Simple and Cool

Tags

Anne Potter, Bead Table Wednesday, Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Jewelry Stringing Magazine, Swoondimples, Travelogue Magazine

The hot temperatures in my area, my own aesthetic and the inspiration of a new (to me) jewelry magazine has resulted in today’s necklace. Right now it is 91 and only getting hotter. I am lucky to be able to be inside with air conditioning, but I like having jewelry that I could wear outside even in the heat and still stay cool.

In addition, I’ve recently learned about an electronic jewelry magazine by Anne Potter called Travelogue. She was a frequent contributor to the late, lamented Jewelry Stringing magazine. Travelogue offers great photos of travel-related inspiration and then projects based on that inspiration. The projects are very doable but can be customized to your own skill level. Not based on any specific piece but just the feeling of simplicity, I took some beads I really liked and made this effortless piece.

The owl focal is by swoondimples. His name is Stewart. I got it in 2016 when the Pantone color of the year was a duo – rose quartz and serenity blue. The pink Czech glass I got in a destash. I just really like pink. It was my favorite color as a little girl, and although sometimes I like to think that has changed, it really hasn’t. I believe that is why I was more intrigued with the Pantone color that year than some other people. I had something else in mind for those little pink beads, but this project asserted itself. I was actually going to use some other spacers in the front for an accent, including some more rustic metal to give the piece a little bit of a harder look. But I decided on these simple eye beads I’ve had since the beginning of my beading days. Since I’ve kept them this long, they deserved to be used.

This sweety tweety little necklace will be fun to wear with my sundresses this summer.

One other thing about this post: the picture. It’s very sunny here, and usually I would have to wait until dusk or perhaps early tomorrow morning to get a picture. This picture was made possible in real time right after I made this necklace by Heather Powers of Humblebeads. I love her beads and other artwork as well as the free projects she shares on her Bead Table Wednesday videos. A couple of weeks ago, she made one about taking better photos with your cell phone. Oh my goodness, she gave a few easy tips that really helped my photo game. It was fun to put them into action after watching the video this morning. Thanks, Heather!

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Vintage

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Heather Powers, Humblebeads

I’ve been really enjoying vintage beads lately.  Also, I’m starting to be able to get back into making jewelry! So for this post, both of those things have come together in a necklace made of vintage and vintage style components. If you don’t know, I got a tendonitis in my thumb and wasn’t able to make jewelry for a couple of months. I am doing much better now, and started a necklace last weekend that I finished this weekend. I’m trying hard not to over-do it. 

The focal is a faux tin piece by Heather Powers of Humblebeads. She has a technique where she puts an image on steel and it doesn’t scratch or come off. The pieces have such a nice feel and really look like vintage tin.

In the actual vintage category, my mother had given me this vintage glass bead necklace. The worn patina of color with the white bead showing underneath is so lovely. I probably would have re-strung that necklace and worn as is with no additions, but it was too short for me. I think the beads work well with this piece, and I paired them with some vintage Preciosa rose shaped beads. My idea was to hang little beads from chain at the bottom. Once I decided on fringe chain, though, more beads seemed like too much. I didn’t want it to get too busy around the pretty focal. 

I’m really pleased with how it turned out. (Do I end every post that way?) Here’s a shot of MooKitty helping me with the photos for this post. Thanks for visiting, and you can look forward to more finished jewelry in my posts again.

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The Never-Ending Search for Storage

Tags

Bead Table Wednesday, Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Nile Corp.

Recently I watched a video tour of Heather Powers’ studio where she creates her fabulous Humblebeads and shares wonderful free projects on her Bead Table Wednesday videos. I love seeing inside people’s studios. If you do too, watch the video.  Anyway, she was casually showing her enviable trove of art beads in these great sectioned wooden trays she had stacked on her table. I thought she had found a slew of them in an old farmhouse barn at an estate auction or something, when she said they were from Nile Corp! Oh. My. Goodness.

I immediately went and ordered a bunch. They are on sale and some sizes/colors are out of stock. I hope that doesn’t mean they are discontinuing them! But at least I got eight. I originally intended them for beads, but an ongoing storage need I have is also for jewelry.

I originally started out with this old wooden rake for some jewelry storage in my studio. Once it became full (it’s only not totally full now because when I wear a necklace, it gets put away elsewhere.) 

Then I ordered some super strong magnets and repurposed this calendar system for jewelry storage. Then I ordered more magnets and employed the side of my filing cabinet.

And more magnets that moved some of my jewelry into other parts of the house.

But I still have a mess on just about every surface, and a lot of it is jewelry.

