2022 Spring/Summer Beaded Jewelry

I've had this bag of beads pulled since the beginning of April but I wasn't feeling like making jewelry for quite a while.  Then I had a baby shower to go to that I got to dress up for and made a new earring design for it. From there someone posted a cute photo of herself wearing a pair of earrings that she had purchased from me and it seemed to have lit the spark to get back to making some jewelry. 

I pulled out the bag of bead colors that have been sitting in my studio and went to work. First making some earrings...

Then I really wanted to play with stripes like I have been on the garage, so the above bracelet happened...

And I got carried away with leaves for a necklace:

The corals and greens are reminding me of past sets from Spring 2015. There were a lot of pinks used back with that grouping which I've apparently replaced with bright purple and lavender. I actually cannot get enough of this matte lavender tiny seed bead.  

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the above lavender crystal earrings but experimentation can easily move into other ideas so who knows where these could go.

I've been beading more than I guess I thought I had been. 

Spike Stripe Earrings

Lately I feel like I've been knitting more than beading, but when I was between 2 dresses for a baby shower I decided to come up with a new earring design that would work for them. Both dresses have stripes. I have been searching the internet for spike and punk designs a LOT while getting wedding ideas so I figured it was time to try my hand at a large spike drop.  

Black and White Spike Stripe Drop

This isn't a great photo put it shows the rainbow 

sheen in the white beads a bit better.

The black and white dress is the one I ended up wearing, it's been a while since I've worn it and it was fun to have these as a new matching piece of jewelry.

Navy and Silver Spike Stripe Drop

I've never really had a good piece of jewelry to match the other dress which is navy with white and orange-red stripes.  It's been really hard to find a real navy seed bead in the past and Miyuki seed beads has this wonderful deep navy color now.

Between these earrings and someone posting a selfie on social media wearing an older earring design I've been inspired to get into my jewelry pieces again. I have some fun new bead colors that are calling to me now that the weather is turning warm and bright with our gardens.

Two Tone Double Weave Look Beaded Bangle and Earrings

 

This bangle started out with the idea of checkers (which I'm so excited they are coming back in to fashion)...then different sizes of checkers. A I beaded the design it ended up moving into looking more like a double weave draft and, frankly, I was thinking of it as one would weave a plaid as I stitched and decided on colors.  

I'm not surprised that after the very involved Fancy Evil Eye bangle that I made last year that something a little more simple is what came to mind to make next. 

 This didn't come out looking at all like the checker pattern I had originally thought about when producing this design, but I'm very pleased with the final piece. I must be in a black/white/grey phase right now since that's what's on my loom at the moment too.  

 As I was beading this piece I kept extending it longer than the initial design. I decided to quit when it started to become cumbersome and too long to hold comfortably while I worked on it.  The bangle ended up being 2 5/8in long. The earrings are 2 1/2 inches long and 5/8 inches wide. I'll get them up on my shop sooner than later. *Edit, the Bangle is HERE and the earrings can be found HERE.*

 Now that spring is here I'm starting to get a little distracted...I plan on finishing our garage roof, planting and cleaning up gardens and continuing to add to the privacy fence of doors. I try to put in some sort of time beading, weaving, sewing every day...some days I'm better at it than others but I am getting much better at understanding that I can only do so much within each 24 hours that I have in a day. I still burn myself out sometimes, but I'm catching it before it happens more often.

Fancy Evil Eye Bangle and Earrings

When I was designing with Evil Eyes in mind, I found so many variations that I couldn't stick to just one, so I drafted 2 different bangles to work with.  I started with the simpler design to see how I felt about this style jewelry.  I also was dragging my feet on picking out colors for this set, I decided to go with one of my defaults, purple.  This particular turquoise was calling to me, so I combined it with one of my favorite neutrals for a base and silver in the middle of the eye.

I'm very happy with how the bangle turned out.  It has the spiraling movement that I felt in a lot of the designs I was looking up. Positivity, Hope and Serenity flowing through my stitching.

The earring set(s) were inspired by all of the mismatched sets I've been seeing lately in the fashion world. I really like the mismatched looks, but I feel like they don't sell well.  

I'm still considering selling this set as 3 different earrings together (above).  It just feels like that's where I wanted this set to go in the first place.

Helen's Tiara

Deadlines are important for me.  I had set to work on this peacock tiara for Helen and since bead embroidery doesn't always keep my attention I kept setting it down.  It's been a year.  When she requested that I get it to her before an event she wants to wear it to in February it started living next to the couch so I would pick it up a little bit every day after work.  I got it done this week and I'm meeting her tonight so she can finish this into a tiara. 

