badge

badge
of course, it's:

Saturday, December 6, 2014

BEAD HOARDERS BLOG HOP

Well I didn't do it. The date came and I was not prepared. It being the month of Christmas I actually had to make jewelry for real people. Plus ever since I took Joyce Scott's intensive workshop my skill have improved but my execution seems to have gone downhill. Then I got a puppy, who devoured all the energy and attention I had. Well I don't have that puppy anymore. I gave him up, to my brother who lives in a more rural area where the dog will have more room. But how I loved the puppy and that puppy loved me back. So now the cat is strutting around the house, chest out. He thinks he got rid of the puppy, demolished the competition. I love my cat and while the puppy was here I had little time for the cat. So he thinks he did all this. And he's heen helping me with everything. In one photo you can see him helping with the jewelry photographs.
You would think since the house was quieter I would have gotten some lovely art bead jewelry to show you. But I made nothing. So Im showing a selection of my latest work, beaded styrofoam balls and a bracelet from my i=unchained sequence as well as a present bracelet for a bead swap partner in Louisiana. Its lovely but I was very dissatisfied with it, so I mean to make her a shiny Christmas bracelet too.

from my unchained series

here you can see the chains and the helping paw


two pictures of my spiral rope /Russian rope bracelet with toggle clasp

 styrofoam ball and peyote stitch

my wonderful cat and bead helper, he likes to type on the computer, too

Lori Anderson www.PrettyThingsBlog.com  (Hostess)

Evelyn Shelby http://raindropcreationsbyevelyn.blogspot.com
Terri Gauthier http://terrisbloomingideas.blogspot.com/
Lisa Knappenberger LIRaysaDesigns.blogspot.com
Mary Lindell marylindell.com
Niky Sayers silverniknats.blogspot.co.uk
Patricia Handschuh thecolorofdreams.blogspot.com
Maria Rosa Sharrow willowstreetshops.blogspot.com
Kathleen Breeding www.99bobotw.blogspot.com
Michelle Escano www.cabbycraft.com
Sheila Prose www.catswithbeads.blogspot.com  you are here
Kari Asbury www.hippiechickdesign.blogspot.com
Ghislaine Kruse-van Erp www.kruseartllc.com
Rachel Mallis www.mintmonarch.com/#!Blog/c1jlz
Susan McClelland www.mistheword12.com
Nicole Valentine www.nvalentine.blogspot.com
Blanca Medina www.peru-medesigns.com
Roxanne Mendoza www.roxidesigns.blogspot.com
Bridget Torres www.shears58.net
Kelly Hosford Patterson www.TravelingSideShow.blogspot.com
Robin Kae Reed                                          http://www.willowdragon.blogspot.com/
Melissa Trudinger                                      https://beadrecipes.wordpress.com/
Regina Wood                                                  http://gina-design.blogspot.com/
Posted by at 13 comments:

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Art Charm Auction

http://myworld.ebay.com/glassaddictions    ART CHARM AUCTION ON EBAY!!

4 blue charms
A while back, B.P. I signed up for the art charm exchange run by Jennifer Cameron for Beads Of Courage. This was in my old life, before Puppy. Then I got the puppy and in a wink, my life changed, I became a mother again and little things like beads  had to be slotted in between my rambunctious new baby. Somehow two new things added on to my life is , well, not overwhelming but I’m pretty busy right now
The most amazing part of the Art Charm Excjhange for me was the way I had an idea. I don’t feel creative. so when I actually get an idea, ONE whole idea, its cause for me to celebrate.
I like the idea of Beads of Courage. I like the idea of telling a story using beads. Prayer beads are an old tradition in the religion I was raised with.  Andr recently I met the bead artist  Joyce Scott. All her beads had stories attached, stones that had significance, old necklaces made by her mother, its and pieces made by artists and craftswomen around the world.
When I was a little girl I was seriously religious. My experience of beads was the rosary where we said the lovely words in order, hail mary, full of grace, blessed art thou amognst women. Growing up I provided myself with necklaces by doing daisy flower chains. I loved the colors, pristine white, blue for sanctity, sunshine yellow.  I learned that the concept of prayer beads existed long before Christianity. In the telling of the rosary one practices a meditation. In the telling of a Beads of Courage a child learns better  ways to tell a story .
I decided to make my charms as little tiny necklaces on the  warped squares from Kate McKinnons book Contemporary Geometic Beadwork part 1. The blue warped squares fulfilled the concept of soaring as they looked like little kites or bits of sky. I put many colored beads around them, as I went I made up a story for each charm, here were the doctors visits, then yellow for chemotherapy, white for medicines that worked. I tries to add a brown bead to symbolize hair falling out and a black bead was to mean someone dying. So each charm was like a little story in itself.  Then I branched out and made necklaces all one color and others with white cloud picots.
Photographing the beads was not easy, I used many new strategies; a new tripod from RobinShowstack at Besd Hoarders destash; a big art pad; the zoom and flash, and  I put the puppy in his crate, much to his distress, or it would have been Beads for Busy Dogs. Slow and steady, I photographed the beads and listed them. I also drew some sketches. If I knew how to do it, I would ornament this page. Since I don't, her


