Where did 2011 go?

I have been seriously preoccupied else where....
I will attempt to attend to this blog more diligently in 2012....but that is not a New Year's resolution.  I don't make them. 

My last bead project of 2011, the Tila Bead Bracelet designed by the beautiful Kellie Burns, was lost during a girls day out to the DIA.  Sigh, I knew I should have added a safety chain to the magnetic clasp.  Sadly, I don't even have a picture of it.  It turned out lovely and in colors I don't normally use.  Someone out there found it and now has the pleasure of losing it themselves when they wear it. 

I have many things on my plate for 2012 and it will be an exciting year!  Hopefully it will not include visits from local law enforcement, various civil servants or require trips to the attorney's office for a change! One can only hope!  Ironically I wrapped up 2011 with a lovely encounter with the aforementioned law enforcement just before Christmas.  No good deed goes unpunished.  In transit to give groceries to the needy family living in my rental house in Mt. Clemens I was stopped by the local patrol officer.  (Read wet behind the ears, snot nosed youngster packing heat and an attitude)  What a beautiful addition to the Christmas lights, red and blue flashing lights just for me!  My DH and I were both baffled and could not begin to guess why.  It seems the light in the previous intersection was Yellow when I rolled through the intersection.  Mind you, I was not even going the speed limit. It's not as if I gunned my minivan to make it either, not at all.....barely strolling through town by my estimation.  It was rather amusing actually.  I smiled serenely and confidently shared my complete surprise, while relishing the knowledge that I had done nothing worthy of being stopped.  Even if he remotely thought of ticketing me, I knew I would hand him his 8$$ in court.  With a clean driving record and no actual violation he sent me on my way...go figure.  Good for a laugh. But sent our "Incident Board" back to zero. 
Hmm, when I started typing this I thought I didn't have anything interesting to tell you.  Hah!

Okay, so far for 2012 we are 4 days without incident!
I have a beaded ring from the December issue of B&B almost done. I have several magazine projects I want to do. I also have to sit and do some design work for Synergy! My bead maker Sylvus is already working prototypes for me!

Let's get on with 2012 then!

Bead & Button Withdrawal Therapy

I was not able to attend Bead & Button this year and I was totally bummed!  Last year I had a super time working with Jeannette Cook of Beady Eyed Women!  It was my first time ever at the show and I was there with a seasoned professional!  What I learned working with her is immeasurable and I am eternally grateful to Jeannette for the experience!  This year I know so many more people at the show...and so I have been watching the fun via the Internet.  But it's just not the same as being there! 

For my B&B Show withdrawal therapy I came up with some unique projects. 

I commemorated my time with Jeannette last year with some great new funky earrings, using her famous Curl technique!  "Mastering the Curl" is a must have technique for your beading repertoire!

Jill Wiseman of Tapestry Beads proposed a Hat & Fascinator Day for Saturday at Bead & Button and of course the beading community loved the idea! Bead & Button is a glorious week of women strutting their stuff, so here was one more exuberant way to do it!  Again, undaunted by my lack of attendance...I participated vicariously.  I up cycled a thrift store hat.  This past Friday afternoon and evening I pretended to be a milliner and decorated my own hat!  You may have seen my profile pic on Face Book...well here is another pic of me with my new hat! 

Can you guess my favorite color??

My local beading guild The Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild is having our annual "Strut Your Stuff" pizza party on June 21.  Guess what we've proposed to our members?? You got it, hats, fascinators and tiaras!! Get 'em out and wear 'em to the meeting!!!  I can't wait to wear this hat, you can't see the mock Bird of Paradise feathers I attached!! I was working on an idea for a fascinator.  Since I came up with this great purple hat my other project may end up as a necklace.  The scale of it is along the lines of one of New York City's most fabulous and outrageous beaders and my friend Suzanne Golden.  It is no where near as fantastic as her work, but I love Suzanne's style and fearless use of color, materials and proportion!

My project idea originated with a class with Carole Horn of The Bead Society of Greater New York. She came to our guild to teach for the first time last year!  When she demoed the class project she used plastic pony beads, etc.  We all loved the resulting piece with those huge beads and it stuck in my head!  Well, I had to make one!  Voila!  I'll have a huge flower to wear as a necklace soon!

I also checked in on my friend Kate McKinnon from time to time the last couple of weeks to see what she and Dustin Wedekind have been doing on their current book collaboration Geometrics.  Needless to say they are up to a lot of interesting things!  I had promised myself for weeks that I would pre-purchase the book, so I did and bought Kate's other self published books before they gone forever. 

This is how I salved my broken beading heart the past couple of weeks.

And now that B&B is over I will stop pouting and start planning for next year!!

Hugs!!

