And I probably should have pulled out all those matte blue DBLs, and just gone with the greeny coppery brown ones ("matte metallic BLUE iris", remember) - but I didn't. This color combo is fine, but I just think I would like all the brown-green beads by themselves, better. Maybe next time!

Wednesday Worktable

I feel like I have been working on this Cellini Spiral project forever - I really want to be done, now.

Sometimes I feel like my pieces are the beading equivalent of tsunamis; they start of small and simple, and then, through no fault of my own, they build up steam and intensity and turn into these weeks-long statement pieces. I always love the results, but I still can't quite figure out why this keeps happening!

This Celllini project started as a simple Cellini spiral tube necklace. But it was too stiff to bend, so I had to turn it into something else. This was the beginning of the tsunami.

Then I decided to add a beautiful lampwork focal bead to the mix, and the wave started to build. How to connect the Cellini tubes to the focal? How to cap the ends of the Cellini tubes? How to finish the back of the necklace?

And, as with all my "project" pieces, I solve one problem, and believe I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and am nearly done! That's how I felt last week, when I started to add the skinny spirals to the back of the necklace. I'm almost done, right?

Or not. Because as I was stitching the first skinny spiral, I started thinking about the clasp. What to use as a clasp? No ordinary clasp would do! Plus, I didn't really have anything available that was a good match, metal-wise.

So, I guess I have to stitch a clasp. Feel that tsunami building, again? I knew I could stitch a toggle and bar, using the same seed beads as in the spirals, and obviously it would match. But I developed a bad case of "been there, done that" last Friday, so I decided I needed to do something new. And the wave is getting bigger! Where is the light at the end of my tunnel, now? See how this is through absolutely no fault of my own? The project is "speaking to me." What? You can't hear it? Am I the only one hearing voices coming from the beads....?!?

I decided to see if I could bead around a plain old ordinary button - I started stitching (freeform circular peyote) on Friday, stitched all day Saturday, and only managed to get the top of the button done. Then I took a break Sunday and Monday, and worked on something different. I started in on the button again yesterday, and haven't quite gotten the sides done. (In my defense, I had some repairs and some ordering to do yesterday, too).

So today I hope to finish the button - I am decreasing hard, trying to cinch up the beads and get a good tight cover on this button!

This is the top of the button - it is a little off center, and very loose because I haven't managed to stitch over the sides fully, yet.

Here is the side view:

Still a couple of rows away from getting over the side and around to the back of the button.

And then there is the next issue - do I make a simple seed bead loop to go over this button, or something else? Simple just doesn't seem to be in my vocabulary anymore! LOL!

There's a right way, and a wrong way...

To make bead soup.

I used to keep my leftover beads in small plastic tubs, obsessively sorted by color. Since I am more of a bead weaver than a bead stringer, most of my leftover beads are seed beads.

I liked these tubs because they were a nice size, no taking up too much space on my workbench, and they stacked, each one nesting in the one below it. They were very stable when stacked, which was a good thing, since they didn't have lids. And lids would have made the whole system less attractive and functional for me, anyway, since I would have had to open the lids everytime I need to access one of the soups, and the stack of tubs would have been over 15 inches tall! Ridiculous!

But then came the day when we needed to move the stacked tubs of seed beads to the back room, for some reason. Who can remember these details now? All I know is that my assistant was carrying them, and the next thing I heard was a really loud "Shit!!!!" from the back room, and I walked back there to find this:

That black shoe belongs to the bead-dropper.

We spent the rest of the day resorting all the beads, because I have a touch of OCD, and I just couldn't have the colors mingling .... ewwww.  And then we weighed out the colors and packaged them in sealed ziploc bags and sold them as bead soup!

And I do not let the leftover beads build up like this anymore.

My Beady Dilemma

I recently rediscovered Cellini spiral, a stitch I hadn't done in about 5 years. I started this particular Cellini over a month ago, and (of course) worked on it a little, then put it aside as other projects beckoned.

The last time I worked with Cellini spiral, I used S-lon thread (size D) and smaller beads, and I was a brand new beader (the Cellini spiral was the first time I ever touched beads - even before I learned stringing!).

I returned to my new Cellini spiral last week. I used Fireline this time, and also threw some 4mm Czech firepolish beads into the mix, and my stitching tension tends to be very, very tight, and this combination of variables meshed to make this particular Cellini spiral almost completely inflexible. At first, I thought if I just made it a little longer, it would start to flex. And once it got to be 3 inches longer, it did actually bend a little, with extreme pressure applied to both ends. It will certainly never be a bracelet! And by the way, this idea that continuing to make something longer will eventually make it all better, never works. NEVER! And yet, I'm sure I'll try it again, and again....