my art charm

Add upside-down, some sketches I made of the charms

some charms, these all had a bird theme, well except the butterfly.







various samples charms I made



























2014 Art Charm Exchange Participants


Jennifer Cameron: http://www.glassaddictions.com/blog
Alenka Obid: http://pepita-handmade.blogspot.com
Alicia Marinache: http://www.allprettythings.ca
Andrea Glick: http://zenithjade.blogspot.com
Caroline Dewison: http://blueberribeads.blogspot.co.uk
Cassi Paslick: http://badatbeingmom.blogspot.com/
Cate van Alphen: http://fulgorine.wordpress.com
Cheri Reed: http://creativedesignsbycheri.blogspot.com
Chris Eisenberg: http://www.wanderware.blogspot.com
Cory Tompkins: http://www.tealwaterdesigns.blogspot.com
Elizabeth Auld: http://www.beadsforbusygals.com
Genevieve Gabbert: http://www.glassaddictions.com/blog
Jami Shipp: http://celebratinglifewithdamamashipp.blogspot.com
Jenny Davies-Reazor: http://www.jdaviesreazor.com/bl
Jill Bradley: http://www.jillybeads.bloog
Jill Bradley: http://www.jillybeads.blogspot.com
Kim Dworak: http://www.cianciblue.blogspot.com
Lee Koopman: http://stregajewellry.wordpress.com
Lennis Carrier: http://www.windbent.net
Lesley Watt: http://www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.com
Mallory Hoffman: http://rosebud101-fortheloveofbeads.blogspot.com
Melissa Trudinger: http://beadrecipes.wordpress.com
Michelle McCarthy:
Monique Urquhart: http://ahalfbakednotion.blogspot.com/
Moriah Betterly: http://mlbetterly.blogspot.com
Nancy Dale: http://nedbeads.blogspot.com
Nancy Smith: http://wirednan.blogspot.ca
Niky Sayers: http://silverniknats.blogspot.co.uk
Perri Jackson: http://ShaktipajDesigns.com/blog/
Renetha Stanziano: http://www.lamplightcrafts.blogspot.com
Shai Williams: http://www.shaihasramblings.com/2014/11/art-charm-exchange-auction.html
Sheila Prosterman: http://catswithbeads.blogspot.com
Susan Delaney: http://susandolphindelaney.wordpress.com
Susan Kennedy: http://www.suebeads.blogspot.com
Terri DelSignore: http://artisticaos.blogspot.com
Toltec Jewels: http://www.jewelschoolfriends.com
Vanessa Gilkes: http://culturezine.com/blog/

Posted by at 11 comments:

Sunday, November 2, 2014

I got a puppy

Wayback B.P., oh a whole week ago, I had another life and planned to do OH so many things. One of these was the Art Charm Exchange for Beads of Courage. I was taken by the concept, using beads to tell a very difficult story. I made charms and sent them to Jennifer Cameron, who coordinates the Charm Exchange and runs the Charity Auction associated with it.  Jennifer is capable of multitasking where I can hardly cope with my life with added puppy. On November 14 we will have the Auction on EBAY
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, August 23, 2014

