WEARING OUT

Most of the time when I finish a piece of jewellery or beadwork, I know it is destined for that plastic storage box in the top of the wardrobe. I love working with tiny beads but I just have so much trouble making the type of jewellery that I really want to wear. I don’t like all the frou frou frilliness that seems to come with a lot of seed beadery, but I am the most hopeless stringer around. Putting pretty beads on thread in an aethetically pleasing manner takes a surprising amount of skill, and it is a skill that I simply don’t have. To top it all off, I’m fairly boring when it comes to clothing and accessories. If I can’t jump a fence in it or if it needs much more care and attention than my birthday suit, I’m not really going to feel comfortable wearing it around.

To me, the highest compliment I can pay to someone is to tell them that I would wear their work. It took me some time to come to the conclusion that wearability is an incredibly important thing to aim for when it comes to handcrafted jewellery and art jewellery. It took me much longer to feel comfortable with the fact that I am much more attracted to pieces that I can see myself in, even though I adore really jaw-dropping and elaborate pieces that someone has poured hours of time and skill into. It is taking me even more time to be entirely at home voicing my opinions on what I like and why I like it.

Thinking about it, this goes some way towards explaining my desire for good technical skill. Pieces with more “white space” (whatever that translates to in jewellery speak, not negative space but more a lack of complexity) need to show far more technical skill than pieces that are bursting with visual details because that precision and craftsmanship becomes part of the overall design. A single wrapped loop is going to get far more attention than the oodles of wrapped loops you might find on a more flamboyant cha-cha style piece. This is not to say that I don’t look for technical skill in visually complicated pieces, I do, it is just that normally I see other aspects of the overall design first. With simpler pieces, there is little else to hold the eye so the technical imperfections tend to leap out more.

So here is my challenge to myself. I need to enjoy the physical construction process of making a piece, but I also want everything I make to be something I would potentially wear. I want to seed bead simplicity. Anyone who has seen a lot of seed bead work knows that this is not an easy task. You run the risk of work looking under-nourished, completely out of balance, or just plain boring. I want to find that sweet spot between challenging to construct and unchallenging to wear. It has got to be in there somewhere, I just haven’t quite found it yet.

My thanks to Ayuumi for providing access to such lovely photos on Flickr

Thoughts & Musings

beading, fashion, jewellery, seed beads, style

June 13, 2011

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DESIGNER QUEST #22

I knew I’d made something that was better than my usual. I didn’t think I’d made something anywhere near good enough to get official recognition! That happens to other people, not to me. I have won a few things in the past, but that has been in open competition with unknown beaders and such a wide range of skills, designs and materials that it was really a personal preference decision for the judges. This was against beaders I knew, talented beaders with imagination and skill that blows mine out of the water, and a set pack of beads. A level playing field, or as close as you can get with such things.

I started out wanting to play with the steampunk style, or more of a steampunk/mixed media hybrid. I imagined a little dragonfly, uneven eyes, big fuzzy feet, body of glass, really very cute and thrown-together looking. Fortunately I re-read the rules before I started. Jewellery. Wearable art. It always says wearable art or jewellery. Mr Dragonfly was filed away in my sketchbook for another time and my mind started churning away on ideas for unusual wearables. I told myself that I was not making a necklace.

My original idea was for a collar and cuffs. Dark, elegant, and only really appropriate with a very plungy backless dress at some fancy black tie do. It had fluff, it had drama, and it had a rear-facing drop that dangled so low it could easily learn all of Victoria’s secrets. Unfortunately this design was scrapped when it became apparent that I’d need a gazillion rolls of thick black rattail cord. Across two suburbs, all I could find was an endless supply of baby blue and a single roll of roadworker yellow.

Eventually I did find black rattail, and black mousetail, and teal braid and some sort of abraisive metallic cord that could easily pass as fine sandpaper. It was a lovely colour mix. Unfortunately it was also quite varied in diameter so my flat braid wibbled and wobbled and ended up looking quite newb-ish. I didn’t really like it, but at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to chop it up. My second idea was for an embellished arm wrap, wrist to elbow & fully convertible. Arm wrap, belt, lariat, whatever! The more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. Unfortunately, the more I thought about the idea, the more I realised I was just using the beads to embellish the main design element. I should have been using the beads *as* the main design element.

At that point I realised I was running out of time and I decided that it was not a great time to step well outside of my comfort zone. I started making components. Lots of components. I made wheels and flowers and medallions and all sorts of variations on the theme. A design started to form in my mind. It was asymmetric and beautiful, simple but interesting. It was a necklace. I resisted for a short while and then I gave in. Why shouldn’t I make a necklace if that is what works best?

