Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2019

Salvage bolt with beadweaving

I took a short detour from bead embroidery for my most recent piece.  Recently I showed you a bead embroidered piece of salvage ( Davy Jones's Lock ) that I stitched as a souvenir from our trip to Bermuda.  Here is the other piece of salvage that I got in the Dockyard...a bolt from a ship.  I just love the colors of the patina on both this one and the lock from the last piece.  The bolt is enlarged to show the details of the stitching...it is only about 2 1/4 inch long.    This piece may look a little bit complicated, but it's really quite easy.  I stitched a center band of size 6/0 seed beads using right angle weave.  From there I added size 8/0 seed beads between each stitch at the bottom of the band and larger disks between each stitch at the top.  Those beads became the anchor points for diagonal stitches going in both directions to form an X through the central drop beads (light turquoise).  At the top, I stitched a simple peyote stitch band in size 11/0 seed beads

Davy Jones's Lock - a bead embroidered piece of salvage

Not available for sale...sorry! We went to Bermuda not too long ago with friends, partly to celebrate big-number anniversaries and partly to celebrate big-number birthdays.  It was a glorious week: beautiful weather, pink sand beaches, no agenda.  Loved it loved it loved it! Each time I go to a significant place, I like to find at least one item that I can use in a "souvenir piece" that I make and keep.  Funny enough, I just showed you one last week that has taken me years to get around to turning into a pendant, my Petroglyph pin/pendant .   So when I found this piece of salvage, I fell in love, even though it was a bit bigger and heavier than I usually use.  It's a metal keyhole, probably from someone's trunk, that's about 2 1/2 inches high, and covered with a lovely patina in front and deep deep corrosion in the back.  There was no flat back to this one! It was so deeply rounded in the back that I pulled out a trick that I developed to use w

Petroglyph bead embroidered pendant

Not available for sale...sorry! Years and years ago, my running group and I ran across the Grand Canyon.  We started at the North Rim on the North Kaibab Trail and then picked up the Bright Angel Trail, which took us up to the South Rim.  It's a run of about 24 miles, 2 miles shorter than a marathon, but much much harder.  It was the hardest run I've ever done, and it made me feel like nothing was out of reach.  The next day, I picked up a pin that was decorated with stylized petroglyphs common to the area. Smithsonian magazine I wanted to still be able to wear it as a pin, but decided to also turn it into a pendant.  It would have been easy enough to simply glue on a nice bail, but I like the few simple rows of bezeling and frame embellishment that I added.  Very simple...nothing to detract from the pin design.  And the back features a plain square stitch loop to accommodate the necklace cord.  Adding a bead embroidered frame to a pin is super simple, but ther

Another bead embroidered kitty pendant

Both have been sold and are on their way to their forever homes! I showed you the bead embroidered kitty pendant on the left yesterday, and then promptly spent the rest of the day doing what I almost never do...I made a second one like it!  Different colors, but same pattern :-) To remind you, the focals are by Dorothy Supri of  Skyline Beads .  Aren't they the cutest? Copyright 2019 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Bead embroidered kitty pendant

Sold! Dorothy Supri of Skyline Beads makes these adorable little focal pieces on dominoes and mini-dominoes.  I have enjoyed stitching around some of her full-sized pieces, but this one caught my eye and it was just so darned CUTE !!  It's only 1 1/4 inches high, so the total size of the pendant is quite tiny too.  It was fun making one that worked up so quickly. Here are two others that I've made with Dorothy's focals: Peacock bead embroidered pendant Winged giraffe bead embroidered pendant Step-by-step instructions for putting together a bead embroidered piece, including back stitch, edging brick stitch, and stack stitch can be found in the free first chapter of my e-book Every Bead Has a Story . Copyright 2019 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Green bronze bead embroidered pendant

Available!  Leave me a comment Instead of starting with the focal, this time I started with the beadwoven bail !  The one I chose was a previously stitched piece that you can learn more about at the link above and below. Open-centered triangular bail Now, that's not to say that I don't absolutely love the focal!  I do, and I've been saving it for something special.  It's a resin-coated polymer clay piece made by my friend Mary Anne Williams Knapp .  Mary Anne has online trunk shows that you can access through Facebook, but you better move quickly when her work is up for sale!  It gets scooped up with lightning speed.  I used some Miyuki drops on both an inner row and around the edging of this piece, along with some pearls and a lovely little raku bead by Amy Mealey of Xaz Bead Company . My e-book, Some Assembly Required , covers making different types of bezels to enhance both regularly shaped and irregularly shaped cabochons, connecting your bead embro