This poor little cabinet always looks like this except for a day or two after I clean it. Mostly jewelry and jewelry-related items. Some random mail I’m pretending I’ll attend to “soon” and that blue thing a duster fits on that shows I at least intended to dust at one point. The wooden box with the building has jewelry in it, but it’s always covered with other jewelry, so I never wear whatever is in it. (It was covered with jewelry right before this picture, but I cleaned off the jewelry to try the experiment you will see in the next photo.

Here is one of the Nile Corp. trays with jewelry in it! If I put jewelry that fits fully into the cubbies in these, I can stack about three on each side of that little cabinet and keep it much cleaner.  

Chunkier jewelry can still hang. I’ll try this and see if it helps me keep a tidier area and a better way to find the items I’m looking for.

Whenever I do a storage post, I like to ask – what are your storage solutions? Share in the comments.  Pictures welcome!

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Tile Trials

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Andrew Thornton, Artybecca, Cynthia Thornton, Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Joan Miller, Staci Louise Originals, Staci Smith, Trinket Foundry

I scored a variety of beautiful tile left over from remodeling jobs (not mine, alas) and was excited to try them as photo backgrounds.  Here’s how it went.

Here are two pieces on a whole sheet of small, square tile. I wasn’t sure if I’d like this because of the spaces. But looking at it, I think it could work sometimes.  I can’t seem to get a nice picture of this particular necklace. I also tried on another day on other backgrounds. The tin bead (with the horrible glare on it!) is from Trinket Foundry.

Here is the same tile closer with a beautiful necklace by Andrew Thornton and Cynthia Thornton. I think the background colors are perfect for this piece, and I love the texture of the tile in this close up, but I’m not wild about how the webbing shows. Also, I know I’d get all perfectionist on whether the lines look straight.

Here are some photos on decorative bathroom tiles.  I actually have three designs, but I’ve only used two here.  i was in a hurry because the light was fading. The lampwork bead below is also from Trinket Foundry.

I think the bracelet below looks better on the patterned tile than the necklace above.  The design shows through the glass pendant on the necklace too much. There are so many variables in a picture that affect the outcome, but I can see that these tiles will be good for many things.  (They look fab in the bathroom too!)

I really like how this elephant by Staci Smith looks on the patterned tile too. I think small, bold pieces might fare best on the patterned tile.

Here is a necklace with a bird by Heather Powers of Humblebeads on three different smaller tiles put together. I actually really like this picture which surprises me. I would have thought the transitions between each piece of tile would be off-putting. I don’t find that. I like that there is a dark, medium and light, and I could position my piece to take advantage of that.  It’s often a problem to have a dark pendant and light beads because one inevitably suffers in a solid background photo.

Here are two pieces on a small square of kitchen counter.  It’s so much prettier in the kitchen, but I think both pieces look relatively nice, although again the bold elephant pendant does better than the necklace. The problem with this pieces is that, unlike the other pieces, it is shiny. That will cause glare, as you can see in the picture with the necklace.

The banana pendant is by Artybecca. The banana dangles are by Joan Miller. The Zola Elements chain is from Lima Beads. The clasp is Nunn Design.

The tile I think fared the worst in photos was this plain white/grey. It’s kind of flat and dark, and again when I need it bigger and put multiple pieces together, I won’t like the line.

I’m not sure this tile is great with these two pieces, but I do believe it will be great with many, many things.  It is gorgeous stone tile, and I have one very big piece that will be good for larger/longer jewelry when the colors are right.  I also have another partial piece with different colors/textures.

I’m very happy to have all these tiles, and will enjoy trying them in the future to have more options for jewelry photos.  MooKitty is also very excited about all the packaging I carried the tile home in.

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Inspired by Reading Book Club: Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

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Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Idea-Ology, Speidel, Tim Holtz

The idea behind Allegory Gallery‘s Inspired by Reading Book Club is to read that month’s book and make something inspired by it.  This month, the book is Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. I read this series years ago in college; it was fun to revisit it.  I liked it the second time around too.  The characters are real and generally sympathetic.  This book is told from the perspectives of various characters; my piece is based on the character Mary Ann Singleton. She’s a young woman from Ohio who goes to San Francisco on vacation and decides to stay.  She is looking for something else in life than the traditional path she was destined for in Cleveland.

I thought about the type of jewelry that was popular in the late 1970s when this book took place. There was a lot of minimalist gold and silver.  I remember the big names in stores I went to being Napier, Monet, and Trifari.  I remember wanting a Speidel ID bracelet with the passion of a 12 year old.  So those were the things rolling around in my head when I made this bracelet inspired by those things but made for today.

