Sorbet colours for Spring

Ana did amazingly with her bead soup, right "down to the last bead" - so, inspired by her example, I've now used pretty much all the beads she sent. So, in the "down to the last bead" spirit, here is my last piece: I've taken the advice of my lovely commenters and tried using PicMonkey - it is indeed much easier to use than a combination of Microsoft Photo Editor and Powerpoint. And the fonts are better.

This is more of a Bead Soup Blog After-Party than part of the BSBP proper: if you want to see what I posted for the 2nd BSBP reveal, please click the button on the right.
 

Sorbet-coloured bracelet

Ana had sent me these gorgeous flamingo-coloured shell beads - and I wanted to put in a bracelet because they're so beautiful you just want to look at them all the time. It's hard to capture in a photo, but they have lovely soft colours that shift as they move in the light. These beads were very keen to be paired with the peach-coloured fire-polished crystals, also from the soup Ana sent me.

It's now properly spring here (my Polish friend said to me yesterday: You know it's spring in England when it stops snowing and starts raining) so I wanted to use a sorbet-type palette. I couldn't quite make it work, until I realised I could use some more of these irregular-shaped greenish-turquoise seed beads that I found in a local charity shop (thrift shop) to make a multi-strand design.

I combined them with a few of my favourite iridescent large green seed beads (also originally upcycled, from a different necklace) to boost the green vibe, and added some odd pink, green and blue beads from my stash. And some of my favourite wooden beads to add an informal touch.

I knew I wanted a toggle-clasp because they're easy to do up (important for a bracelet!) but I didn't quite have the right style. Then I found this twisted Tibetan silver clasp online - perfect. The weight of the silver makes sure that the bracelet sits with the clasp at the lowest point, so that the interesting part of the design is uppermost.

The bracelet can be worn either untwisted, so that it looks like three stacked bracelets, or lightly twisted, like this:

Sorbet-coloured bracelet, with the strands lightly twisted

BSBP reveal - updated!

This is an updated post, with further pictures and explanations of what, why and when.

The beautiful flower focal from Ana, now converted to a brooch

This morning was the first sunshine we've had in about three weeks so I took loads of photos all in a rush and then had to figure out what to do with them! So I've been playing around with Powerpoint to make composite pictures.

Brooch and earrings

The brooch and earrings were an inspired last-minute creation: I'd been wondering and wondering how to use this gorgeous fabric focal. Finally my mother came up with the idea to attach it to a brooch back and we came up with the crystals-on-three-chains design together. We thought it went well with her black pashmina (looking rather washed-out in sunlight in the small pictures on the right).

I'm not very confident at using bead caps, but these ones seemed to fit well onto a pair of frosted, translucent purple beads I had; adding a couple of green-cored seed beads made some great dangly earrings. I think they go with the brooch while avoiding being too matchy-matchy. Although I am not supposed to be making myself any more dangly earrings because I already have so many. Oh well...

This necklace was actually the first thing I made with the bead soup. The Bead Soup rules are that we have to use (at least) both the clasp and the focal. I thought that this clasp went nicely with the striking pewter focal, so that became my starting-point. I had some pewter tubes whose curves mirrored the swirls in the pewter focal, so those went in too. And my son had carefully chosen a bright red bead when we were buying the clasp for Ana, so I included that too. That set me off on a red-and-cyan colourscheme because for some reason I was reminiscing about computer games of my childhood ... so in went lots of blue beads. Hurrah for BBC Micro Red-alternating-with-Cyan.

Originally the chain sections lay on either side of the neck, and the pewter tubes either side of the focal, but that made the front section heavy and at the sides it reminded me of fish-gills! So I switched them round and that seemed to go better. Using my new waxed cotton, I threaded the beads and tubes onto some orange  cotton, threading it through the chain section to achieve a rather jumbled look with the mosaic-tile beads.
 
I like the bright colours of this one, but to be honest I think the design ended up a bit over-worked and not so much my personal style. I think my decision to use the clasp and focal and to incorporate fibre ended up sending me down a one-way street that I maybe shouldn't have gone down.

1990's style!

For this one, I was inspired by a de-clutter I had recently: I'd found a photo of me from my student days in the 1990s, proudly wearing a necklace that I'd made from wooden beads strung onto leather cord (I didn't know how to tie it properly at the time, so I used to tie it with a reef-knot every day). Ana's beads seemed to want to go with some other blue-green beads that my sisters had given me; I added some nice spacers purchased from Hobbycraft in Solihull.

I am very, very proud of my first ever hand-made clasp-hook! I was very pleased that I managed to hammer the silver-plated copper without the copper showing through at all. The hammering makes the wire stiff so that it keeps its shape. I have to admit though that the silver-plated oval came "off the shelf" from Beadalon. And I didn't make my own spring-ends but used clam-shells instead, to avoid the need for gluing.

This was a bracelet I made from the sheer pleasure of discovering how light and wearable beads are when strung on fibre. The green focal was a present from my sister. I was a bit worried that my knotting would come undone, so I did a round-turn and about five half-hitches! - that's why there seems to be quite a lot of blue cord next to the clasp components. There is also a leaf charm, ceramic beads and ice-blue glass pearls.

