The Boho mermaid

Some years ago, I fell in love with the tiny Miyuki cubes. I got a whole bunch of colors and used some in wire crochet, some in bead looming and peyote rings.
When I put some bead tubes back into my stash drawers, I noticed tubes with cubes in a silver lined light blue and a matte green with AB finish which vaguely made me think of ocean (possibly having the Moana movie run for background noise influenced that). The green had been around for a long time and the blue was from one of my surprise bead orders.

At first, I didn't think there would be enough beads for earrings and I tried a pendant that I kind of half liked which was not sufficient to keep it, though. I ripped it up again and thought that if I made the folded peyote one bead slimmer than the last pieces, I would have more beads to get to a length which I could bend comfortably for earrings. That was important because the cubes made the strips a bit less flexible than if I had made them with Delicas.

Next I thought about a pattern - one layer or side green, one blue ... checkered ... striped ... but in the end I opted for a random mix for the "ocean waves", waves because the folded and twisted peyote results in a wave shape if you look at it from the side. Also I had less green than blue, so mixing them would help to get long enough peyote strips. In the end I had three blue beads left!
I actually like the contrast between the very shiny blue and the matte green, the effect in light is so pretty, but I wanted more, so I randomly added metallic silver seed beads.

A mermaid - and I just can't help thinking mermaid when thinking of ocean, probably because Andersen's fairy tale has been a (sad) favorite of mine since childhood - could well wear long earrings in her flowing hair.
If that wasn't an excuse to add pearls, I didn't know what would be, and now I feel the earrings have turned boho.

Therefore my question, can a mermaid have a boho style?

Dawn is going boho

Usually I need a break after completing a doll outfit. I take a while relishing the feeling and admiring my own work - yes, I know that doesn't sound very humble, but it mostly is a very interesting path from the first row of beads to the completed doll and I'm always amazed myself that it has actually happened!
This time my bead mojo was strong enough for me to start on a new doll only a few days after finishing the wedding outfit and once again there were experiments, failures, and a complete change of plan.
You see, my first plan had been pink, but I had problems getting the same pink in both size 11 and 15 seed beads, so I checked the colors I had on hand and went for a favorite opaque luster red instead.
Luckily red with some golden accents looks stunning on this girl with her long blond hair and luckily she's not as afraid of color as I often seem to be myself or this dress would be black now ;-)

My second plan had been a kind of evening gown which I'm not going to say more about in case I'll do a variation of it eventually after all (how often have I said that about things?). The reason I didn't follow that plan were the gloves.
Did you know that Dawn has really small hands? Bead gloves simply looked too bulky, even with 15s, and of course there wasn't a chance I could have made a thumb with beads.
So the gloves turned into sleeves instead, 3/4 long which is a preferred length of my own.
When I was still a knitter, I hated sleeves. It was my old problem of having to make the same thing twice, boooooring. This time I made the sleeves first, that's definitely a new one for me.

What I really like about making these doll outfits is how one thing influences the other, often unexpectedly. After the sleeves I made the top and when I was at the top of the top - I often start from the waist because the beads don't try to run away there - and joined it with the sleeves, it hit me. A Carmen neckline!
And the Carmen neckline called for a wider, flowing skirt.
You may think at first that this dress doesn't look that different from that of the Fairy Queen, but actually there are several things I did like this for the first time.
There's the neckline and my first long sleeves, there are tiny crystal embellishments (you have to trust me on this, it's hard to see here), and not only is the waist a bit higher up which accentuates Dawn's lovely figure, but the skirt also flares out higher up, and after increasing always in the same spots for some rows, the skirt then falls down straight while the Fairy Queen's skirt is increased all around and all the way down to the bottom.
That's the fun about making these dresses, even though you are limited by the beads not being flexible, you can still play with designs.
I think Dawn likes it, too, judging from the way she's showing off her new dress.

The dress didn't seem to need many accessories, so Dawn is just wearing some simple gold sandals - I'm sure she would also have liked to go barefoot - a classic two-toned coated hematite ball chain and a cute little daisy chain. Maybe she has just made that herself before going to the market?
Yes, she has been to the market with her netted cotton tote that she has also made herself, no doubt, and she has brought home a huge ear of corn which actually fills up the tote. Hopefully it's organic, but I'm sure Dawn knows what she does! ;-)

I already have at least two new designs in mind, one of them will take more planning because of the technique I think I'll have to use, however, so I can't promise when there will be more to see.

Dawn was a registered trademark of the Topper Company. I am not affiliated with Topper in any way.

Oldies but Goodies - Boho

Boho - if we found out something in this week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge it's that we struggle with the word.
I remember the first time I stumbled upon the expression Boho Chic, it was when I first started browsing Etsy. Even then I wasn't sure what exactly it was supposed to mean. I always thought of some kind of Hippie style, colorful, fringe, flowing, but didn't quite get why it wasn't just called Hippie then.
Boho is an abbreviation of Bohemian which had originally to do with Bohemian travellers from Central Europe and developed into the description of a certain lifestyle rebelling against the rules of society way before there were hippies. Sherlock Holmes for example had a "Bohemian soul", but I doubt he wore bright colors and fringe (yes, I know he's not real, such a pity), Winston Churchill was "pre-First World War Bohemian" (now I bet that's a surprise for you, I know it was for me).
Today's Boho look does use a lot of hippie elements, so we were not completely off.
You are most welcome to tell me your own description because now I'm still pretty much at a loss what exactly to think ;-)

Oh, and of course I brought you some examples from the challenge, too!

1 The Crafty Chimp
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 MC Stoneworks
4 RioRita
5 Cat's Wire

Tackle that stash - Kumihimo cord and beads bracelet

This bracelet really made me dig into my stash drawers!

At first I only wanted to loom a slim bracelet. I had some bead soup mixed from gold lined crystal, transparent topaz, and transparent topaz AB cube beads and I had ordered some gold lined crystal and transparent topaz seed beads for a piece in a series not long ago of which I still had some leftovers.
I really like the look of alternating cube and seed beads in a row - as I did in the O beads bracelet and pendant - which reminds me of tweed. Great structure.
When I had finished looming, however, I knew this needed something more, but what? I went through my drawers and found some golden Kumihimo cord that seemed just perfect and that I had used in looming before.

I sewed one strand on along the middle of the bracelet. Not only did it give the piece even more structure, but the red thread also added some contrast.
The sides did look a little naked now, though, so I added two more cords.
It's a bit of challenge what to do with the cord ends if you use ribbon crimps. Did I want crimps? What if I didn't use a clasp at all? What if I just braided those strands tightly, so they could be used for tying the bracelet onto the wrist in two different ways depending on the wrist size?

I was so close to leave it at that, but somehow it still needed something else. It needed some embellishment on the sides because it was slim, maybe a row of seed beads? Okay. Not on both sides, however. How about a seed beads fringe - I had already used up the cube bead mix except for one lonely cube - or maybe ... wait, I still had crystals that would be perfect in color! I knew I didn't have that many left, would there be enough? It turned out I did, in fact I had one too much.

Didn't that work out nicely? ;-)
And an extra bonus is that I could use the bracelet for the monthly JAC challenge which was about fiber art/mixed media AND that it gave me more ideas!