Rocky and Bullwinkle...well not exactly

Last week Christi Friesen was here at the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild to teach classes! Wowser what a week we had!! I only had one class, Saturday, with her but it was a total blast! I have played with clay like products in the past, but never polymer clay.  Sometimes I am just a total chicken!  My friends will be shaking their heads at that comment, but it's true when it comes to trying out new crafts.  I guess my biggest fear is that I will become obsessed with yet another craft media!  It is a well founded fear!  I have a new love and have had a few sleepless nights with ideas swirling in my head!

I will explore and play with this new found love and eventually you will see what I come up with of my own.  In the meantime here is a picture of the pieces I made Saturday.

 The squirrel was finished and baked in class (sorry Kate McK - we were in a classroom with 3 toaster ovens going and no extra ventilation per se).  The moose gave me fits, so I only had the head done at the end of class.  I finished and baked him at home that night.

I cannot say enough wonderful things about Christi Friesen.  She is a delightful person and a superb instructor.  You WILL walk away from any one of her classes with the ability to make the project taught!  If you ever have the opportunity to take one of her classes...DO IT!!

To go to Christi Friesen's website click HERE.

Bling Bling Bling!

Ta da!

Here is my latest beAd Infinitum Design Team contribution!!

I purchased these rivolis at B&B last year and they have taunted me, dancing around in a variety of design ideas ever since.

A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those "ah ha!" moments.  Also referred to as an epiphany.

The Infinity Prism pattern loomed before my eyes...remember my ribbon piece back in January?

I realised I had another way to use the prism and incorporate my rivoli stash! Yippee!!

Prismatic Infinity

This piece has three sizes of 8 sided rivolis that have flat tables. You can look into them and see an infinite prism reflected on the internal faces.

The pattern calls for drop beads at the corners, I used 1.8mm cube beads instead.  All of the beads are the same color ~ Silver Rain.  Yummy, but really tough to look at for long periods of time!

Detail of Prismatic Infinity Necklace

I used 4mm Chinese crystal rondelles in between the elements. 

The clasp is another Infinity Prism with an embellished Herringbone loop.

The Infinity Prism technique for bezeling is very satisfying and time efficient.  It is very versatile and easy to adjust to various rivoli sizes.  Although I haven't experimented yet, I believe it would be very adaptable to a variety of cabochon or rivoli shapes.  Hmmmm...I feel another project coming on!!

Please post a comment and let me know what you think!

Beaded Beads

Here are my latest experiments....

I am playing with the various beaded bead techniques in the wonderful patterns from beAd Infinitum.  Recently I made several Time Machine beaded beads, which got me to thinking that I could combine the lace overlay technique with the Ionic Polyhedra shapes (leaving out the ionic overlay). 

I made a simple bead first....

This bead is approximately the same shape as the Time Machine bead, although it is smaller.

It insists on being called "The Time Capsule".

Next I applied this same technique to the Cuboctohedron shape....

Here is the result!

So far the name for this little beauty is "Fancy Cuboctohedron".

Maybe I should call it "The TARDIS", what do you think?

Hope you enjoy the results of my exploration!

River's Time

Trying New Things....Great Give Away offer from Andrew Thornton

This afternoon we are supposed to have more snow again! I'm tired of winter here in Michigan. We've had more snow this year than we've had in a long long time.

This winter has been one for trying new things....new crafts.  January with Jeannette Cook of Beady Eyed Women, I spent a week with three other retreat mates playing with felting, wet and needle.  We also beaded on our felt and had a special project with Marcia DeCoster!  Very fun!! We had a lovely week in Mission Beach.

   

 

 I have felted before, but only a specific project.  Our retreat project was more open to interpretation and freeform.  The bag/purse is the main project and we had time to play and create other felted items. 

The bracelet I made on the last day of the retreat.  The bezelled stone I finished as a ring just a couple of nights ago.  This came about after the workshop with Marcia DeCoster, when I decided to try her bezeling method on a shape other than a circle.

Here we are at dinner the last night of the retreat!

February for the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild means Bead Daze and this year we had four teachers for four days of classes!  Two Bead teachers: Marcia DeCoster and Sherry Serafini  AND Two Wire teachers: Kim St. Jean and Barb Switzer.  It was a great week!  These classes are some of the same classes that they teach at Bead & Button and other large shows around the country!  As a Guild we are able to offer them to our members for a discounted class fee.  You buy the kit or bring your own beads and supplies, fabulous!! We also have a "Meet the Teachers" evening at our regular membership meeting prior to class days! Lots of kits, supplies and finished pieces are purchased by our members that evening and throughout the week! Everyone has an opportunity to find something wonderful!
I really appreciate that our guild is able to have four nationally known teachers in for classes all at the same time,  the problem is choosing only four. (one per day)  Well, I decided to try something new, bead embroidery.  What better time than with "Rock Star" bead embroidery teacher Sherry Serafini! I also took a class with Marcia DeCoster and a class with Barb Switzer (my second time in a class with her)! 