And this necklace has the most beautiful beads of all. I'd been watching Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, and it occurred to me that the special blue focal would have suited Arwen. I also remembered I had some light-blue crystals which went nicely with it. So I found some of my other most lovely beads which reminded me of woodlands and nature in general - lovely lampwork; leaf-like Czech glass; pearls (Tolkien seemed to like to write about jewellery with pearls) and two moss agate beads from Brighton which I'd been saving for ages.

All in all I was really pleased with how many of Ana's beads I managed to use. There are just a few left, including the gorgeous flamingo-pink shell beads, which I'm planning to make into a multistrand bracelet (and will post pics at a later date).

Check here for the full list of participants in the Second Reveal. And here to see the amazingly creative pieces Ana has made from the things I sent her.

Thank you Ana for being such a great bead-swap partner! And thanks to Lori Anderson for hosting, and for providing words of encouragement early on!

Bead Soup reveal deferred one week

The Bead Soup 2nd reveal has been deferred one week, so check back here on the 13th April for what I made with the lovely things Ana sent me!

Am slightly relieved actually, as I haven't used all the bead-soup yet and I want to use as many of the items as I can!

Supposed to be working on Bead Soup. Getting distracted by Turtles.

Isn't this little guy so cute? If you have any other good turtle bead links, please feel free to share!

From: http://kerrieberrie.co.uk/new-handmade-lampwork-beads/handmade-glass-turtle

Creativity and myth

I have been thinking about what I do and how in the end all creative pursuits are partly about telling stories - the need to make, tell and re-tell stories is such a fundamental human need. I'm a keen novel-reader, but I also like reading myths, folk-tales, fantasy and science fiction.

Turning into stone: Medusa, stalagmite, and fossils. From the Natural History Museum, London.

• Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is currently being serialised on Radio 4/Radio 4 Extra. Having both seen the TV series and read the novel before, I think it's far better than the TV series and at least as good as the novel. It deals with "the people who fall through the gaps" - covering issues such as homelessness and mental illness, but in a metaphorical or mythical sort of way. This version has excellent casting and production and is highly recommended. If you've missed any of it, you can catch up on-demand until 29th March.
• I have enjoyed reading The Hobbit to my five-year-old son. He often pretends to be Bilbo. Usually I get to be Gandalf, which I quite like. He is particularly fascinated by the Arkenstone and what the book calls the "power of gold". I don't think this is a concept he has been able to verbalise before, but he well understands it, telling me about "the power of sweets" and "the power of chocolate" - something that I can also relate to!
• At the moment I'm reading him the Usborne Greek Myths for Young Children. It is beautifully-illustrated, and very much toned down and age-appropriate; there do remain a few unavoidable mentions of people killing their family members, however, which is very different to the cheery benevolence of modern children's TV. However, he loves all the mythical creatures, Atlas holding the sky up and trying to trick Heracles into doing it, and (best of all) King Eurystheus hiding in his big brass pot. I was also highly impressed that he remembered Medusa from our visit to the Natural History Museum at Christmas-time (see picture above).

What, if anything, has all this got to do with what I do? Well, I think it's that creativity isn't trivial, or some sort of time-waster for people with nothing better to do. It's part of being human and is a basic need we all have. If we ignore it, we are in danger of losing something of ourselves.

Addressing my fibre phobia

Well, I had the book "Bohemian-Inspired Jewellery" by Lorelei Eurto and Erin Siegel for my birthday, but I've just had so much difficulty getting my head round the use of fibre in general and fabric in particular. Now, though, since my Bead Soup from Ana has got some ribbon in (eek!), I thought I'd try and ease myself in gently with a more tractable problem - stringing beads onto cord using simple overhand knots.

Here I used waxed cotton in a lovely dark red. I soon discovered that only certain beads have holes large enough to work for this. This restricted my designs somewhat. The design constraints are different in other ways, too. The fibre itself provides additional visual interest, so a simpler design seems to work better than the more complex designs you can make with wire (either normal wire or beading wire). Because of that simplicity, each individual bead seems to speak louder, so it's even more important to pick the right ones. This bracelet here was very much a first attempt.

Bracelet made using knotted waxed cotton

The nice thing about wearing a bracelet made of fibre, I found, is that it's much more drapey than something strung on beading wire. So it's much easier to wear and doesn't feel like it gets in the way so much.

Overall this seems to have a much more informal feel than beads on wire. I have to admit that, despite my expectations, I do quite like it. I will have to practise some more!

Bead Soup sent to Ana

This is my own photo of the Bead Soup sent to Ana. It was quite a dull day, the house was dark, but I HAD to send the beads to her in time for the posting deadline - so my son and I went outside and put the beads on the ground! I used a white piece of card for contrast - it has my name written on in a design by my sister, a talented papercrafter.

Ana tells me she's used all the beads up already - I am in admiration at her productivity. I have to confess that I haven't finished anything yet using the beads she's sent me, but I have done a great deal of "playing" with the different colours and textures. Watch this space...