And work it did!

I think I used every type of stringing material that I had at my disposal. I knotted beads on string as if they were pearls. I learned how to do kumihimo. I sat down and tied tiny little knots in fiddly bits of fishing line and then fused them with glue. I even broke out a brand new bottle of Diamond Glaze and gave DIY fancy cabochons a try. I learnt so much from what looked like a pile of fairly ordinary beads.

I think I finally managed to do it. Visual balance on an asymmetric piece is not an easy thing to achieve and I’ve made a few pieces in the past that totally missed the mark. I’m much more at home with patterns, repetition & symmetry so this was a big scary reach for me. There was no way to make this work as a symmetrical piece so I had to make it work with balance. I make it sound hard, but to be honest this one just kind of came together all by itself.

The end result was just fabulous. I’m so incredibly happy with how it turned out. A bunch of people on the Beading Forum agree, I scraped in with the Peer Recognition award!

It was a REALLY tough field. Hot on my heels for the Peer Recognition award was a stunning wirework piece by Rhalikias that I would have happily lost to. It was just stunning. Elegant but not over the top. The piece that won the overall contest was created by Beadywitch and was well and truly deserving. It was the more difficult of the two colour options – purple and boho gold – and showed incredible skill with design and technique. It was a strap-like micro-macrame piece that worked the beads into the panels, in one section they were knotted in as daisies!

Honestly, I’m so chuffed by this that the piece is still sitting on my bust right next to my computer. I keep trying to casually drop “oh, by the way, did I tell you that I did OK in a bead comp?” into completely unrelated conversations. I’m sure the glow will wear off soon, but right now I’m just going to bask in it a while.

Big thanks to 3rd Rock for my lovely gift certificate and providing such a splendid set of beads for everyone this quest!

Competitions, Makings

beading, components, Designer Quest, necklace

June 10, 2011

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ROUND THE FIRE

I’m not a Nymo fan. I love the colour range but I can’t seem to get the hang of working with it. It frays, it stretches, it splits, and it goes fluffy. Having started out my beading obsession with good old quilting cotton it was a bit difficult to make the transition. I just never really took to the stuff.

Quilting cotton has some serious limitations though. It rots and knots and snaps if you put a little too much pressure on it. I needed an alternative. Enter Fireline. Everyone seems to use it for one thing or another and, other than those who work with sharp crystals, nobody seems to have much bad to say about it. I ordered a little roll of 6lb crystal line and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

A short while into the project I decided that all the beaders of the world were nuts! I had kinks and bright white stress marks and very very sore fingers. It was like trying to wrangle a very thin and belligerent serpent. I honestly couldn’t figure out how this had ended up being the thread of choice.

After a few false starts I settled on using it to make little rows of brick stitch around some fat black rubber o-rings. It looked good, but because of the stress marks through the Fireline, the thread really stood out. A quick Google revealed that Fireline was also available in a dark colour called smoke. Another quick Google revealed that smoke was available in a few different weights, including 4lb. People said that 4lb was much like working with cotton that just didn’t knot. Knotless cotton? Maybe this was the magical Fireline that everyone has been talking about.

It took 4 stores and 3 suburbs, but eventually a spool was located in Anaconda, dusty and hiding behind oodles of spools of neon pink and green. I took it home and got to work. It was WONDERFUL! No kinks, no stress marks, no knots, no dissapointments!

The tricky thing with the lack of knotting is that when you actually do need to join one piece of Fireline to another, you need to go and flutter your eyelashes at the closest fisherman and get a quick lesson in joining lines. I wish I’d known how to tie blood knots years ago!

Ordinarily I’d be wary of taking this bracelet out and about, but ordinarily I’d have made it using quilting cotton or Nymo. This version feels strong enough to wear around town without feeling like it is made of cardboard.

So there you go. Fireline is pretty impressive stuff, providing you get the right weight for the job. Seems really simple when you think about it but sometimes it is easy to overlook the obvioius.

Products & Supplies

bracelet, brick stitch, supplies

May 23, 2011

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BASIC BRAIDING

Years ago while we were on a holiday in The Netherlands I happened on a device for making simple cord braids. It looked like a big foam flower and was being showcased in many of the fancypants bead & craft magazines I saw over there. The braids looked absolutely perfect for me – nice and simple to make and something that I could work into my everyday wardrobe.

So as you can imagine, I bought one of the braiding disks. Last week I finally gave it a try.

