Beading Arts

Making Designer Bead and Wire Jewelry Tammy Powley's new book is available on Amazon! Here's part of the book review blurb: "Jewelry making is one of the most popular craft trends, and its audience continues to grow. Few jewelry books on the market emphasize the importance of the design relationship between beads, wire, and jewelry findings-the "nuts and bolts" of any piece. This book will show not only how to design and build your own spectacular jewelry out of beads and wire but how to design and create your own findings as well." The book is getting good reviews from readers too. Congratulations Tammy! Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Tribal 2 Since I've had several "how did you make those?" requests, I decided to post simple directions here on the blog and add the link to my list of tutorials. Really, this couldn't be easier. The biggest trick is to have beads with large enough holes to accomodate the crochet thread, and to have a variety of fibers sitting about. Here's how mine was made. Materials: Cotton crochet thread (I used black) Large-holed beads Variety of fibers in 3' lengths Tools: Crochet hook Twisted wire needle Tapestry needle Step One ~ Create the beaded strand String all of your beads onto the crochet thread, remembering to place the biggest ones in the middle of the batch. Chain about 100 stitches. Don't worry about whether it's enough ~ if you come to the end before finishing your necklace, you can always add more. If there are too many, you can just remove some. Start double or single crocheting along the chain, depending upon how thick you want the stand. Add yo...

Tribal Some beautiful deep teal ceramic beads were sitting around looking lonely...and the soft fluffy fibers I've recently collected seemed lonely too :-) Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

This is a simple little pendant I put together yesterday after finishing the big honking beaded neckpiece. It's a thank you present for a friend . I made the pendant bead awhile ago, and it has beautiful silver dichroic glass swirls through it. There are a couple of smaller lampwork bead spacers, and the oval shaped ones are antique trade beads from ~1875. Anyway, the picture is very blurry, but it is too late to do anything about it right now because I had to pull the batteries from my camera to recharge. So I'm stuck for several hours...I know I should have backups! DH and I are going on a Boston Harbor cruise tonight (a reward from his workplace for a successful project), and I want to make sure the camera's ready to go then. The only angle from which Boston looks pretty is from the harbor :-) Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Ammonite Neckpiece This piece ended up using three different major techniques: bead embroidery, freeform peyote stitch, and complex interwoven stringing. In addition, I had to make the lampwork glass beads in various shades of amber, brown, and purple before it could be completed. I'm pretty psyched with the way it turned out! Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

I haven't had a lot of time to work on this, so I've only got one little woven section done so far. The lampwork glass bead is not orange, it's amber colored. The weirdness is just from my flash. Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Last night, thunderstorms ripped through our area, bringing some blessed cooler weather. Now I'll be able to turn on the kiln and the torch and make the glass beads in the browns and ambers that I've been envisioning for this necklace! If I weren't such a heat-wimp, I'd have made them last week, but I tend to melt even faster than glass... Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Just one more embroidered piece to make, and I'll be able to start weaving the sections together, probably using free-form peyote stitch! Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Baylie's webpage Inspired by Lance Armstrong's fundraising efforts, young Baylie began to make bracelets to raise money to help fund research on the very rare and incurable (so far) brain disorder that afflicts her. My dear friend Bill lost his young son to brain tumors last year (August 6 ~ I miss you Maty B), and although it's not the same disease, I can't think of a better way to honor Mat's memory than to support research into Baylie's illness. Join me? Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Well, lots of somethings actually! But what's on my mind today is the issue of how many projects people have going at one time. I was raised to finish one thing before I started another, so it took awhile for me to transition into my current mode ~ which is having three to four pieces in progress at any one time. More than that, and I get overwhelmed. Fewer, and I don't feel like working on the one! So, even though I've got this huge honking ammonite necklace thing in progress, and I've got a small mixed media art quilt underway, yesterday seemed like the perfect time to experiment with a little sunprinting. I had two nice scraps of muslin that were just begging to be used. Now I'm not really sure if they'll end up as backgrounds for necklaces or for wall art, but they were really fun! Do you know what's the optimal number of projects for you to have going at once? Technorati Tags: wearable art

...the same thing to both of my blogs, but this is what's on my heart today. At age 3, my daughter declared, "Mommy, art is my life!" On Saturday, August 6, my husband and I dropped her off at art school. There's a big gaping hole in my heart right now. But I'll get over it.

Jewelry by a cancer survivor

Starry Night Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

My friend Anne asked me to take apart her old clip-on button style earrings and remake them into a new set of dangle earrings and a bracelet. She has a really tiny delicate wrist, so I made it from organza ribbon. Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry

Were you one of those kids? One of the ones who always had pockets stuffed full of stuff that was too good to leave lying on the ground where you found it? One who regularly got your mother steamed by getting paint or dirt or fill-in-the-blank all over a "good" piece of clothing? One who really couldn't quite get the hang of which were the "good" clothes and which were the "play" clothes, since they all mixed and matched so well? Or at least, you thought they did... If so, then you probably have the messy collector's gene, one of the first pre-requisites to being a mixed media artist. Congratulations! Personally, I have been doing mixed media work for as long as I can remember. There was no craft material that I didn't want to try as a kid, and the most fun was seeing how they could be combined into new forms. At some point in my "adult" life, I settled on mixed-media jewelry , at least for a time, since there were so many direc...

Starry Night Although I started this piece in June, I had to set it aside for awhile and have just gotten back to it. It's the first neckpiece that I've tried with a fabric transfer as the entire background. I used a shot taken by the Hubble, and arted it up a bit in Photoshop (gotta love that Photoshop!) It is much easier to read the words "Starry Night" in real life than in this photo ~ I just couldn't get either the color of the charoite center cabochon right, nor the glass accents that are scattered on the surface. They're very cool, changing from green to fushia as the light shifts. Still not done, but it's getting there! Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Pearl Spiral I finally got around to clipping those threads and finishing off the spiral I started last week. I had some beautiful vermeil beads and other findings that came from the last bead show, and they seemed to go really well with the colors of seed beads. I felt like this one could go either way ~ silver or gold ~ since the beads are a mixture of warm and cool tones, but I really wanted to emphasize the bronze seed beads. I don't think you can really see them as they are in the scan ~ they are matte finished, but with an iridescent glow. Very cool. Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

This is the centerpiece for a new bead-embroidered neckpiece that I'm starting. Instead of the entire thing being embroidered this time, I'm going to use free-form peyote and other off-loom stitches to weave together several of these embroidered sections. The focal pieces are real ammonite slabs, and I'll also be using freshwater pearls, coin pearls, and tons of seed beads (as usual!), including some of the fabulous new cut steel beads I just got. Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

Here's a new spiral necklace that I'm working on...complete with unclipped threads and everything! The pearls are soft gray freshwaters that I picked up the last time I went to a bead show. They fit the curve of this spiral beautifully. Technorati Tags: wearable art , beads , jewelry , necklace

I am so unhappy ~ I've got some new pictures to post, and my computer won't talk to my camera!! I've tried reinstalling the camera software, but so far I'm getting nowhere. And my computer genius/geek son is still in Guatemala. In fact, that's an interesting story in itself. He emailed last night and said that he wanted to stay longer. The original plan was for 6 weeks, but now he wants to extend it to 9 weeks so that he'll basically make it back just in time to start his sophomore year of college in the fall. Here's the irony: this is the boy who hated school, couldn't be bothered to do his homework, and (tells us) he doesn't like little kids. So what's he doing? He's the schoolmaster in an orphanage. God is not without a finely developed sense of irony! Here's a picture of Nate at the airport.