I Should Be Beading

I feel like I should be beading, but I just finished up another 12 hr work day and my enthusiasm for just about everything is very low. If I didn't have to clean up my office/workroom in order to be able to find anything, I'd probably get to work - but there's a small disaster area behind me where boxes of beads and findings and design boards with miscellaneous beads are piled up 3 and 4 deep...I just don't think I'm going to work up the enthusiasm tonight to tidy up.

Since I don't have any WIP to write about, I will put in a plug for Elise's Shiny Sale - she's listed a great huge lot of lovely jewelry on sale - get your Christmas shopping done early! And feel free, of course, to check out my Etsy store, too.

Shiny, Shiny Sale at Elise's Live Journal

Elisem over on Live Journal, makes lovely jewelry and she's having a huge sale. Visit her display page, pick up some dazzling earrings or a long glittery necklace. And wish her a happy birthday, today!

I bought a couple of her necklaces at Denvention last month - you can see one of them on a few posts ago. Now I'm hoping that the necklace and earrings I just requested haven't already been sold.

And, she has a really cool bead of the month group (botmo) you should check out, too.

Gift of the Magpie

Several months ago I redeemed a Christmas gift certificate from two dear friends, MacAllister and Medievalist, for a Bead of the Month selection from any month. I think I got a "Big Magpie" certificate - although with the selection I received, it might have been "Mother Of All Magpies" - there were certainly a lot of wonderful beads in it.

Well, I've been staring at these beads since they came, trying to decide what I would do with them. I wanted the design to be extra special, since not only were the beads a gift, but the Bead of the Month club is one of Elise Matthesen's endeavors - and you know how much I love her work and appreciate her sense of color, design and whimsy.

Last night I was busy again with the organizing and arranging and *there* were *those* beads. And over *there* were these *other* beads (some favorites of mine that I bought down at Beadology in Huntington Beach back in February) - wait! They would work together really, really well, I thought. And here's what happened:

The necklace lanyard is 34" long. The Botmo beads are the three larger roundells in the center focal area and the larger tablet cut beads. In between are faceted glass rounds with a yellow/gold/olivine and opaque turquoise pattern and faceted small roundells in that same yellow/gold/olivine with faint turquoise swirls inside them separated with seed bead sized gold-plated beads. I love this one - I don't know if I'll be able to part with it!

Now I'm working on something with the aquamarine nuggets, round beads and pale watery-blue chips (glass?) to which I'm adding my own light aqua druk beads, sterling silver beads in 3 sizes and darker aqua glass seed beads. Should be able to post a picture of that tomorrow.

There are still a lot of Botmo beads left, so I'm sure I'll be mentioning them in future designs.

Thank you Mac, Medievalist and Elise!

New Names for My Necklace Lanyards

For the most part I've been giving my pieces names descriptive of the stones or colors in them. I've lately seen a number of bead artists giving evocative names to their pieces, either from quotes or, perhaps, lovely sentiments they've created themselves. I am charmed by and enjoy the thought that goes into the naming.

My pieces sold pretty well at BayCon, so I'm (as mentioned on this blog) hoping to be approved as a dealer at LosCon and am going to look into other cons I can attend. Since most of the people at the cons are SF and Fantasy fans, using SF inspired naming seems like a fun idea, and it represents something I enjoy personally, not just a gimmick. So I was pondering where to get my inspiration for the names of my pieces.

Flash forward to a post about day lilies I clicked on yesterday. There are varieties of day lilies that have been given Star Trek names. I'm a fan, and I got a kick out of looking at the beautiful Borg Technology and Cloaking Device flowers. I've named my most recent pieces with a Star Trek theme, with many thanks to Memory Alpha Wiki to help me find information and quotes.

Here's Tears of Elaan, a short-ish piece at 24" in frosted Czech glass druk beads and iridescent glass seed beads with a larger iridescent Czech glass bead at the ends, best suited for an eyeglass leash. I'm going to also pick a quote from the episode that inspired the name, for each piece. This one comes with the quote from Spock to McCoy at the end of the episode:

"The Enterprise captured his heart long before the Dohlman did"

And almost finished (still need to attach the hardware) this morning, is a longer badge lanyard necklace - approx. 30 - 32", with two sizes of clear glass bicone (diamond) Czech pressed glass beads, separated by silver glass and iridescent glass seed beads. I've named it Treasure of Rigel XII, and the quote, from a conversation between Kirk and Harry Mudd:

"You either believe in yourself or you don't."

First commenter to tell me the name of the Star Trek episodes the necklace names come from, can claim these earrings (Enterprise-A not included), if they'd like:

Home Again

Back from Denver and just a bit worn out. I did have a wonderful time, met some great people - including a lovely and talented beading artist, Elise Matthesen. I bought this necklace and these earrings at the convention plus another necklace "Dawn at White Sands" - I couldn't find a picture of it to link to, so I took my own.

and these earrings, which she made on the spot. We had been talking about a number of things, including how much I love to wear pink (my "uniform" for traveling is pink polo shirts and either beige/khaki/tan pants or jeans) and she just happened to have these lovely milky pink beads lying about.

The final bead related purchase is also SF related - a limited edition book of short stories to mark the revival of the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention in June 2008 titled Glass Bead Games is full of stories inspired by Elise's beaded necklaces. Lois McMaster Bujold, the Worldcon Guest of Honor wrote the introduction, and Elise got her to sign my copy of the book. The other fabulous thing about the book is that it includes a story called "Tideline" by Elisabeth Bear, who won the short fiction Hugo for that very story. I wish I could have gotten her to sign the book, too. Maybe at the next con?

I did an 18" necklace tonight, unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice - need to get some frosted, lower watt bulbs for the lamps. I'll take another in natural light tomorrow and update with it. The beads are small iridescent-coated clear glass drops and iridescent clear glass mini-hexagons (or "wavy diamonds" as some sites sell them) separated by tiny seamless sterling silver spheres and finished off with very small iridescent clear glass spheres for the last few inches.

I'm going to finish off the ceramic lanyard I made in Denver and do some complementary pieces with the rest of the beads from that lot, probably bracelet, earrings and maybe a pendant necklace, just for the heck of it.

Updated picture (on Aug 15th) - not sure it's that much better...but taken in natural light against a better colored background.