Book review: Heirloom Embroidery

There are over 225 iron-on transfers in Heirloom Embroidery from Brian Haggard , specifically from his book Embroidered Memories .  The designs are classic for crazy quilts, and come in a variety of sizes.  There is only one page of embroidery stitch instruction in the very back, but surely you've got plenty of other books that cover the stitches!  This book is about pure iron-and-go!!  By C + T Publishing. This post contains affiliate links: Amazon

Orthoceras fossil bead embroidered pendants

Available!  Leave me a comment When I was in Cambridge England recently, I went to a really nice little market.  It mostly had food, so of course I bought some tea...and then I turned a corner and found a lovely woman selling stones and fossils.  One of my favorite pieces that I've ever made features a small but almost perfect orthoceras fossil I bought in Alaska, so I was thrilled to find she had a little bin of them.  They were a bit shorter than my first, but that is absolutely fine.  The one on the left features a butterfly style bail that I've really enjoyed making recently, and the one on the right has my more typical square stitched bail on the back.  Finally!  I always planned to keep my original pendant and have resisted all offers to buy it, but now I can keep it guilt free! Copyright 2019 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

The British Museum in London England

I'm so happy to be able to share these treasures with you.  Our last stop in England was the world-famous British Museum.  My tastes have always run to the ancient, so I headed for some of the most ancient pieces in the collection.  Created about 2500 BC, these pieces of jewelry were found in a royal Sumerian tomb.  Sumer was the earliest known civilization in southern Mesopotamia, located between the Tigris and Euphrates.  One of the best-known city states in Sumer was Ur.  Most of the Sumerian artifacts in the British Museum come from Ur. This stunning headress is a reconstruction, but the jewelry is original.  This suggests the arrangement of the jewelry worn by the royal Sumerian women found in the grave called The Great Death Pit.  Below is the signage with information about this burial site.  Click the image to enlarge it for easier reading. These are some of the pieces worn by the queen's attendants, similar in style to hers but less elaborate, an

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London England

The other day, I showed you some photos that I was able to take in Cambridge England (link at the bottom of this post), and today I want to turn to the first of two world-class museums we visited in London!  In no particular order, here we go! Micromosaic jewelry pieces are made from the very smallest glass pieces (tesserae), some of which contain more than 5000 tesserae per square inch!  The necklace, bracelet, and earring set were most likely made in Italy around 1850. This piece is called Devil's Trumpet, and was made from recycled and electroplated cutlery in 2016 by artist Ann Carrington.  It was inspired by Dutch still life paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries. Life Began in Water , about 1950 by artist Sah Oved.  The necklace contains gold, silver, agates, jasper, and aquamarines. Inspired by a Picasso drawing, Portrait of a Woman , artist Wendy Ramshaw made this necklace in 1988 from patinated silver and colorcore. This is a col

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge England

Mike and I just returned from a trip to Cambridge and London, England!  Mike was working, and when I wasn't busy being a groupie, I was out exploring.  I loved loved loved visiting two of the museums in Cambridge, and was sorry that I didn't have time for more.  The Fitzwilliam Museum is not to be missed, but since it doesn't have much to do with beads per se, I thought I'd concentrate on the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology instead.  You must go if you every have the chance.  It is a "small" museum, but is three floors high, with lovely displays and wonderful guides/guards available. In no particular order, here are some of the things I liked best.  The quality of my shots is poor...the lighting as designed to preserve the pieces, of course, and flash photography (as everyone should know by now) is not appreciated.   The so-called square headed brooches of the Anglo Saxons.  They could be worn either direction, so the 19th century name for th

Book review: Two-Hole Bead Stitching

If you like working with shaped beads, then you are probably already a fan of Virginia Jensen's work and her books!   Stitching with Two-Hole Shaped Beads  and  Contemporary Cube Bead Designs  are Kalmbach Media titles you might already be familiar with, and here is her latest:  Two-Hole Bead Stitching .  Just like the others, this book has the fabulous photos and illustrations that Kalmbach is known for.  And it is full of the fabulous and fun designs that Virginia is known for! Each chapter starts with a fairly simple piece and progresses through more intricate and challenging pieces.  I particularly liked some of the variations that could be made using the basic S-braid pattern.  The easy basic version is included in this book, along with lots of fabulous alternatives, using other shapes and mixtures.  I have to be honest that I've not been very interested in shaped beads.  I love my regular seed beads, and for the most part, adding a few drops or daggers around th

Bead embroidered pendant redo!

