Beaded Forest

Makin' some jewelry

I've spent the weekend doing all sorts of non-craft stuff...spending time with friends, doing housework, taxes (oh boy!), etc.  I put a few household items up on eBay, since they've been sitting around way too long.  As soon as I finished posting them, David tells me there's a big eBay boycott week starting today!  I had no idea. Well, too late to do anything about it now.
Finally I got around to doing some beading this afternoon.  One of my co-workers wants to buy some gift jewelry from me, so I made a couple of pairs of earrings for him to check out.  And the necklace is for me!  I love this ceramic focal bead from ArtBeads, and had to put it to use.  I combined it with faceted glass, jade, pearls, and hessonite garnet.   It'll go with a lot of my outfits. 
I've been experiencing something of a creative slump, but hopefully getting my hands wet with the beading will get me back on track. 

Experiments...

This is the general state of my work area.  Chaos.  I've been experimenting with various things, and haven't come up with too many finished projects to show off.  Some of my experiments are paying off, though, so I'll hopefully have some fun stuff posted soon!

In the meantime, I just found out yesterday that Rockland Center for the Arts wants teachers to display/sell some items in their new display cabinets, so I came up with a couple of new things to put in there:

A couple pairs of earrings, and...

...a Spring scarf.  Guess I'm into the blues, pinks, and purples right now!

Slavic Soul Party!

This is me last night at an event hosted by the Rockland Center for the Arts (RoCA), where I teach jewelry classes (in fact, I taught a beginner's class yesterday morning!).  It was a fabulous time!  There was a pasta dinner, which was great, and we sat next to some of the board of directors of RoCA...they were a lot of fun, and it's always good to make those kinds of connections!  Dinner was followed by music by Slavic Soul Party, which is an amazingly cool brass band.   

Go to their website and listen to some of their music...there's no way I can describe it here!  I brought my friend Barb, and we danced all night (boy, am I sore today!).  Here's the crowd having a good time:

And here's Barb, dancing with our friend Andre...

I whipped up a necklace and earrings to wear to the event, using raw sapphires (aren't they gorgeous?), pearls, silver, and a great ceramic pendant from ArtBeads.

It was a terrific evening, and made me realize I have to get out more!

Intermediate beading class

Whew! Our computer was fading away on us, so we bought a new one...it arrived today, two days before scheduled! What a relief...I've only been able to log in for a few minutes at a time before another crash! Anyway, now our brand-new iMac is happily buzzing along (very quickly, I might add!), and so I can now download these pics. We taught our 3rd and last session of the Intermediate Beading Class at Rockland Center for the Arts this past weekend, and we had a great group of students. Here are a few of their creations:

Second beading class

Today Kathy and I taught the second session of our beginner beading class at Rockland Center for the Arts, and here are some of the creations!  We focused on multiple strands today, among a few other things.  Everyone is having a lot of fun, although many were too shy to have a photo of more than their hand!  One more session to go, and then on to the intermediate level...

Lampwork beads

Today I took a lampwork bead workshop with Stephanie Maddalena at the Rockland Center for the Arts, where I also teach beading classes.  It was fun!  I took a workshop with her years ago, and it's still just as fun!  Here are the results:

The set of three (to use for a pendant and a pair of earrings) use a really neat technique involving crushed goldstone and silver foil.  They're my favorites!  For those who don't know about lampworking, you basically use a tabletop flame to melt narrow rods of glass onto a stick (mandrel).  The glass becomes malleable, like melting wax.  There's something very meditative and satisfying about the technique.  One more craft I'd love to get into...sigh...

Charm necklace

This is a necklace I made a while back, as a sample for a charm bracelet class that Kathy and I ran at Rockland Center for the Arts.  I wanted to show that you could do things with charms besides just the bracelets. It's proven to be a very popular design in all of our classes...everybody wants to make one!  It's been really neat to see people's variations on the idea...using different types of beads (semi-precious, pearls, bone, etc.) and their own assortment of charms.  I can't believe that I've forgotten to bring a camera to every single class I've taught, because it would be great to snap some shots of students' work.  That will have to change with our next set of classes, starting in October.  I'll have that camera out and ready to go!

Beaded cuff

Here's a cuff I made recently, my first time attempting to use an aluminum bracelet blank (I got them from Dick Blick, if you're looking for them).  I had a few stumbles, but I learned a lot!  It's always fun working with seed beads...the variety of colors and sizes gives you so many options.  I'll do another soon, I think, if I can ever stop sewing!  I've got several sewing projects going on simultaneously, and feel the need to get them done before moving on to a different creative outlet. 

Unfortunately, I don't have the space to keep different types of projects going on at the same time.  If I've got my sewing machine and related supplies out on the table, there's no room for beading stuff.  My fantasy was to win DIY's recent contest for $100,000 towards a workroom, but I think they've already selected the winner and I haven't gotten a phone call yet.  Darn.  Maybe they're just waiting for the right moment to surprise me...

RoCA faculty show

Last weekend was the opening gala for Rockland Center for the Art's Faculty Show.  I submitted a couple of charm bracelets:

They take a lot of time to make, but they're fun, too.  The first one has lots of hand charms, which had dual significance for me: I like to create things with my hands, and I also use Sign Language in my work with Deaf people.  The second one was just pure fun.  It has several turtle charms, and a few frogs, and assorted other creatures thrown in, along with some old African glass beads, a strange carved seed pod, bone carvings, and more.  I imagine the wearer constantly discovering new "goodies" throughout the day. 

The pieces are up for sale at the show...I have no idea if they'll sell, but if they don't, I can use them for class samples (and wear them too!).  Of course wearing them to work probably isn't the best idea...I can imagine all those extra hands flying around while I'm trying to sign to my clients!  But as class samples, they'll be great.  Last year my co-teacher Kathy and I ran a charm bracelet workshop, and everyone had so much fun.  And each person came up with their own really unique piece, totally different from everyone else's.  I'd really like to run that class again, maybe in the Spring.  Ah, so many ideas for new classes, so little time!