More Checkers [earrings]

Tan & Light Yellow Checker Huggie Earrings 

can be purchased HERE

I've felt a bit...overwhelmed and lost lately. I haven't gotten to my next weaving on my big loom because I need to dye for it. I have a weave structure that I want to play with on my little loom but I don't have specific imagery in mind for it...I need a bit more direction to get motivated for that weaving. So. Beading checkers. Talking out the weaving issue with my husband led me to the fact I probably need to just start with checkers on the little loom too. Checkers are my default. 

Meanwhile I've been wearing my various colored checker huggie earrings a lot. They're lightweight, easy and out of the way, I've made a few more in different colors. Above is the yellow and champagne checkers, below I was inspired to bead with 24K gold plated seed beads. I did a spray finish to help with the plated finish but these should not be rubbed or exposed to much water, if any. 

Purchase Gold & Olive Green Checker Huggies HERE

I thought that the gold with white would be a classy neutral, I made those first (below). One of the clothing additions to my collection is an olive green midi skirt that I'm leaning towards accessorizing with gold, thus olive green and gold checkers was the next obvious stitching (above). 

And last, checker circlet earrings. I don't lean towards red much, especially wearing it, but, some of my favorite ska band tees are red and I had the red, white and black beads out already for the Resist Bangle. So these large circlet earrings also came to be.

Shop Circlet Earrings HERE

I took checkers to the next personal level adding them to my slowly growing tattoo collection. I have wanted a checker arm band tattoo since my late teens, early 20's. Back then I thought it'd go on my upper arm, but in my 40s...well, thank goodness I waited because upper arms can get weird (mine included) and they may have not looked as even 20 years later. I decided instead to have them tattooed below the elbow of right arm. I went with my friend (for her first tattoo!) we decided to do a walk-in and I ended up with Mo (@mo.mo.tattoos on Instagram) who did an amazing job lining up a very straight, linear design on a very not-straight part of my body. The idea for my checkers probably started with ska music, but they also satisfy my attraction to even numbers, multiples of 2 and 4, things fitting together in a certain way, and a way in which I am constantly using to express myself in my artwork. Checkers just always feel right.

Last night on our way out the door to go to see Cake
Made by me: Olive and Gold checker earrings

Green, Neon and Neutral Checker Bangle

Totally Tank, design by by Jessie Maed Designs

Resist Bangle in Red

I think this bangle speaks for itself. My artwork, or me for that matter, haven't had a tendency to be political. I work with words that I need to release, that I'm pondering, journaling, struggling with. Lately my words, emotions, fears and sadness have very much revolved around the current political landscape. (I just moved a lot of ranting to my journal rather than posting it here...).

Sticking to speaking technically, I'm thrilled at how well this font translated into my bangle form. I am even more thrilled at how much the shadow added to the design. I was searching for color ideas relating to "resist" and the drop shadow showed up in a few fists-up resist images so I added it in to my design. 

Red seemed like the obvious starting point for this first Resist bangle, I believe there will be more and other colors to come. 

I toyed with how much of the red I should fill in the top over the "R" and up to the dot on the "i." Ultimately I just kept beading until I got really bored of stitching red beads and checked with Bryan to see if he thought the little bit of the dot in the i looked OK sticking up. I like it, it's just a little blip up, short enough that it won't catch on things making it much easier to wear. 

Resilience Bangle

Shop HERE

I didn't expect to start beading and finish this bangle on our short trip to Chicago at the beginning of this month but it was done in like 2 days. That doesn't include the designing and picking out beads but that's still a really quick turnover for me on a bangle this size whos pattern doesn't repeat. A 4 hour train ride and quiet, comfortable hotel can do wonders for my production. 

After creating my "nope." (Golden Boundary) bangle last year I realized it's time to start putting my word themes into my beaded jewelry. Then it dawned on me...statement bangles....why it took me 20 years to put that one together...