The Woodland Christmas challenge

I  am so happy I get to participate in this challenge. The minute I heard of it I knew exactly what I wanted to make for it, Paula Adams pagoda ornament, a free pattern on her website. I’d seen one made by and I was entranced. I was glad for an excuse to try making it. but…, a big but, when I tried to find the pattern again, it (the browser) told me I was forbidden to access it.
But, again, I had a realization. Paula Adams ornaments were almost identical to Kate McKinnons geometric ropes, with a lot of crystal and fringe added. and since I’d spent all winter working on Kate’s designs, I thought I could deconstruct the pagoda ornament and produce a similar, not identical design. After ordering delicas, crystals and other such gauds, I set to work. And it is working
For my second work I wanted to make a magatams pinecone as the magatamas were some of the only beads I had that went with the dark woodland colors that that palette demanded. Adding some gold for sparkle, I uses deep green and gold beads to make a cone shape, also from Kate McKinnons book and added magatamas to the sides. Never having used magatamas before, I piled up the mistakes. Undoing my work several times, because I’ve learned thats the only thing that You can do when things go badly wrong, I ended up lining up each magatama in the way and order it was being used. More mistakes were made sewing them on. But I took it apart again and again until I was satisfied. 
The ridiculousness of this design contest struck me when i found aa complete Saint Nicholaus doll just like the one in the picture. Would he help me set the scene. You betcha! I toyed with the idea of bead animals but discarded that as too time-consuming .
After days of effort, I made something nice. My own attempt at designing didn’t work so well, so I bought a pattern. Its a simple pattern and I should have been able to think of it myself, but I didn’t. So thats one pine cone and pine-branch lariat down. Thank you, Deb Moffatt-Hall for the simple but elegant pattern. Now I’m, working on a second lariat, this one by Carol Wilcox-Wells. This one, although a simple spiral rope, is more complex, with a lot of counting and I’ve had to make modifications and be very specific about which kind of beads go where, as there are multiple thread passes through some of the beads
Now its time to take the pictures and try to post them online. The funny thing about this contest is I really don’t want to win it because it has a booby prize. If you win you have to hold the next contest. And in the past I have found I am really bad on things that need follow-through and commitment. Although, even saying that, I’ve already picked an artist and picture if by a miracle I do win.
christmas dalek

the marriage of christmas dalek and christmas cake

pine cone lariat, courtesy of Deb Moffat-Hall

I made the pine-cone

bracelet mistake

Posted by at 3 comments:

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Oh,OH OH Bulgaria!

What do I have a blog for. To post sad stories of how my husband and friend all have cancer and are going to die?
NO?
 TO POST GLORIOUS PICTURES LIKE THIS ONE!
Attribution; wikimedia open license;
The Joker, GIJoe, Ronald McDonald,Superman, Santa Claus, Captain America and Robin strike a blow for Good Old Glorious
Freedom!!!
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, August 2, 2014

CHOOSEY CHICK LOOSES CHICKLET

. 
Let me start out by mentioning that my chicklet is orange. When I got it it made me laugh because orange is a color I think I hate yet if given a choice of colored objects, i always choose orange.
Of course, I misplaced the chicklet. I searched everywhere and couldn't find it. I panicked and posted about it on Linda’s new site"Bead Peeps" and to my surprise I got an email from Toltec  Jewels that Sue Kennedy  had heard of my plight and offered to replace the bead. Of course, by then I had found the bead again.(It was with a collection of orange beads I had put together to go with my orange chuckle 0t But how kind Sue was to offer to replace the bead.
Next I came up with a grandiose scheme, I would make a butterfly and use the bead under to attach a flower to it. After three attempts to producee a butterfly, I managed to come up with oner,f,rom a  Katherina Kostinsky  design: Catopsilla Solstitia,which I mangled,, but which still made a spectacular butterfly. Three more attempts to get the freeform flower done and I managed to produce a posie.  It consisted of a left-over butterfly wing and a green stem with leaves that I stiffened with wire. After producing this orange confection, I found there was no  place for my little chicklet to go on it. 
So with only a few days left I had to come up with a new idea, which was not easy. I ended up redoing a bracelet I had made before, with elastic stringing material and some sort of white  jasper bead with a what looks like black writing with splashes of orange on them, and half the bracelet done as a flat spiral, in orange, of course. Unlike the butterfly, the bracelet is very wearable.


