Special Feature: Twitter Contest with The Beadin' Path and My Contest Finalist Necklace

Contest? Did someone say contest?

On Tuesday I blogged about finally organizing (well, mostly) my workspace with some pictures and shared about it on Twitter, too. To share it on Twitter, in less than 140 characters, you need to convert the URL of the post, which is very long, to something as short as possible. To do that, I go to a site called Cli.gs and create a short link. Cli.gs also tracks the human clicks (discounts all 'bots) on each cli.gs link created.

When I look at the metrics for clicks on that link, I usually see that I get anywhere from 10 to 20 clicks and sometimes 30 or 40 if I'm really lucky. On Tuesday's link - over 200! (If you are back today after first visiting me via Twitter yesterday and Tuesday, thank you for returning) The point, though, is wow, people must like to see other people's studios!

Well, I was tweeting (that's what you call the messages on Twitter, by the way) about it with Heather DeSimone from The Beadin' Path (@beadinpath) and she said:

beadinpath: @AWDawno We should try to start up a #TweetYourStudio day. It could be fun. And inspiring. And scary.

That got some re-tweets and positive comments, so we are going to have a TweetYourStudio day on Monday, September 28th, on Twitter. To enter you have to do two things.

1) Go to one of the Twitter photo sharing sites (I'm familiar with yfrog and twitpic, but there may be others) and upload a photo of your studio. These sites allow you to tweet the picture and a brief caption to Twitter right from the same spot. You register there with your Twitter name and password. Signing up for Twitter is free. There may be other ways to share your pictures that those of you who are more Twitter savvy know how to do, feel free to use them.

2) In order to complete your entry, you *must* put the hashtag #TweetYourStudio in the message you tweet with your picture (or we won't be able to find it). If you don't know what that means, here's a great explanation of hashtags and how to use them.

Update from Heather on prizes! (promoted from comments)

The Beadin' Path & BeadinPath.com will be ponying up 2 $30 gift cards to The Beadin' Path or http://www.BeadinPath.com for winners in the following categories.
*Most Organized
*Most 'Holy-Cow-I-Can't-Believe-You-Get-Anything-Done-in-that-Space' Studio

Submissions are open to any artist working in any media. Just tweet your space.

Judges will be 3 BeadinPath staff'ers (but not me, sorry Tweeter friends, no favoritesies :). And we'll announce the winners on Tuesday morning here on this blog as well as on Twitter!
Submissions must use hashtag #TweetYourStudio or we won't see them.
And also - all entries must be submitted by midnight West Coast time on Monday night (we don't want to miss anyone who submits too late).

Wahoo! This will be fun!
Thanks Dawn for the superb blog!
:) Heather
The Beadin' Path

I am also offering an "honorable mention" prize for best use of a small crafting space. If you're stuck with a corner, a closet or have to do your crafts on the sofa, tweet a picture of the space in use (if you're camera shy, just show the stuff you craft with at the place you craft - you don't have to be in the picture) and use the same hashtag but mention "small space" or "sm.sp." to keep it short. I'll send the winner a special prize, something that won't take up too much space either: a Bead Buddy Dual Lap Desk.

So you have the weekend to tidy up (or not if you want to win Holy-Cow-I-Can't-Believe-You-Get-Anything-Done-in-that-Space) but post your picture and use the hashtag on Monday to enter.

Speaking of contests...

Some time ago I got the news that I was one of the ten finalists in the Step by Step Beads magazine Colorworks contest held in the Spring. The contest finalists' pieces (including mine!) will be featured in the November/December '09 issue of Step by Step Beads with comments by Margie Deeb.

I have wanted to post a picture of the necklace ever since I heard, but I'd removed one of the copper chains to use for another necklace that I sold at BayCon, because I'd run out of that chain and didn't have time to order more. I'd put the necklace aside to wait for the replacement chain. Now that I've worked my way through the organizing (mostly) of my workroom to the point where I uncovered the necklace, I could replace the missing chain and take a picture for you:

The rules for the contest were to use the green, orange and purple triad of the color wheel. I'd already started what is the top beaded strand in the first picture, with those colors, so I used that design as my starting point for the final piece.

