Beaded Forest

Latest jewelry projects

It's been raining on and off today, and I encountered this little guy while I was taking pictures:

He seems to be enjoying the weather.

I've been working a lot in my studio!  Some of my latest creations:

Earrings with sterling silver, glass, pearls, Swarovski crystal;

An adjustable necklace of faceted amethyst, hessonite garnet, sterling silver, and Thai Hill Tribe silver;

Another adjustable necklace, this one of rainbow moonstone, glass, sterling silver, Swarovski crystals, and carved quartz;

This one is faceted sapphire, with gold vermeil Thai Hill Tribe beads and finishings.  It was a commission, and so much fun to work with materials I don't normally have the chance to play around with!  I hope the recipient is happy with it!

New jewelry from my studio

I've been busy having fun in my shop, and am finally getting around to taking pictures of a few of my latest creations!

Chalcedony, poppy jasper, sterling silver, and Thai Hill Tribe silver dangles

All sterling to the left, and bone, sterling, and jasper to the right

Lapis, African turquoise, and sterling silver.  The pendant and cool beads on the earrings are Afghani.

A melange of Czech glass, carnelian, turquoise, amber, sterling silver, chalcedony, and God knows what else.  The large round silver piece is designed as an eyeglass holder; I'm mainly using it for decorative purposes here, but I guess I could stick my glasses there, too, if the dangly beads wouldn't rub them up too much!

Red agate and sterling silver.  The pendant beads are from Nepal...aren't they great?

I've got so many other projects in the works...some half done, waiting on the perfect bead or the strike of inspiration...others just vague ideas floating around in my head.  It's such a shame that real life (a.k.a. the job that pays for my beads, my fabric, my studio, and all the other goodies I need in life) interferes with my creative time!

My studio!

OK, so I haven't written a new post in a while.   A major reason is that I've been working on setting up my new studio!  It's almost exactly 100 steps from my house (I counted!) and it's the one benefit of the sad situation of my neighbor/partner-in-creativity Kathy moving to North Carolina...I was next in line for a studio here at the Co-op.  I'm currently sharing it with another neighbor Janet, a movement specialist/dancer who wants to use it for the open space, which is why everything is pushed against the walls.  I'm really hoping this will work out for both our needs...it'll be great if it does!  Anyway, there's lots more to be done, but here's the space so far after a thorough cleaning and preliminary set-up:
Kathy told me that this is an antique dentist's cabinet.  I think it'll be perfect for beads!

Kathy gave me this old mannequin from an NYC fashion house.  I love it!

The exterior of the building has enameled tiles by Paul Hultberg.  His son is in the neighborhood and plans to stop by soon and help clear out some of the foliage blocking their view, so hopefully I'll have a better picture soon (I took this one by leaning out the studio window!)

I'm so happy to have this space...I've been waiting for something like this for a long, long time.  By the way, isn't the church pew great?  Not tremendously practical, but it fits so well in there and I may end up using the seats as bead display areas.  The back area looks a little blank, but my main work table (against the back wall) has two more leaves, so I can make it bigger when I need to.  I'm looking forward to figuring out all sorts of creative ways to use the space.  Yay!

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!