14 colors of bead for the butterfly
















I managed to provide myself with a lot of drama. I had a purpose to direct my beadwork. I learned a lot, new skills like: sort of reading a peyote chart graphic, and I tried things that my skill level wasn’t quite up to before.  In many ways I enjoyed this challenge more that the bead soup blog hop, where my desires  in no ways matched my skills. Now I've become a bit more competent, more able to get the beads to do what I want them to do. I am planning to try another butterfly, using more uniform beads and I will wear my little bracelet with pride. 





Some time in the future I'm going to be like all the big girls and have a  contest on my blog, I've got a great prize, OH, No its a book, isn't it?!
Posted by at 18 comments:

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Death comes for us all

My mother has come back and gone away again. Taking care of her can be as hard thing as can be. Sometimes she moans on each breath and I say"Be Quiet!" As she falls silent I feel so mean, yet when she makes her constant piteous noises I feel like I am going insane along with her. She says she feels spread out over everything. She has lost herself.Sometimes she is more creative in her despair than she is when she is more aware. I bead silently on. I am making some great bracelets, I seem to have MRAW down and am getting mastery of the zig-wing. These are giant steps for me. I am making fewer mistakes too.
Now my mother is dead. People don't use that word. Instead they use circumlocutions;''she passed',"your loss', I want to say: she's dead, dead. The night I put here in the hospital, I left after staying with her in the emergency room and I felt like I could do anything.I still have that feeling, how odd, that a person's death could leave you with a feeling of accomplishment.
I seem to be better at everythingIi do. Goodness knows my mother wasn't capable. While she did a lot, it was all at the order of my father, he would depose and she would struggle to do.
What  I never really saw about my mother was how negative she was. All my life I had been puzzled because my parents always told me. "You can do anything" But I couldn't do anything. It wasn't till my mother came to live with me that I really heard the other message. She would say,"You can't do it Sheila, its too hard". She would say this even while I did all the things she was telling me were too hard for me to do. And so I realized I had internalized her message and it had left me totally unable to cope with life. But lately I came to realize, if you just do things that need doing, they will get done.
my mother on a good day

mom sleeping in bed. she stayed in bed for 3 years

So I came to outgrow my mother and her constant  negative messages. These last years, she became childlike and I became that adult in our relationship. Her death seemed fitting, a rebirth into nothingness, a subsiding into the place she came from. Her consciousness extinguished, her time on the earth  was over. I thought I would be lost without my mother, but instead, I am stronger than all that.
Meanwhile, my skill at peyote has increased, I can now read those charts that baffled me and I have an easy alternative way to start it. Long live MRAW
Posted by at No comments:

Friday, July 11, 2014

Mom in Hospital , All's not Well with the World

WELL, well, well.
 Mom is in the hospital and I've joined another blog hop. My mother is in the hospital ,confused and miserable. They want to give her electro-shock treatment. They want to see if she will agree to it. I can't imagine it being good for her in any way. She already feels really bad all the time. She is too fragile to go through the number of shock treatments that will be needed.  I was warned by the author of the book"Knocking on Heaven's Door" ; Katy Butler.  Doctors are in the life business while my mother and I are working on getting a death going.  In the meantime my mother holds on to me with all her strength and I feel like she is trying to clamber up me to escape her death, pushing me to the ground, inadvertently, of course, but that is the effect. She is so desperate, and for what, even she doesn't know?
The one bright spot in my life is this blog hop. I am too wasted to do anything else. I will have three days respite and then its back to caring for my mother.
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, July 5, 2014

