Beading Arts

This is one of my favorite pieces.  I made it years ago, and it was inspired by my Mother, who has the greenest of green thumbs I've ever known!  I wrote a tutorial to show you the basic steps of how it was conceived and put together.  It combines bead embroidery, beadweaving, and a little bit of stringing.   Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

The Peaceful Fox and The Ghost of the Forest have found their forever home!  I know they will be well cared for.  Please contact me if you are interested in adopting a different pendant <3 Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Andante The idea for this piece started to form in my mind when my husband became involved in restoring an antique player piano. The keys called to me in ways that I couldn't explain. I cried when I thought about the elephants that had been destroyed to make these objects of beauty. My tribute to those majestic animals is to prevent some of those keys from ending up in a landfill.  Note ~ The only ivory that it is currently legal to use in the United States is either ancient fossilized ivory, or old recycled ivory like these keys.  Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Gaea Emerging Wool roving, seed beads, pearls, aventurine, jade, copper  In making Gaea Emerging , I developed a two-layered solution to the problem of stitched-on embellishments getting lost in the texture of the wool roving when felted wool is used as a background. The centerpiece of Gaea Emerging is a CopprClay pendant that I made, fired, and patinated. The organic feel of the piece led to the name.  There are some step-out photos and basic instructions at the link.  Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Ancient Waves  Ammonites, jasper, Swarovski crystals, seed beads, and pearls  Here are some step-out photos of the process at the link :-)  Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin.  All rights reserved.

Dark Lady An antique purse that was well beyond repair provided the steel-cut beads and the chain used for the closure of this recycled bead embroidered necklace. All of the black beads, from the fringe to the smallest glass charlottes are recycled antiques as well. The steel buttons have been attached in such a way that their shanks have been preserved.   Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Orinoco Flow   My daughter pointed out to me that this piece uses several very primitive symbols, like concentric circles and jagged lines, which often represent watering holes and the rivers that connect them. So I picked Orinoco Flow as the name. It has turquoise, amazonite, and pearls, and gold wire along with the glass beads.  If you'd like to see a couple of process shots , visit the link!  Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Midnight at the Oasis  "It's midnight at the oasis, send your camel to bed," sang the incomparable Maria Muldaur. My friends and I used to howl with laughter as we sang along! Now I find myself nostalgic for the song if you can believe it.  This bead embroidery necklace uses complicated clusters of graduated stacks of seed beads to create the texture. The photograph just doesn't show how dimensional it is. If you'd like to see all my process shots, there's a three-part post on my blog that starts at the link.  Copyright 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved.

Phoebe Hello friends! I haven't had time to work on new pieces since I'm still running a food pantry and hot meals program during the Time of Covid. So I thought I'd take a bit of a trip down memory lane and share some of my older pieces again. I hope you don't mind. This one is called Phoebe . She is named for Saturn's ice moon, which was in turn named for a Titan of Greek mythology.   Copyright 2021 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

I got this great polymer clay cabochon set from Sherri Kellberg, BeadazzleMe . I thought I just needed a push to get back into making things, and this seemed to do it. I am trying to set aside some creative time when I'm not working on or obsessing over the food pantry and meals program. 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 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved.

Some of my friends - around the US and around the world - have probably wondered why I've stopped posting new work. Here's why: I run a food pantry and a weekly dinner for the food insecure, lonely, and marginalized people in my community. With the covid-19 crisis, my work there has increased a higher percentage than I can even figure out. I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing Stone Soup Kitchen Ministries . It has left no vacant brain space for making new art right now. As an introvert, I would have liked nothing better than to hunker down and just make things. But that wasn't in the cards.  I've been put in a uniquely privileged position to be able to do this, and I thank you all for understanding that it is the most important thing to me right now. Some day in the not TOO distant future, I hope to be able to create art again.

Available!  Leave me a comment Just last week I finished and posted a pendant using one of  Yvonne Irvin-Faus 's quirky fun pieces.  Seems I'm on a roll!  For this one, I decided to go more elaborate with the bail, stitching up a butterfly bail .  They are waaay easier to make than they look.  In fact, when I was on vacation last summer, I stitched up a whole bunch of these.  Which leads me to an idea. If you are stuck inside right now, especially if you can't get the exact materials you'd like in order to start/continue/finish a project, or if you are finding your creativity waning because of stress, try this.  Pick an easy small project like bails and make a bunch of them in various colors.  It doesn't have to be bails.  It doesn't have to be anything fancy.  It doesn't have to be something for a specific project.  JUST MAKE SOMETHING...ANYTHING!  The act of making, of moving your hands, will open your mind and...

Available!  Leave me a comment I love these bright fun pieces by Yvonne Irvin-Faus .  Yvonne has a site you can check out called MyElements by Yvonne .  In fact, I just realized when I went to post this piece that I had made a similar one almost exactly a year ago!  You can see it at the link...it's a bit more elaborate than this one. As always, if you are interested in getting started with bead embroidery, I invite you to download a free copy of my e-book's first chapter, Every Bead Has a Story .  If other forms of beading interest you, please check out the Tutorials tab at the top of the blog.  Since we are all laying low right now, due to the virus, it's a good time to plan and try out a new art form! Copyright 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

SOLD This pendant features a pyrography fox cabochon that I bought from House of the Green Lady on etsy.  I fell in love with him the moment I saw him.  He is only 1 1/2 inches tall and an inch wide, so I wanted to keep the embellishment pretty simple and straightforward.  He has a square stitched bail on the back.    Copyright 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Available!  Leave me a comment I fell in love with this pretty cabochon made by Susana Paredes !  When you have a super-colorful piece like this to work with, it's hard to narrow down to just a few colors for the beadwork, but if you don't, it can end up being really chaotic.  That's ok if that's what you're after.  As for me, I prefer to pick one or two main colors and fill in with neutrals.  At least most of the time! When it came to the wrapped wire beads hanging from the crescent, I added a few more of the cabochon colors, and kept it asymmetrical but balanced.  If you need instruction on making a wrapped loop , there's a tutorial at the link using large gauge wire so you can really see what's being done.     Copyright 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Available!  Leave me a comment I bought this set of polymer clay focals from my friend Mary Anne Williams Knapp of The Cat's Meow !  There's a bit of color-shift that you can't really see in the photos I took unless I show you two close-ups right next to each other.  Suffice it to say that I love this piece!  There were many color directions that I could have gone, but I'm very very satisfied with this one.  The smallest seed beads, size 15/0s, have a purplish cast to them, which is perfect, but funny enough, they are actually a luster cobalt! Copyright 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

SOLD How cute is this guy?  He was made by talented artist Shari Smith McDermott , and I added a raku leaf by my friend Amy Mealey of Xaz Bead Company .  I wish you could see more of the detail on Shari's owl and more of the color flashes on Amy's leaf!  I didn't want to lose any of the owl by bezeling over him, so I used epoxy to attach him to a deep felt backing: a thin piece of black felt over top of a cut out thick piece of felt so that he nestled in.  To do the beaded surround, I followed the same procedure as for this heavy piece, Davy Jones's Lock .  Here are some links to other tutorials you may find helpful: Square stitch bail Chapter 3 of Every Bead Has a Story Butterfly bail Open-center triangular bail 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 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

I thought I'd just show you my latest piece.  I don't have time to write too much about it right this minute, but just wanted to get it out there.  I broke my ankle, the holidays were busy, and I've not gotten much work done since the beginning of December.  This "retirement" thing is starting to actually creep up on me whether I want it or not!! Copyright 2020 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

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 pe...

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 develo...