I used a Tim Holtz Idea-Ology word band as a bracelet bar.  The quote, “live the life you’ve imagined” is what Mary Ann was trying to do, as well as advice Mrs. Madrigal, landlady and sort of den mother to her tenants, might have imparted. I made the band part of the bracelet from gorgeous wobble beads by Heather Powers of Humblebeads.  I included two charms.  The heart is a nod to the Speidel ID bracelet of my youth that this was inspired by, and the vintage mouse charm is a reference to Mary Ann’s friend (and fellow tenant) Michael “Mouse” Tolliver.

Thanks to William and Andrew of Allegory Gallery for these great book club challenges!  This was a really fun challenge that took me back to the jewelry of my childhood. Have a look at what other participants were inspired to make on the Inspired by Reading Book Club Facebook page.

No Procrastination Necklace Remake

Tags

Earth & Stars by Joshua V. Davis, fromNothing, Heather Powers, Humblebeads

I do not like remaking things.  If I make something and end up not liking it, the poor piece will languish perhaps forever.  Certainly for months or even years. So yesterday I made a necklace.  I liked parts of it – the pendant, the color combination.  But I did not like the overall effect.  Somehow the round put me off in the middle with the chips.  It seemed like an unbalanced texture or perhaps size mismatch.  Here that is.

I really love this bird by Heather Powers of Humblebeads.  She calls it Mod Geo in Terra Cotta. (Not a good picture, but I’m taking it apart anyway.)  I love turquoise with it which might not be a natural color choice.  But the composition of this necklace is just off.  I slept on it overnight, and I’m still not satisfied.  I decided to change it up right away because I don’t want it to languish.  Finished, it will be a great necklace for spring and summer.

I had a bag of mixed beads sitting on my bead table.  I had made a necklace I really liked with them that I gave away.  Here was my chance to have another version of that necklace. That necklace had been heavy on pink, so most of the pink beads were gone.  I added white, turquoise and some handmade natural clay beads from the shop fromNothing Earth & Stars Joshua V. Davis.

This design still didn’t quite satisfy me, although I liked it. Perhaps if I had made it longer, I would have left it. But the white chips were still nagging at me. I had really liked them with the bird. I went to redesign it again. I thought about discarding the turquoise colored dangle which would open up more design possibilities, but I really loved that pop of color.  I decided to use just the mother of pearl chip knotted on turquoise blue waxed linen to tie in that color. Of course I didn’t cut the linen long enough (will I never learn?!) so I added some chain at the back.  Now I have choice of lengths.

None of these pictures is great, but I have no patience to wait for better light. Makeover mission accomplished in less than 24 hours.  That’s the way to do it!

 

New(ish) Beads Parade

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Allegory Gallery, Andrew Thornton, Beady Girl Beads, Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Jennifer Tough, Joan Miller Porcelain, Project: Next Step

I haven’t had a new beads post recently, so I thought I’d show some new and newish beads.  I just went to take pictures, and anything that hadn’t been put away yet was fair game.  My studio is a mess again.  It’s going to get some attention during my upcoming time off.  So, here we go.

These gorgeous beads from Andrew Thornton actually are pretty new.  He saw some ancient beads he liked and decided to make some similar.  He is such an amazing artist. His beads are even better than the original. I am in love with them!

You can see more of Andrew’s work (as well as that of other artists) at Allegory Gallery and their etsy store. Andrew and his partner William are having a fundraiser for a special project for the gallery with some really fun rewards still available until December 15th.  Check that out here: Project: Next Step.

Next up are these from Beady Girl Beads.  I love the bright style, and fell for this matte heart.  The other beads were a gift – nice!

I’m a complete Joan Miller junkie. I could not resist this cat pendant from Joan Miller Porcelain. I also got these great floral bead caps, and this bicone bead. The bicone is truly one of the most beautiful beads I’ve ever seen.  This picture doesn’t really capture the metallic glowy goodness of it.

Here is a bonbon bead and leafy pendant by Heather Powers of Humblebeads. She has so many gorgeous things. I recently saw some blue toned bonbons on her Facebook page. Swoon! Her husband also makes some beautiful things like these connectors. 

Last but not least is this crackle heart by Jennifer Tough. I really like her work, and I had made a necklace with another of her hearts that turned out so great I wanted more!

Thanks for visiting.  Come again!

Art Bead Scene – November 2016

Tags

Allegory Gallery, Andrew Thornton, Art Bead Scene, Claire Maunsell, Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Lee Oscar Lawrie, Miss Fickle Media

The Art Bead Scene blog offers a great monthly challenge.  The editors share a piece of art for inspiration, and participants make something based on it using at least one art bead. The inspiration this month is a metalwork owl above the door to a room at the Library of Congress.  The artist is Lee Oscar Lawrie.