I've been called resilient repeatedly in the past 7ish years. It finally started to sink in. The more things thrown my way, the better I bounce back stronger both mentally and physically. I'm in a good place these days (thanks to my golden boundary and sobriety). Resilience has become a clear theme for me. So I created a big bold Bauhaus version of this bangle. 

I think the font translated well. I find playing with fonts in all of my work to be really fun. When I was thinking of what colors to use I thought maybe greens was a good starting point and when I asked Bryan what color he thought of when he thinks of Resilience, he said green too which solidified the color direction for this first bangle. I already feel like making another one in different colors, probably a rainbow direction. 

Bryan and I in Chicago

I Voted for Kodos, Cobra Lounge, Chicago

This bangle was finished just before a test in our resilience. It's been a crazy 3ish weeks. It started with a short trip to Chicago for 3 days for an I Voted for Kodos show, a fun little getaway. We stayed in the West Loop and liked the Sonder hotel set up so much that we also booked it for Riot Fest in September. I managed to come home drained and super sick, so on Thursday after getting what I needed to get done in my department I left work early to sleep. Bryan woke me up around 10:30pm to see if I wanted to eat and while we were eating a yummy marinated grilled chicken that he had made a weather warning and tornado sirens started. Before we really got going to grab cats and get to the basement, a HUGE boom and crash happened. I was so sick and out of it that I didn't realize at first that a tree had come through our dining room window. Like 8 feet from where we were sitting on the couch. Lois shot down into the basement and we had to go find the boys (kitties). My impulse was to start dealing with the tree situation but I made myself go to the basement to wait out whatever damage was going to happen. 

Tree in our dining room window

Tree from the outside the next day

When the warnings stopped we kept the cats in the basement and started to figure out what to do next. We had a tree come through the window and a tree next to it come down on our cars. I got on the phone (on hold for forever) with our insurance company while we cleaned up the window, glass and cut back the tree. Our insurance company set us up with ServPro for disaster relief, they were over first thing in the morning looking everything over and getting approval to have the immediate issues taken care of. The tree company made it out in the afternoon and removed the tree from the window and off our cars. Miraculously our cars were mostly unscathed and working. The tree guy took a peek at our back yard and said he hadn't seen anything that bad since 2023. With the privacy fence (and yes, all my doors) crushed and fallen, we've met our next door neighbors (they've only been there 2 years) and are sorting out what to do next. 

So many trees and branches down...

I'm thankful everything was triaged quick enough to make sure our cars were good and we made it to the Devin Townsend and Tesseract show in Detroit that we've had tickets for since December. We were tired, but it was VERY worth making it to this concert. 

We have a long way to go to get the back yard cleaned up and figure out what insurance will be taking care of and getting our own quotes to put the house and back yard together. Just one more project, which is turning into a bit of a creative project. The problem with two creatives trying to clean up a fallen forest of a large yard is there's a lot of "look at how cool this log ended up with the bark peeled off" and "check out this cool stick!"...there is a cool stick pile and cool log pile started. I'm sure there will be more to come on that. 

Resilience, onward and upward.

Checker Huggie Earrings, Definitely Ska

While I was on on roll making huggie earrings, I went with a bunch of checker options. Checker is basically a baseline in my own wardrobe so it's nice to have the go-to black and white ones along with some colors depending on what I'm feeling like that day. The original black and white ones I was wear sold over the holidays so I had to start with a new pair of those.

Black and White Checker Huggie Earrings

My obsession with checker melds somewhere within my love of ska or "two-tone" music and love of nice even numbers, particularly multiples of 4. You may notice these are all 8 beads wide, the checkers in 4s. It's just very satisfying for me to work this way. 