So then I had a 3 inch long beautiful tube, but what to do with it?

I decided to use it as a component of a strung necklace, so I stitched up a matching 3-inch long Cellini tube to go on the other side of this theoretical necklace, but now I have to figure out what to do with the ends of the tube, which are (as I see them) huge gaping holes:

None of the many beads or bead caps I have at my disposal will completely cover the ends of this tube.

I absolutely love the colors and patterns I created here, and have several ideas of ways to cap it. I could stitch bead caps, or I could fabricate some bead caps from bronze or copper. But I have the germ of another idea planted in my creative subconscious, and I'm going to try to flesh that out, first.

This project will probably end up on the workbench for tomorrow, because today is set aside for doing the monthly sales tax report and catching up on all the do-over jewelry (repairs) I have let accumulate in my work basket since last Friday. I think folks are spring-cleaning, and bringing in all their broken jewelry for a little sprucing up!

Long Kazuri Necklace

I bought some black and white Kazuri beads (hand-painted ceramic beads from Kenya) at a bead show about 4 years ago and squirreled them away in my stash . . . and hoarded them, and hoarded them, and finally decided what to do with them!

The Kazuri beads have nice-sized holes, so I created a multistrand necklace with thousands of size 11 black seed beads, and a few 3 mm cube-shaped onyx beads. I hand-strung all the seed beads, 'cause that's the way I roll. This probably would have been the perfect project for one of those bead spinner thingies, but I don't have one, and it really didn't take too terribly long to get all these beads strung.

I used 5 different Kazuri beads - 4 have black and white patterns, and one is solid black. I like the symmetrical asymmetry (that's a thing, right?) The necklace is a delicious 44 inches long, and I've worn it long, but it can also be doubled up, like on the mannequin above, so it's very versatile, and goes with a lot of stuff.

I don't often string this many seed beads - I am a beadweaver at heart, sewing each little seed bead individually into intricate patterns, so I'll probably never invest in a Bead Spinner. Anyone out there have experience with one?

Kumihimo

Kumihimo is my latest venture. I took a class 2 weeks ago, and instead of choosing to do the 18-inch necklace that the other students chose to do, I had my mind set on a lariat. A 60-inch lariat, to be exact. Naturally.

If I had fully understood the implications of this, I might not have been such a rebel.

Kumihimo is a lot of fun, and though it was a little difficult to get the hang of at first, once I figured it out, it turned out to be relatively easy. And it is completely portable once it is set up on the disc.

This is the kumihimo disc - it is made of foam, and is maybe 8 inches in diameter.

The most tedious part of Kumihimo is the set up. At least 8 different strands of seed beads have to be pre-strung and then wound onto something that will hold them - plastic bobbins work well. The number of beads needed on each strand to complete a necklace varies with the length of necklace desired and with the size of the seed bead, and when using size 8 seed beads, it takes about 10 beads per inch.


So for an 18-inch necklace, I would have needed to string about 180 - 200 seed beads on each of the 8 braiding cords. But for my 60 inch lariat? Yeah - I could not even start learning the technique until I had strung almost 600 seed beads on 8 different cords. That's a lot of seed beads!

The other students finished stringing their cords, and there I sat, still trying to fit the tiny beads on the thick braiding cord. Ultimately, the other students pitched in and helped me get set up, and we all started braiding.

And here is my finished lariat, with the fringe I added at the ends.

And back to my point about portability: once all your beads are loaded on the bobbins, the whole shebang fits in a Ziploc bag, disc and all. And the notches on the disc keep your strands in place, no matter what. Trust me - they do not come out of the notches, even when thrown in a tote bag with a bunch of books, or tossed around in a car, etc. And once you are all set up, there are no needles, no tools - so this is an ideal project for air travel, or car travel: you hold it in one hand, move the strands with the other; it is lightweight - I love it. It doesn't hurt my hands at all!

Of course, you can also do Kumihimo without beads, or with a combination of fibers and beads - so I love its versatility.

I've purchased some pretty textured fibers to try, and I am anxiously waiting for my square Kumihimo disc to arrive. The square disc supposedly makes a flat braid, and I already have my colors picked out for my first project on the square disc. A 60-inch beaded lariat, of course. Because apparently, I never learn.