New Bracelets with Toggles

Bracelet made with wood beads, my raku and ceramic toggle
Wire wrapped square wooden beads, my ceramic toggle clasp
White wood beads, my raku and ceramic toggle clasp

My ceramic beads, and ceramic toggle clasp, metal spacer beads

New Work

Here is a newly created Maple Wings circular pendant with a slightly different coloring.
I have been working on some new ceramic pendants. Here is one I really like of some young oak leaves. It is so interesting that these just formed leaves look more like feathers than the image we have of oak leaves. This pendant does not have a hole in it. It could be a cabochon or I was thinking of affixing a bail to it. I wanted to see what it looked like first without a hole.

These have been added to my webstore for purchase here.

Backing Up

A fused glass connector or pendant
A riveted coppper pendant

One of my thistle pendants in browns.

A fun Lady Liberty I made a while ago. Now that we are having summer I thought of her.

Now that I have experienced my first computer crash and loss of so many photos and emails and documents, I am trying to be dilligent about getting my photos on Flickr! at least. Here are some I put on recently.

Learning a New Stitch

On Saturday, I was able to learn a new off loom beadweaving stitch at our local arts council. The pictures above are of first the bracelet that we were taught -- a wonderful elegant Victorian style cuff bracelet. This is one of Ginny Burnett's specialities. We were lucky to have her for a teacher. The bronze colored bracelet is the bracelet that I made later when I got home. I always like to do another very soon after a beading class so that I will be sure to remember what I learned. Now I will have a model.

The bracelet we made in class features an off loom stitch called Herringbone. This can be a very supple stitch and is often used for flat straps and bracelets. I have wanted to learn this for some time but I don't do too well trying to learn beading stitches from a book. The live experience is what works for me and Ginny did a great job.

My friend Sally Hartmann, Ladies First Gallery, came with me as she also enjoys bead weaving.
Afterwards we did some bead shopping at a great shop that surprised me beyond my wildest dreams. More on that later i.e. my newsletter.

Ginny taught the class using size 11 seed beads. Her choices of colors for each of the three styles: Peacock, Fire and Sea were exquisite. I chose Peacock and they were were so beautiful. We spent the three hours in the class learning the stitches and making part of a bracelet. And as you can see, I took photos as well.

But to really get that stitch into my mind, I needed to make another bracelet in my favorite size beads, 8 and often 6. I chose to make my bracelet in size 8 seed beads and used 4 different colors.

Mine is quite different from the elegant, Victorian style that Ginny is so good at, but I really like mine to.

If you want to learn even more about Herringbone stitch, you can visit Ginny's blog. She also has a wonderful Etsy supply store called Goblin's Market and a jewelry store.

Art Bead Scene Challenge for June

Above photo of my beading in progress.

My entry for this month's Art Bead Scene Challenge is a free form peyote stitch necklace featuring my handmade ceramic beads. The copper swirl beads that hang from the center and sides are wire wrapped with my own torched copper ball end pins. The central beaded flowers are ringed in tiny Tangerine beads. These colors are all muted expressions of the bright colors in our inspiration piece, Farbstudie Quadrate by Wassilly Kandinsky.

Back On Line

A bowlful of beads the only edited photo on my new harddrive

I am very excited to have a computer again and to be back on line.A special thanks to my son Brian who express mailed me a Linova Think Pad.

It is really true that I missed having one a great deal. Although I still had email, I didn't have access to my photos, or my photo editing program. Since I couldn't upload photos during that time, I didn't do any blogging. I was able to publish my newsletter since I had done most of it before my hard drive died--all I had to add was words.

Thank you so much, all of you who took the time to vote for me in the Bead Star contest. I have not heard how that turned out.

I am promising myself that I will put all of my photos on Flickr! now and back up my drive more often. Last time was a year ago.

RAW and Toggle

Here is a photo of one of my Right Angle Weave bracelets with one of my ceramic toggles. The suppleness of the beadweaving and the size of the seed beads seem to enhance my toggle. I love this combo. This particular bracelet has been donated to my daughter-in-law's school where they will be having an auction soon.

Those little copper beads (there are two of them) feature the earliest Spring flower the Trillium.