Beading Arts

Beautiful beads from Via Murano De Roma Venetian Glass Imported Venetian glass beads Venetian Bead Shop Imported Venetian and Murano glass beads Gems 2 Behold Wholesalers of Venetian and Murano glass beads Via Murano Imported Venetian glass beads Glass of Venice Wide selection of beads and gifts Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

Beadaholique For everything beading you could possibly need! Jesse James Beads The prettiest specialty beads on the planet, plus all the necessary tools and supplies! Rio Grande A comprehensive selection of raw materials and other jewelry making supplies. Rings and Things Everything from jewelry display items to stones and jewelry components. Ornamental Resources An enormous selection of beads and other decorative materials, with many hard-to-find items Artbeads.com Fabulous selection! Auntie's Beads Lots of specials and low-priced shipping Mama's Minerals Besides a nice selection of beads and findings, you'll also be able to purchase fossils and rockhounding equipment here Cherry Tree Beads The nicest people in the world! The Bead Shop New products added frequently...well worth the visit! Bead & Button Company, UK Wonderful buttons! Beads Direct Europe biggest bead supplier and an official Swarovski Crystal Retailer who works very clo...

Help me out here…did I miss any good ones? International Society of Glass Beadmakers Forum Lampwork Etc Forum Warm Glass Forum Glass Line’s Hot Glass Forum Wetcanvas Glass Art Forum Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

Picture Yourself Creating Metal Clay Jewelry by Tammy Powley When the author, Tammy Powley , approached me about creating a project for this book, I was very excited, but also a bit scared! I’ve been involved with a couple other projects with Tammy, and I already knew how much detail and effort she puts into everything that she does. I knew that this was going to be an amazing and very complete book for beginners. And I wasn’t the slightest bit disappointed when I received my copy of Picture Yourself Creating Metal Clay Jewelry . Tammy’s instructions are excellent and very thorough, and the DVD is just the icing on the cake! Here’s a picture of the project that I made for this book, using a pendant blank from HHH Enterprises . Those little maple leaves on the cover? Those are mine :-) Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

Online tools Imagination Prompts Are you looking for some random writing prompts or story starters for your journal, blog, or other creativity-related project? Creativity and the periodic table Roll your mouse over the table to see examples of each strategy Excellent articles Don’t wait for the muse Apparently you shouldn’t sit around waiting for yours even if you do happen to believe you have one! Six myths of creativity This study may change how you generate ideas 11 tips to suviving a day job with your creativity intact View your day jobs as the blessing that it truly is! How to get your day job to leave you How to naturally outgrow your current life right into the one that you desire Best sites for a general pick-me-up Creativity Portal Artella Creating Minds

  Artist: Olivia Competente Business name: Jewels By Olivia Location: San Francisco Website: Jewels By Olivia Gallery: Museum of Craft and Folk art in San Francisco Olivia, how do you describe your work? I have always loved sparkle and color. I started out with beads and they have always been my first love. What I do now is and extension of my bead work. I love the art nouveau movement and Egyptian adornments. What is your creative process like? Sometimes I render a piece, but mostly I like looking at what I have and what will fit with it. I work very organically – it cannot be forced, it will work itself out and be or not. Then I show the design to my mom and she has a great eye and gets me to finish a piece. What kind of training did you have which helped you achieve your current level of artistry? When I was 9ish I lusted after a pair of earrings at Macy’s and my mom wouldn’t buy them for me. Instead she took me to the oldest bead shop in San Francisco and b...

There are several different methods that are popular for creating woven bead necklaces: a figure-8 style of finger weaving, spiralling half-hitch macrame, and flat square-knot macrame. My preferred technique for this necklace uses all three stitches! 1. Each half of the necklace is woven separately, starting at the ends and working towards the middle. For the loop, I used figure-8 finger weaving, starting in the middle of my cords, and then folded them in half and proceeded with square-knot macrame for an inch or so. 2. Once I began adding beads, I switched to half-hitches so that the work would spiral around. Beads are added only to the central cords, not to the outside working cords which are used only to do the knotting. It takes a little trial and error to figure out how many knots to add between each bead. For this necklace, I used a 8/0 seed bead to anchor each resin bead in place. 3. When each half is as long as you desire, switch back to square-knots to make sections ...