Black and Blue Checker Huggie Earrings

I'm getting into whatever colors inspire me. Orange has been on the forefront for the last year: 

Black and Orange Checker Huggie Earrings

Purple is a staple in my life along with checkers: 

Black and Faceted Purple Huggie Earrings

I also made a pair of lime green and black ones, but Bruce has been playing on my table in the studio and I think he must have hid them somewhere on me. I have been digging around for them hoping to get them posted (or make a new pair) but alas, I'll just have to wait for them to turn up in a studio cleaning session. I am on to beading other things to send to the Crooked Tree Arts Center Shop in Traverse City.

Combining Bangles

Back when I was trying to make lower priced "stuff" to sell I started making "tiny bangles" for $20. Even $20 didn't feel good when I sold them due to the amount of work that I put into these bangles. I had made enough to fill a display and they've been floating around my studio and pop-ups for years now, occasionally 1 or 2 selling. I've gotten really tired of looking at them and they tend to represent the years when I had a desperation to sell something, anything. Now that I'm in a really good place and only make what I feel inspired to make I've been cleaning out my studio and removing anything that I don't like anymore or I'll cut it up to reuse the materials. 

These tiny bangles were initially on the chopping block but I have a hard time cutting up anything I've made, even if it's something I no longer like. I created them to be an option to layer with other bracelets and each other. The issue is that being only 2 or 3 beads wide doesn't allow them to keep a good bangle structure. So they end up a bit floppy and unattractive (in my mind). I'd layer them for a pop of color with other bracelets but now that I barely wear jewelry they just take up space that I'd like to reclaim.

One of my recent studio cleaning days I decided I might be able to put some of them together to make the bigger bangles that I like better. I put the first one together (above) and now I like it! They're actually fun to play with which stripes and solids go well together. It's a fun practice of putting together colors and designs in a direction I wouldn't usually take. 

Creative play has become more important to me than making to sell. I'm seeing more and more artists and makers throwing in the towel because they can't make enough to cover time, supplies, studio, not to mention the amount of work it takes to constantly post on social media, update websites etc. When we have to make to sell instead of play and discover it looses all the fun. I was starting to have days where it was more fun going to work at my day job then hunkering down in the studio. Ok, that still happens too.

This year has started to be a lot more about playing and rediscovering why I love fiber art rather than making any final products. It's more about process, play, design, new techniques and color. 

Abigail's Wedding Hair Pins

I dabble in bead embroidery when it's needed for specific pieces. In these cases I'm usually matching or complimenting some other design.  For example the bead embroidered Tiara piece that I created for Helen a few years ago. When some of my dear friends announce that they are getting married I offer to bead something for them for their wedding outfit if it calls for it. Not everyone takes me up on it, and if I don't think I can do what they want I let them know. 

Detail photo I was working off of from Abigail

Abigail asked if it was possible to do some beadwork for her hair that went with her dress. She sent me plenty of photos of the beadwork on her dress and sizes of beads and sequins to work with. I wasn't sure I could do it since I've never worked with sequins before but I started researching and playing. As I went down the sequin rabbit-hole I found this fabulous website to purchase sequins. 

I stitched a few pieces at a time on one piece of satin

I compiled white, off white and silver beads from my stash along with ordering a few different sequins that I thought would hopefully work. I mailed the sequin samples to Abigail to compare to her dress...whites and the various finishes are so hard to photograph and guess at! Once I had enough information and color options I started stitching. 

I always think that I don't like bead embroidery but these were super-fun. I was really amazed at how well they clustered together in Abigail's hair for her wedding. Her hair dresser did an amazing job at making the ones she chose to use look like they were all one piece. Her hair dresser had requested I put them on 2 inch U-pins which I ordered from Amazon. 

Abigail's Wedding Hair!

We had such a great time at all of the wedding festivities and getting to catch up with friends old and new. I'm always honored to have something that I handmade as part of a friend's wedding. Thank you for including us and congrats Abigail and Juan!

Lastly, I loved photographing these. I wished I had a macro lens to really get better detail of the sequins and beads together.  I'm am by no means a professional photographer but I took a lot of photos as close as I could get.  The shapes drew me in. So this blog post has extra photos!