Here is my progress as of last night on my Sherry Serafini Cuff - Crystals & Pearls Bracelet.  I'm loving bead embroidery and Sherry has made this project so easy to do!! 

March brings Jean Campbell to the GLBG and I plan to try out her new steampunk necklace and bracelet. 

Then in April we have Christi Friesen of polymer clay fame!!  I think this year I have to try it out!!

Having said all that....Andrew Thornton of Green Girl has posted a give away offer on his blog for some lovely Art Nouveau alphabet stamps and a bonus wing stamp.  The stamps come from TJ Tool/Jewelry. 

Now there is something that I may just have to bang out a try on!!

Go check it out! Good luck to you all and Happy Beading!

Sigh...no time for beading!

Okay, so for the last two days I've been busy with other things that you really don't want to know about.  It might be funny if I told you, but only if you "know" me.  So let's just say I've been busy. 

Now on to what I can tell you about...



I had an appointment on my calendar for Monday, I was supposed to be in Clarkston at the Independence Township Public Library.  Clarkston is about a 45 minute drive North from my house in Sterling Heights.  Which is in lovely, wait 15 minutes and the weather will change, MICHIGAN!  Yes, I said Clarkston and you know that here in Michigan we all have to drive our cars, no mass transit system, no TRAIN to Clarkston, first middle or last.  So since we had freezing rain and lots of lovely snow Sunday night, Monday morning the roads were a mess.  Our schools were closed, the whole Metro area was an ice skating rink.  My beloved DH text (or is it texted) me at 8AM and told me to stay home.  Who am I to question the authority of my husband, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.  For about 5 minutes!  Remember that appointment?  Well, there was another component of  that appointment that I needed to address pronto! 

I am the Exhibits Chair for the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild and I have voluntarily scheduled back to back exhibits all over the Detroit Metro area for the next three months straight. Yikes, what was I thinking?  Over achiever...nope maniac! And the Board recently executed a plan to steal away my wonderful Co-Chair and I now have to rely on "volunteer" volunteer help.  (get it?) Don't misunderstand, I have a couple of helpers on the hook already, Valerie G. and Judy D. who are fabulous.  But I had known for weeks they weren't available for this gig.  This is a job that one person CAN do, but it is oh so much more pleasant and much more convenient with TWO people.  Time got away from me and I hadn't recruited another helper.   In desperation I hatched a scheme to call one of my fellow Guild members and beg for a solid.  I would resort to bribery if need be!  So I checked the membership roster for beaders I know in the Clarkston area and I rang up my friend Diane Grecu!  Low and behold she was not only available but she was also willing to come give me a hand.  (heh heh, beaders!)  Hey I love that about beaders, we all seem to be such giving people!  So now, dag nab it I had to get up and call Diane to let her know it wasn't going to happen that morning after all. (my friends know that I really prefer to hug my pillow until at least 9 when I can)  Long story short, it all worked out and we made plans to meet at the Library on Tuesday. 

Diane and I had a lovely afternoon installing the GLBG Exhibit collection into the display case in the Independence Township Public Library.  The library requested a Christmas decoration theme.  The Exhibit collection consists primarily of items loaned to me from the membership and sadly I only had a couple of pieces that could pass as Christmas ornaments.  Undaunted, I displayed all our lovely work and then suspended beaded snowflakes from the top grid of the case.  It was surprisingly lovely.  When we were all done, Diane and I looked at each other with great satisfaction and pleasure.  Several library patrons and staff members had already given us glowing reviews!  Diane and I decided that if we didn't have actual beading time, spending time with a beady friend displaying beadwork was almost as good.  It is very gratifying to share our work, something from which we derive so much pleasure (and frustration), with the community around us!  It is always fun to hear their comments (you gotta have good eyes to do that) and answer their questions (where do you come up with these ideas?).  Diane was surprised at how much work goes into the Exhibit process, but she also told me that she enjoyed it.  Thank you Diane, for giving your time.  I really appreciated your company and your help!  There are more pictures on my FB page.  Click here

If you live in the Clarkston, Michigan area, please be sure and stop by to see the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild's beadwork on display.   If you would like to know more about the guild....
January 25, 2011 at 7:00 pm I will be giving a presentation about the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild in the Independence Township Public Library community room!
Please come, bring along your latest projects, we will have beadwork show and tell after the presentation!

Oh my, I still have some newsletter articles to write....sigh ....still no time for beading!
See you in the funny papers!