I really enjoy participating in the Art Bead Scene challenges, but I haven’t done so lately.  I’m not sure I would have this time.  Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with ideas and find it difficult to focus, but lucky for me I had help this month in the form of Heather Powers’ Bead Table Wednesday video this week in her Humblebeads VIP Party Facebook page.  It was a great post that talked about a few things including the ABS challenge and the uplifting power of art. I came away inspired as I did from last week’s video. Heather is the creator of Art Bead Scene as well as the artist behind Humblebeads.

I thought, yeah, I have some owls in my stash.  I started one necklace, but I wasn’t feeling it, so I decided to look for some other owl pendants in my stash by Andrew Thornton of Allegory Gallery and Claire Maunsell of StillPointWorks. I came across this wonderful bronze owl coin pendant by Andrew and knew I’d found my art bead for this challenge. Metal and majestic, like the inspiration.

I wanted to add something right above the pendant. After searching around my stash, I decided on this little mood bead. It changes colors, and I like that aspect of it. The necklace will look slightly different at different times.  While I was designing, the bead was mostly green.  Whenever I touched it, blue was the hue.  For some reason when I took the picture, it took on a golden tone like the yellow quartz.  I like that the bronze and the quartz have a bit of a monochromatic look like the inspiration piece.

I love the simple cut, and especially when the stones are drilled so that some are side to side and some are top to bottom.  I think that adds a nice design element.  I was originally going to use one of the marquis cut Montana agate beads above the pendant, but I couldn’t get both strands of the (1-ply!) linen to go through.  However, because I needed a little more length, I got to use two of the beads in the back.  I finished it off with chestnut opal patina hook clasp from Miss Fickle Media.

Please visit the Art Bead Scene Pinterest page to see more creations from the challenge inspiration.

Humblebeads Stacked Fall Necklace

Tags

Allegory Gallery, Andrew Thornton, Gaea, Heather Powers, Helen Backhouse, Helen's Bat Cave, Humblebeads, Karen Totten, Majoyoal, Mari Carmen Rodriguez Martinez, Starry Road Studio, Supply Your Soul, Vintaj

Heather Powers of Humblebeads makes great polymer clay beads. She also makes beautiful jewelry, and recently shared some tips and design ideas on a Work Table Wednesday video on her Humblebeads VIP Party Facebook page. She has made a colorful innovation to her classic bird beads.  In the video, she shows that she has also used the technique to make owls and offers some cute ideas to use each in pretty necklaces. I was inspired to use the bird I have.

I had so many ideas; this shows just a few of the beads I considered using. Heather showed a variety of leaves and birds together.  I thought about using this beautiful black round by Karen Totten of Starry Road Studio because I love the black with the grey bird.  But I couldn’t resist using a leaf. I don’t actually have a lot of leaves in my stash, but this one by Helen Backhouse of Helen’s Bat Cave went so well with the gold in the bird.  I loved the idea of using a Vintaj acorn bead cap. I also loved this mottled brown ceramic bead by Mari Carmen Rodriguez Martinez of Majoyoal. But I decided I wanted a pop of the pink/purple in the bird.  Some choices included dark and light purple ceramic beads by Gaea and a plastic bead. In the end, I used a polymer clay nugget by Andrew Thornton of Allegory Gallery. I used some beautiful patina ball chain in the Steampunk color from Supply Your Soul.

I couldn’t resist also using Heather’s idea to put a flower bead in a bead cap to make a little “crown” on top of the bird. This project was a lot of fun. It’s simple and easily customized to the beads you have available.

Building a Pendant

Tags

Heather Powers, Humblebeads, Saki Silver

I buy pendants for their look, not their size.  But many pendants tend to be small.  I like larger beads. I do like delicate necklaces, but since I’m designing for myself, I generally like a larger piece.  I’m kinda tall, kinda big.  I take up space.  I want my jewelry to take up space as well.  So, I’m starting to realize (yeah, slow on the uptake) what I can do to make pendants the size I need is build them out of several components.

I got this beautiful dogwood pendant by Heather Powers of Humblebeads that I’ve admired for a while.  I had been planning something else for it, but when I saw it near these faceted yellow-green stitchtite nuggets, I decided to use those. The colors are perfect together. Except the size and visual weight of the nuggets overwhelmed the pendant.

The easy fix was to take a few of the pink beads and one of the nuggets to make a longer, bolder pendant to balance the necklace. This also adds a design element over just a beads-and-pendant type construction. I strung this on waxed linen and used a Saki Silver bronze toggle clasp. I think it turned out very pretty, and this highlights the beautiful dogwood pendant better than if I had used it on its own.