It went through several iterations before I finished it. I wasn't sure about it having five layers, but I just wasn't happy with it and kept on adding layers, until I had five.

So, there's the necklace and its story. Hope it was worth the wait...

My apologies for not being ready to review the Wubbers yet, nor having an interview ready - I need to carve out time to do some research and email good questions to the potential interviewee - hope to do so this weekend.

See you tomorrow for my Friday Pick!

PS - Picture credit: The picture at the top of the page is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID cph.3b06083

Monday Miscellany - The Beadin' Path's Glass "River Rock" Design Partner Necklace

Heather De Simone of The Beadin' Path recently asked some bead-jewelry designer/bloggers if they'd be interested in being design partners. I was honored to be asked and thrilled with the opportunity it would give me to be able to feature some of The Beadin' Path's exclusive and unique offerings for jewelry design on a regular basis.

So, it wasn't very long ago that I received a package with their large glass "River Rock" nuggets in topaz and citrus colors.

I don't do a lot of work in what I've seen described variously as primitive, natural or tribal styles. My personal likes tend toward the vintage, favoring Victorian, Edwardian, even Renaissance looks.

That said, when I got the nuggets immediately I knew they would look great combined with a strand of amber chips, some lava rock and a number of India glass round beads in a light AB finished amber color that I've had in my stash forever, it seems. I felt that I should only use a few of the large River Rocks because they're definitely substantial in size, presence in the piece and weight. The India glass beads and lava stone are very light weight, fortunately, and I didn't use any metallic beads, caps or spacers, either. I still haven't added a clasp - need to find something suitable and don't even know where to begin!

The strand with the River Rocks is strung on .38" 49 strand Beadalon satin gold because the River Rocks are rather heavy. The practically weightless amber chips are strung on .33" 19 strand Beadalon satin gold. When finished it will be about 18 - 20" total length.

The nuggets I got had some powdery grit on them, so I rinsed them before I used them. There were also a few with more than one drill path through them, in other words, one which dead-ends and one that goes through. They're are definitely rough hewn inside and out.

All in all, while they aren't the kind of thing I'd have thought to buy, I was surprised with how much I liked what I came up with. I look forward to making another necklace using the citrus colored 'rocks'.

That's it for today - see you tomorrow for Tuesday Tidbits: Dawno shows you her clean(er) workspace.

Tuesday Tidbits - Colorworks Contest in Step by Step Beads Magazine

I got this in the mail yesterday - talk about stunned!

Congratulations!

Your work was chosen by Margie Deeb as one of the top ten finalists in our first Colorworks contest! Though you did not win first place, your piece will be showcased in a special Colorworks gallery in the November/December 09 issue of Step by Step Beads. Thank you for submitting such outstanding work!

Best regards,
Editor in chief,
Step by Step Beads

the rules were:

Enter the first Colorworks Challenge!

Tertiary Colors

The orange-purple-green tertiary triad presents a challenge of bold and striking contrasts. Create a piece of bead jewelry (or a bead in any medium: polymer, beads, glass, etc.) using the triad from the color wheel. Black, white, or clear are welcome, but the predominant colors must be the orange-purple-green triad (any shades of those colors).

And I'd started playing with using pale orange faceted coral beads, a purple firepolished bead, some green cathedral cut beads and copper, which met the color criteria, so I worked on several versions of it (consisting of adding new strands) until I came up with the design I submitted. I wrote to the publication to see if I could post a picture, I haven't heard yet so I'm going to wait a little longer on the picture, but I couldn't wait to share the news!

Materials used: copper stamped links and copper chain from Accessories Susan, copper bead caps, clasp and spacers from Artbeads, copper wire guardians, crimp covers and Scrimps from Rings & Things, green cathedral cut Czech glass beads from the local Global Beads store, faceted coral beads from JJBead in Huntington Beach, and Satin Copper Beadalon stringing wire.
Dimensions: the collar is from 1.5 inches to 3.5 inches in width and 16" in length.