I know Helen through the Ann Arbor Fiberarts Guild which has Fashion show every year where Helen shows off her amazing vintage dance dresses at.  One year I told her if she was ever to want to part with a particular piece, to let me know.  Consequently, she did as it wasn't quite as long as she'd like.  So we have been working on a trade.  When she came to me with this idea I was excited to do it and she even had a design to work off of for the peacock feathers.  We got the size down and she gave me some vintage beads to work with.  I also used gold and silver from my stash to make it a versatile metallic piece to go with many of her outfits.

(back side detail)

I was very attracted to the amber colored vintage seed beads she gave me so I'm hoping it's not too brown-heavy.  I kept picking them out as I went along.  I'm happy to breath a sign of relief having this done early enough to give her some time with it.

I found two articles on Helen if you want to took into her more, I'm not sure she has a website (I'll ask tonight and update if so):

https://www.designsfordancing.com/Helen-Welford.html

https://annarborobserver.com/articles/sewing_up_history.html#.XiRh_flKipp

This is the piece that we traded for, it's just wonderful 

and I make sure I have occasion to wear it.  <3 p="">

(Photo by Eat Pomegranate Photography)

I almost forgot that I wanted to do a weaving update too.  I'm about 8 inches along on the large Leaf Me Alone piece that I've been putting off working on for far too long!  I did a few small ones but its time to go bigger again.

Triple Pod Earrings and Open Leaf Snap Bracelet

The triple pod earrings are some of my favorites right now, I decided they would fit well with my holiday dress this year.  I was just going to do a black and white combo of the pods, but then I was looking closer at my dress and I realized that the white lace portion had black outlines in it.  So I chose to make the pods all white and silver with black edging. 

White based earrings pop against my darkish brown hair, especially when I wear it down.  The silver sparkle looked really lovely at the bottoms of these earrings and gave some extra glitter. 

This bracelet was inspired by the white with black edging of the earrings, but I wanted it to be more simple.  This is the second bracelet I've ever made with this snap closure that helps make the bracelet look like it has no clasp at all.   This first type of this bracelet can be seen HERE.

I was on a roll, so I made these thin dangle earrings too.  I wore one of these in my second piercing on my one ear along side the triple pod earrings, you can see them worn together below.  I love the look of all the beads together.  Of course, it's what I do. :)

Jax dress lace detail.

Layered earring look.

Bryan and I at his office holiday party.  <3 p="">

Aziraphale x Crowley Bangle

For Halloween this year Bryan thought we should be Crowley and Aziraphale from the book/Amazon show Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen.  Some Halloweens costume research inspires me to create new jewelry designs.  This year I've been looking at a lot of angel wings. 

I had a more traditional image in mind, wings evenly spread aligned next to each other.  The more images I looked at of Crowley and Aziraphale with their wings crossed or spread next to each other, the more the idea of showing both angel and demon wings together in one piece emerged.  

If you've been following along on Instagram, I appreciate all the likes and comments as I've been beading along!

I am so pleased as to how this piece turned out.  It also seems to go with all of the outfits I'm wearing to work right now.  It shows both black and white, the black wings lined in a matte silver and the white wings lined in a matte 24K gold bead.  

I'm also trying to post videos a bit more often.  I would say I'm no good at editing, but it's a start and I figure the more I do it, the more I'll learn (and laugh at old videos).  I think I cut the beginning of this one too much, but it shows part of my process on this bangle:

So here's a video of my slow process, showing a little bit of beading on this bangle.

Halloween, Earrings and Kittens (oh my)

Wow, I've been so busy that I haven't had a minute to blog and take photos.  Mainly I've been working on fill for galleries for the holidays which does start in mid October.  We took in 2 kittens that came to us on our walk through the park one night, which have been a handful.  Then our Halloween Party and the following month we hosted Thanksgiving. I'm still settling in to my job at White House Black Market, I think I'll get better at blogging once I have that and some household things under control.

(We went as Leela and Fry from the show Futurama for Halloween)

(The cats were not forced to dress up, only take photos)

Recently I did make something for myself though.  The set that matches the dress I wore in June is at a gallery and I was wearing the same dress the other night for Bryan's company holiday party.  I decided to put the dress with a bright blue/teal pair of heels and happened to have just purchased beads the same color in clear matte.

So in my usual form, I made myself a large pair of earrings for the event, which we had a great time at.

The next place I'll be showing my jewelry is at REACH's Not So Silent Night Event on December 9th, 2017.  This is always a great event, plus it benefit's an awesome creative part of our community!

(Kittens love to "help" hence things taking a bit longer these days, this is Lois in the background, 

she loves spilling beads and playing with jewelry.)