It was really fantastic to see the kumihimo braid coming together on the underside if the disk. The piece came together really easily and quickly too, which is something I really appreciate when it comes to fibre crafts. I don’t seem to have that much patience for thread & yarn-related things. I have this horrible habit of getting myself tangled up. I was kind of expecting this to do the same but I escaped with no knots or tangles and some beautiful new pieces of jewellery.

Some were er, more beautiful than others.

There have got to be hundreds of fluoro rainbow kumihimo braids floating around the country, I’d say. It is pretty much the only variety of rattail available at the cheapie shops and I’d bet almost everyone uses it for their first try with a new weave. Mine ended up being j-u-s-t long enough to be an anklet, though I’m not sure I’ll ever have cause to wear such a bright and sunny piece!

All of these braids highlighted a major shortcoming in my bead & jewellery making stash. I was almost entirely without end cones! I’m not really sure how that happened, but a quick trip to Spotlight gave me plenty enoiugh to practice with for the time being. They don’t really have enough room for much cord to be jammed in there, but I think I’ve made a pretty solid connection regardless.

I’m really looking forward to making a few more of these little beauties just for myself.

Makings

braiding, fibrecraft, kumihimo

May 8, 2011

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FLORABUNDANCE

I have been going a bit easy on the beading. I have not wanted to, there are competitions coming up, challenges I want to complete, and ideas a-plenty doing laps around my head. It is a physical thing, I have gone and hurt my wrist. Wrists, even. It doesn’t feel too bad, I’m pretty sure it is from using a laptop trackpad at a stupid angle, but long stretches of crafting or computer work aggrevates it somewhat, so I am going slow.

Slow, but not stopping This past week or so I have been playing with paper. I made a few batches of rolled paper beads (that I am desperately trying to class up), played around with pop-up business card ideas, and this week I have been making flowers.

Pretty, no? I’m really chuffed at the kusudama flower. It is not traditional one piece of paper origami. It is a rule-breaking five pices of paper and *gasp* glue piece of origami, but I don’t think I love it any less. That version is actually made out of Post-it notes, which sounds great because they are small and square, but it is actually a pain in the bum because they are small and square and glued on one side.

The papercut flowers are a fantastic “corporate craft” idea from CraftStylish. They provided a print-out and I cut and cut and cut. I adore them! The concept is wonderful – flat pack flowers! I’m so inspired that I’m designing my own flat pack bouquet, and I will be putting it on the blog as a freebie printable for you to download.

Anyway, there are many more flowers I would like to make, but I’m not sure I have the time right now. When I do though, I really want to try these cherry blossoms and maybe a lotus or two, though heaven knows where I would put them. Still, it really is all about the creating

Makings

decorations, flowers, home decor, origami, papercraft

April 19, 2011

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MY CREATIVE SPACE – BLUE BEADS

I feel creative and prolific this week.

Lots of seedy goodness being whipped up on my trusty little stable table. I’m about to switch to a bit of mixed media and papercrafting stuff to bulk up my focal supply and let me move into some more creative projects so it might be a few weeks before my life (and my lap) is so completely beady again.

Not bad, hey? Never tried peyote beaded beads before so I’m rather pleased with how easy they are. I did have some accidental herringbone on the black version, but otherwise it was not bad. Not sure what I’m going to do with these guys, I’m thinking some sort of bolo tie or fancy lariat. We are talking about me though, to I’ll probably just string singles on tiny rollo chain. Simple. Beautiful.

Why not hop over to Kootoyoo and check out some other creative spaces?

My Creative Space

beaded beads, My Creative Space, peyote

March 25, 2011

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BEADING UNCOMMON

Recently I have been a very bad girl. If anyone knew I’d be excommunicated from the Church of Bead. I’m going to tell you, but you have to promise not to tell a soul.

I haven’t been making jewellery. *gasp*

Terrible, isn’t it? The worst part is that I am absolutely loving it! I feel like a little rocaille rebel! The freedom to think, design, & create outside of the confines of jewellery is deliciously addictive. I keep looking at everyday items – forks, ugg boots, my ever-patient dog – and imagining exciting ways to do them up in seed beads.

For the moment the dog is safe, but I can’t really say the same for other odds and sods I find lying around in my craft cabinet. All of these projects, all of these ideas that sent me scurrying off to find this piece of hardware or that type of bottle, they are finally being dragged out of mothballs and stitched into little sparkly finished items.

I use the term sparkly fairly loosely. I mean, this is hardly sparkly, but it is totally gosh darn cute!