Ready, set, go make something! This short series of discussions that we’ve been having about the various pathways and journeys that you can take into designing your own original work was not intended to turn your creativity into just another mechanical exercise. It’s also somewhat artificial to imagine that most of us are so organized and linear in our creativity that everything always flows in one pre-determined order. Still, I believe that the more you understand about your own preferences and biases, the more you may be freed to try new things. I hope you will spend some time thinking about the steps you usually take in designing, and maybe even spend some time mapping them out. Understanding your dominant patterns of working can both help you to play to your strengths, and also to challenge and stretch your creativity. Perhaps you could deliberately try a completely different approach to your next project, just to see what happens. It may not work. But then again…it could be wonder...

That Silver Ribbon of Road Three independent panels of color represent the past, present, and future, as well as the subconscious, unconscious, and conscious mind. That silver ribbon of road connects them all. Loomwork by Margie Deeb and Frieda Bates. 11/o glass beads, acrylic base. Photo by Haigwood Studios, Roswell, Georgia Artist: Margie Deeb Location: Roswell, Georgia Website & Blog: Margie Deeb Margie Deeb’s Color for Bead Artists Colors of the Lilac-Breasted Roller A Lilac-Breasted Roller, one of the most beautiful birds in existence, inspired Margie Deeb’s panoply of hues on a cobalt background. The color challenge this bird presented was one of abundance: so many colors, and all so gorgeous. With a calligraphic flourish of lilac, Margie swirls your attention from the main stone up toward the center, the heart of the wearer, crowned in turquoise. The unique shape suggests arms raised in praise of color and beauty. Chrysocolla, t urquoise, amethyst, ch...

Creating Crystal Jewelry with Swarovski by Laura McCabe Fantastic sparkle! With the precision of an engineer, Laura McCabe has counted and measured so that you don’t have to. There are charts included in this book that will save you a lot of time when you decide to bezel a few rivolis for yourself :-) This is a gorgeous book that anyone who enjoys sparkle will love looking through. A lot of the projects are similar, or are variations on each other, but that’s to be expected with a book that concentrates on something specific like this. It’s not a beginner’s book either, but a determined beginner will not have problems following Laura’s excellent illustrations and directions. Technorati Tags: handmade beaded jewelry , wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace , mixed media , beading

The “pendant with dangles” look is still going strong this spring. It’s a jewelry look that I like, and so even though I don’t usually consider myself any kind of slave to fashion, I was pretty quick to figure out how to make one of these to my liking! Any full-service catalogs will have the pendants and connectors that you will need. I got mine in an antiqued pewter metal from Rings & Things : the central pendant, the two rose connectors, and the 5 loop drop. In addition, you’ll need a selection of pearls and crystals, or other beads of your choice, a bail, head pins, jump rings, and additional charms. I also used a 5 strand chain tassel from Rings & Things , but you can substitute plain chain or skip it altogether and just make beaded links. 1. Assemble all your beads and findings and think about how you might want to lay them out. Generally, I think the balance is best on these pendants when the central dangles are a bit longer than the ones on the ends. 2. I started by a...

Structure: Patterns and techniques No matter how intuitively you work, at some point you will need to make some decisions about the structure and pattern you’re going to use in order to avoid having to go bead buying right in the middle of a project. That is usually not the best time to be making clear-headed decisions! You might be the type of person who decides what project to do based upon what type of stitch you feel like doing, and you make most of your structural choices at the very beginning of your design process. For me, the technical details are often one of the last things I consider, but like all of the other pathways into designing, structural questions can easily pop up at any time along the way. In design terminology, pattern generally refers to repetition or lack of it in stringing or weaving a piece. (It can also refer to the plan for the exact placement of beads in something like a flat peyote weaving, but that’s not what I’m referring to here.) The pattern can be rep...