Available!  Leave me a comment Sometimes you just have to let a project sit for awhile, and sometimes you need to get advice from your friends!  I had pretty much decided to just keep the pendant that I showed you last time because I was unhappy with the wonky back stitched lines around the onyx donuts.  But thanks to an online friend, Shayne M's suggestion, I stitched peyote "bezels" around each, and it hid the uneven line enough to make me happy!  Thank you, Shayne :-) Here's what it used to look like: Copyright 2019 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved.

Fuchsia + onyx bead embroidered pendant

I had another beautiful set of polymer clay and resin focals by Mary Anne Williams Knapp , and although I like the asymmetrical design of this piece very much, I'm a bit disappointed with one aspect of it.  Can you see the problem?  The onyx donuts did not sit flush, and so they shifted around after the piece was stitched together.  Until that time, the surrounding rows of back stitch were nice circles, but stitching everything together caused them to shift and warp slightly.  What I should have done was to either build a clay base for them or sink them into a thicker felt foundation.  By the time the shifting occurred, it was too late. Oh well, I'll just have to keep this one!  I don't see pieces that I'm not satisfied with. You can find information on the open-hole triangular bail at the link.  Further instruction on making bead embroidered pieces can be found in Every Bead Has a Story , where the first chapter is free to download. Copyright 2019 Cyndi Lav

Book review: Bead Stitching Handbook

You know those super-clear instructions that you get from Bead & Button magazine (or from any Kalmbach publication, for that matter)?  Well, here is the handbook that you've been waiting for, that puts all the instructions for all of the stitches in one spot: Bead Stitching Handbook by the editors of B&B!  Here's a list of the stitch instructions that are included: Peyote, netting, ladder, brick, square, herringbone, right-angle weave, crossweave, fringe, bead embroidery, spirals & helixes, chenille, chevron, St Petersburg chain, loomwork, and bead crochet.  Wow!  All the fundamentals in one handy book. The book also includes the variations of each stitch, so for example, you'll get instructions for flat, circular, and tubular, plus how to increase and decrease.  AND it also covers special tasks the stitch is really useful for, like creating bezels with peyote stitch, stitching two-drop, diagonal, Dutch and Cellini spirals, etc.  There are tips incl

An open-centered triangular bail

Earlier this month, I showed you some beadwoven bails that I was working on to top off and embellish my bead embroidered pendants.  Well, I found another one that I like very much in Diane Fitzgerald's book  Shaped Beadwork .  On page 33, Diane shows a double-layered triangle with an opening in the middle.  Instead of stitching the whole thing together around the edges, I stitched only the top edge.  Since the two layers are joined in the middle around the opening, that forms a nice little tube along the top for your necklace strap to go through. I found through experimentation that the size of the entire triangle needs to be enlarged from Diane's instructions.  It's simple to do this, just adding as many more rounds as you like.  An alternative, which is what I did in the sample shown here, is to just peyote stitch increases along the top edge of one layer, and then zip it to the other side.  That keeps the entire bail smaller, but still accommodates the necklace

Fuchsia swirls bead embroidered pendant

Available! Leave me a comment I bought this set of polymer clay and resin cabochons from Mary Anne Williams Knapp at one of her online trunk shows.  There were so many different color possibilities that it took me awhile to decide.  I don't usually sketch out a pattern for myself before I begin, but in this case, with all the spirals and interweaving, I needed to do that, but not with the chosen colors. I simply grabbed some different colored markers and sketched the pattern, keeping a chart of which color was used in which order.  Then it was much easier to recreate it in the colors I wanted without having to draw it on the foundation fabric, fumble around, or rip out sections. If you want to learn how to make bead embroidered pieces, I show you how to do it with over-sized beads and lots of pictures in the free first chapter of my e-book Every Bead Has a Story .  There are also free instructions there for back stitch, edging brick stitch, and more. Copyright 2019