Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Squared Bangle in Yellow Variation


I finished this piece a few months ago but keep forgetting to blog about it.  I keep thinking I had already because I've been wearing it a lot.  I guess I had first crested this design in 2010 with the first bangle inspired by a dress/tuinc piece that I had bought.  The blog post about that one can be found HERE


The original was a 4 pattern repeat in design but I had not repeated the colors.  This bangle (and the one I made over the holidays this past year) do repreat in color.  I like them both ways, the color repeating is easier to do and keep track of but sometimes I just have to use as meany different color beads and finishes as I possibly can.  



The original earring design for this bangle was a large square and small square with uneven edges, I decided to go a different route and just pull my basic sized eearring from the original bangle design itself and I think it is a much more successful design.  

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Playing with St. Petersburg Chain Jewelry Ideas


I'm giving a lexture and workshop with the Weavers Guild of Kalamazoo coming up in April and May (I'm the April Meeting Speaker on 4/13/2020 and the Workshop is on 5/02/2020).  Since the workshop is on the St. Petersburg Chain Stitch I'm working on my talk circling around how I use that stitch.  


This always pushes me to think about how else could I use this stitch?  So this is a new little set I came up with thinking about that.  The earrings are 3 rows of St. Petersburg Chain stitch, the bracelet is one row on each side of my netting sittch. 


The beads aren't suite lining up how I want them to between the St. Petersburg Chain and the Netting so I'm going to give it another try soon.  I do like that the pearl and loop closure can hook anywhere along this bracelet to get the correct size if it needs to go smaller.


I used the below blue beads for some of the accents in the above pieces.  I'm so enamored with this color that I made a small pair of leaf earrings in them.  They include some glass beads that I picked up on our trip to Wisconsin last summer.


I apologize for the poor photos, I was trying to get them quick and the sun was too bright, plus I didn't take the extra time to clean all the cat hair off of all my display things so they seem a bit extra fuzzy.

Thursday, February 6, 2020

Lavender Leaf Jewelry Set


I finally finished this lavender leaf jewelry set.  I think I started on the chain last fall and got distracted with something else (Halloween, Holiday shows, work....)  Thinking about it now, October through New Years is just a whirlwind and I barely remember it. Things are finally slowing down a little bit.  Enough for me to finish some jewelry and get back to my weaving loom!  Anyway, I took some quick photos of this set, the light balance isn't great, but it's a current favorite, which usually means I get to wear it a handful of times and then it sells fast.



The colors in it are really a lavender with antique-looking off white faceted seed beads that I work with a lot.  There's 1 lariat necklace, a large leaf bracelet which can be shortened at the loop at the base of the last leaf for a smaller wrist.  I usually don't make them this way, but I liked how the leaf points off of the bracelet and down your wrist (see how it's clasped below).





And two matching earring options, a small faceted leaf and a pair of my leaf cluster earrings.





Playing with Fire (Small Weaving)

I doodled these matches back in 2015. I had gotten divorced, I was out a lot and "playing with fire" was feeling like the best des...