An "I'm Not Really Here" Saturday Post

I'm visiting with my family this weekend and won't be able to do a 'real time' post, so I've prepared this in advance and am setting it up to publish automatically today (same goes for tomorrow's post, too).

On Wednesday I put up a picture of my little laptop DIY workbox with some pieces I was fiddling with. They're still works in progress and here's where I currently am with those same pieces.

This first one is the copper choker frame and peach glass drops. The circles and wire wrapping just didn't work out right, so I unwrapped the copper wire and took off the circles, put on these copper beads as spacers between the peach glass drops on the vintage copper coated steel chain.

It felt unfinished still, so I tried stringing the choker form with chain. Hmmm. Nope.

The beads may have to go...I've put this aside for now so no more version pictures today, will update next week.

The second necklace had one pearl between two copper spacers. Then I remembered I had these gorgeous Swarovski faceted briolette drops in Mocca. I unstrung the beads and put a small middle-amber hessonite bead after a pearl then the briolette, another hessonite bead and another pearl. This I really like. Now I have to get more briolettes, I didn't have enough, on top of wating for the rest of the spacers to come (they shipped today).

Since I will have given these to my sister by the time this posts, here are the earrings I made for her using Champagne color dyed freshwater pearls I bought at the Rings & Things road show in March plus a green coin pearl, also from Rings & Things. The ear wires and eyepins are gold filled and they're set on a gold plated curb chain I got from Rings & Things, as well.

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend so far. Come back tomorrow for Dawno's Weekly Wanderings Around the Beadosphere post!

Sketch? Bead Board? Wing It?

I've noticed some jewelry (bead, metal, ceramic, polyclay - you name it) bloggers talking about coming up with their designs. A couple talk about sketching, others use bead boards (primarily stringers) and some of us (you know who you are) wing it.

I'm mostly a wing-it'er. I look at beads, string them, take them off, try something else...sometimes I'll dump a bunch in one of my DIY lap desks (aka a shoe box lid with bead mat) and just play around until I get what I want.

I used my bead board *a lot* when I started making my beaded badge lanyards, but now I've pretty much got an eye for how the design elements need to repeat, etc., for it come out the right length. I'll may still occasionally use it, but it's been a while.

As I think about more complex and challenging ideas, though, I think I'll be getting out the graph-paper and colored pencils. I need the colored pencils, anyway, if I'm going to try experimenting with shrinky-dinks (Margot Potter has inspired a bracelet idea via a book of hers I just got, Sparkletastic: 50 Dazzling Jewelry and Fashion Projects for the Discriminating Diva (Impatient Beader)
).

So, once you get an idea for something, what do you do? I'll be very interested to read about it in the comments.

Now, before I wander off for the evening, and since I mentioned it above, I'll tell you what I thought of Sparkletastic. Published in 2007, it's a soft cover, full color, 8.5x11" sized book of 128 pages, 50 projects, with hundreds of great pictures. I found it on one of those racks sticking out of the beading aisles at Michael's that you have to be watchful for, or you'll whack your shoulder on it. Having read Margot's blog pretty faithfully for some time now, as well as watching her delightful videos (have you seen the one about the YuDu home screen printing system? Go. Watch. Now - I'll wait here), I decided I wanted to own one of her books, too. This one looked particularly fun.

Margot's humor is what makes her books stand out from most other beading how-to's I've read. The designs are full of fun and whimsy. I saw a number of things in the book that, while I don't know if I'd make the exact same thing, I could see how the tools, materials and techniques would lend themselves to something that suits my style, too.

Oh, and if you want a copy of this fun and fabulous how-to guide, click this link and a few pennies go to my bead fund :-)

Dawno's Do It Yourself Portable Beading "Lap Desk"

I thought I'd do something a bit different and start off by sharing a simple, portable, lap sized stringing set up I use from time to time. I love my Bead Buddy lap desk, but it is a bit bulky, and I primarily use it when I'm trying to figure out design. Once I have that accomplished I continue my stringing with the lap desk for its portability, but sometimes my work is simple enough that I'm ready to go without having to 'draft' it on the design board. For example, the "Chateau Picard" lanyard I mentioned last night, for that I'm just using two types of beads and one type of spacer and the pattern isn't complex, so there's not much need for the whole design board/lap desk kit.

I've taken a wide shoebox lid and fit an 8"x8" bead mat inside of it. By the way, bead mats are just a square of vellux material - you could probably find it at a fabric store and cut your own - in my googling I found a cute one at Etsy with edging, a sewn in tape measure and tie strings at the ends so the whole thing could be rolled up - probably not a good idea to try it with beads still inside, though *grin*.

Where there's space left over in the box top, I've put some small plastic containers and the spool of stringing wire. I used the box top, initially, to sort the lighter colored faceted roundel beads from the darker ones, and darker pinched oval beads from the lighter ones, so my finished lanyard necklace would be uniform in color - thus the tiny spoon lying there, which I used to help sort and set aside the unneeded beads.

The bead mat keeps the beads from rolling all over the place and makes it easy to pick them up on the wire since they stay pretty well put, the plastic holders keep the smaller spacers from finding their way under the mat. Since the box top is just 8" x 12", it fits very nicely on the lap.

By the way, here's the finished necklace lanyard, tentatively named "Chateau Picard"

(click image to enlarge)