quickie in NYC

Last week events in my life collided in a big way. My mother was taken to the hospital a few days before I was to go to New York, to see Kate McKinnon speak. Those of you who have followed my blog know that Kate McKinnon is my guiding muse, the style of beadwork she and her team of dedicated bead weavers have pioneered the style of weaving i aspire too. I had really wanted to go to New York to hear her speak and to meet her, and I got the chance to do just that when the New York Beading Society sponsored a talk by her at The Fashion Institute of Technology.
I arrived late for the talk, New York always overwhelms me. But I was in time to hear her inspiring words as she described how the new designs were discovered and found, in nature as perfect triangles, in our hands as we find the new shapes and colors, in our minds as we push forward into new territory. A new frontier in beads, who could have foreseen it. Most encouraging to me was hearing that even she makes mistakes. Many mistakes.
Last, as a treat, we got to have our pictures taken with Kyle?. I got up and grabbed the boldest piece I could find, a full neck wrap in black and white with memory wire and had a picture taken. I talked a bit with Kate, who graciously remembered me and gave me a copy of her book, to give away when I got my brand new copies that I had already bought.
Back home, my tiny mother deteriorated in Mt Auburn Hospital. Brought there for a fall, when I finally got her released she was in diapers and bedridden. Her deterioration has been so fast we are all in shock. No one else will change her diapers but me. Only  feed her. There is a family meeting scheduled for Sunday. What can we do. She is so helpless
Posted by at 1 comment:
A quick post giveaway from Lori Anderson, a Lark book about seed-beading that will fir right in here. But I never win.
http://www.prettythingsblog.com/2014/07/calling-all-seed-beaders-book-giveaway.htmlhttp://www.prettythingsblog.com/2014/07/calling-all-seed-beaders-book-giveaway.html
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Missoni Knit

missoni sweater fabric, courtesy of Freddie Baer
Just bought two yards of this gorgeous Missoni knit fabric, when a friend posted a picture of it on Facebook. I'm hoping to have it made into a skirt with something left over for , well anything really. This new appreciation for fabric has come to me courtesy of Bead Journal Project, where I feel like a moving train wreck of disaster as I do asocial thing by stupid mistake by misstatement and every
other clumsy foolish thing i do when trying to fit in with people. I feel like I should take the pledge will not speak in public or post on Facebook, I will not lurk. Save me from myself is become my motto.
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, May 10, 2014

finally, its here:Bead Soup BlogParty

                                                    ITS been an interesting few months.

 This is something I did for the BEAD Journal Project. I used some of Rose's beads in it. Then I promptly lost the rest of the hank.
a part of a necklace

the bead soup I got

don't worry, I sent lots more beads to Rose

clasp



    Thank you Lori Anderson for hosting this blog hop and doing it through some seriously stressful times.


    There has been the challenge of the beads and the fustration with the pictures. Add in a trip to New York City for the Bead Show and the passing of our coldest of winters into a flower drenched  spring. I've learned a lot, with an epic web journey into lamp working and an exploration of polymer clay, both of which I knew nothing about before  this blog hop.
I was so excited about this blog hop. Excited to get my beads. Enjoyed reading and looking, especially enjoyed the great bead mystery photos. Most of all I've been beading. I've done some lovely geometric beadwork inspired by Kate McKinnon and Diane Fitzgerald. One of the pieces shown here tonight used Diane Fitzgeralds' oval links, a single layer with a stabilizing row of peyote to stiffen them. I used the clasp I got from Rose Thorn on this and  it definitely the best thing I made. I made three other pieces, one was a brick stitch chain with a triangular two sided bezel, which I designed myself, only to find Diane FitzGerald giving instructions for the identical bezel. This bezel holds the jasper Rose sent me. I did a spiral rope, also in purple, to use the purple beads from my soup. Last, I made a necklace, called Bronze Evening from a pattern on Beadsmagic.com. That necklace I made with the brown beads I got, bugles and the
ones I called disco balls.  I used a lovely clasp, a purple enamel bug, on this necklace , but, I cannot do it justice in my photographs.
bezeled jasper
So a little experimentation, a lot of work.The panther is our family totem and greets people as they

oval links with butterfly clasp
ones I called disco balls.  I used a lovely clasp, a purple enamel bug, on this necklace , but, I cannot do it justice in my photographs.
S,o a little experimentation, a lot of work.The panther is our family totem and greets people as they enter my home.
bronze beauty>not!
spiral rope





prettythingsblog.com/2014/05/welcome-to-8th-bead-soup-blog-party.html

Posted by at 38 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)