And if that isn’t enough to prove I’m going completely off the beading rails, I’m making household decor! Oodles and oodles of flowers are slated to pop into existence over the next couple of weeks. I’ll finally have little beady bits of myself around the house for people to ooh and ahh at. I am a big fan of this plan. It means I can stay in my pyjamas all day long, the house can wear the accessories instead. Perfect!

I am having a blast. Jewellery was a nice place to visit but I don’t think I would want to live there. Accessories are good, maybe some belts, suspenders, spats, spur straps… so many choices!  Homewares are almost as overdone as jewellery, but I still want to play. What about origami, bonsai, quilting, papercrafting, scrapbooking, lighting…. there are so many things that could be adapted to work with beads!

Why anyone would limit themselves to necklaces and bracelets is just plain confusing to me.

Break out!

Experiment!

Have fun!

Makings

accessories, beading, brick stitch, decorations, flowers

March 21, 2011

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BLUE COLLAR

I think I need a new dog. I like the one that I have, he’s great and all, but his neck is way too large to fit into any of my latest creations.

I have no idea why I have such a small blue collar in my craft box. I think I bought it way back when I was making the Roo Collar. I was going to test out the strength of the loomwork and maybe swap over to a nylon base instead of a leather one. As it turned out I just jumped right in there so this little thing just sat around for years and years until I could figure out what to do with it.

This black collar is even smaller. I bought this one much more recently to make a collar for a friend of a friend. Unfortunately I dragged the chain a bit and by the time I saw the dog again she was wearing a very snazzy store-bought number. Back into the craft box with the black one too.

Both collars are made the same way. I loomed the strip on crochet cotton (warp) and quilting cotton (weft), secured the ends with knots and Magic Tape, then sewed every row onto the collar. They aren’t really suitable for long-term wear or for households with multiple dogs, but they would be the ideal neckwear for a posh city pooch who loves sitting under cafe tables or trotting up and down city streets.

I’m very pleased with how they’ve turned out. I’m so pleased, in fact, that I may just go out and buy a new collar. A larger one that will fit the gangly grey pooch that has strewn himself across my feet. He could do with some refinement and elegance, y’know?

Makings

beading, Collar, loomwork, pets

March 20, 2011

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SETTING UP

This last week I have been on a making binge. Sometimes I just get stuck on one idea and can’t move past it until I’ve made enough of whatever was on my mind. Most recently I have been making sets of little tubular beads. Mostly they get called peyote tube beads, but mine are made using brick stitch. They just seem to work out better that way, less squashable.

I have been trying to find a way to wear my own work. See, I love working with seed beads but I hate wearing fussy and fiddly adornments. Give me thick silver collars and lampwork bracelets any day. It occurred to me recently that little solid blocks of colour sandwiched in between fancy silver beads would be fun to make and very wearable. It would give me a chance to strut about in my creations without feeling like I was wearing grandma’s doilies.

There are still a lot of sets I want to make and a lot of silver beads that I need to buy, but I’m very happy with what I have completed so far. The white lined/colourlined & silver set is my favourite, I think. It is crying out for a lovely orange hue, but even as it is I’m rather smitten.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5173/5511005023_405ac12199.jpg

Makings

beaded beads, beading, brick stitch, components

March 9, 2011

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MY CREATIVE SPACE

So after reading through almost all of the craft blogs listed on Kootoyoo last week, I thought it might be time for me to participate a little. I’ve only just carved out a somewhat permanent creative space for myself in our home. It used to be that I would work on a Stable Table on the bean bags in the lounge room, but at the moment I have commandeered the spare bedroom and, although I am still working on my ever-faithful Stable Table, it is much more relaxing. I don’t think I will ever get used to working at a desk, it just feels so restrictive!

This week I have been pretty crook and guzzling down antibiotics and cough lollies at a rate of knots. I’ve also been working on peyote tube beads. Sets of peyote tube beads, to be more precise. I have a bundle in my little box-o-stuff, but they are pairs and half-done art projects, not actual usable sets. So far I’ve only done basic patterns and plains as they are suitably low on the brainpower, but I want to make some more complex pattern and picture beads in the next few weeks.

Tonight I’m starting on rolled paper beads, to use both as stand alone pieces and to fill my larger and less stable peyote tubes. It is a technique I discovered for myself a few years back and I’ve been using it ever since. I’m kind of surprised I’ve never seen it anywhere else, but maybe that is how these things go. I love it, anyway.

My Creative Space

bead, My Creative Space, peyote

March 3, 2011

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