Tackle that stash - Crystal Arrow

For those who don't know it yet, I'm (half) Swabian from Southwest Germany. Like all regions, we have our own stereotypes attached to us, one of them being that we don't like to part with our money.
Sometimes I have a bout of frugality myself about using up bits of stuff. Do you save thread, wire, bits of fabric etc.? Then you may able to understand what I'm talking about.
I don't really do it in an organized way, though. I sometimes save lengths of thread I know I will be able to use because that thread is not available in Germany and it's true I don't like to part with my money if it's for crazy postage fees ... and yes, postage has become more than crazy.
I also save beading foundation and backing if I think I will be able to do something with it. If it's a weird shape, that can even challenge me and be a lot of fun like the "Mod heart" pendant.

It can also be a challenge if it has a weird shape and is also quite small which brings me to today's stash tackler. It has been around for a while and it was high time to finish it.

The starting point of this piece was the shape of the beading foundation which reminded me of an arrow.
Being quite small, the arrow needed something to make it really pop, so I went through my stash and found a tube in which I had collected different beads, among them red crystals, some small and opaque, the others large, transparent, and very sparkly.

I don't usually wear red a lot myself although I like the color, but red in jewelry has something special. Not only does it pop off an outfit and can therefore set a stunning accent without being too overwhelming, but it always gives me that cool gothic vampire vibe that I love.
Black and red is a favorite color combination of mine and if Gundel weren't so strict about not wearing any costumes, I would love to give her a little black cloak with red satin lining 😼

For this piece's size, however, red and black seemed to be too much, so I chose one of my favorite seed bead reds instead. It's gorgeous, rich and dark with a beautiful luster. I used black thread to give it an even darker touch.
At first, I wanted to turn it into a necklace and maybe add a heart or something, but the arrow was too wide for that to work. I decided it had to shine on its own and the obvious choice was to make it into a brooch!
Can you imagine this on a black coat or jacket or another kind of top?

January - A challenge

I haven't been touching anything jewelry related in a while. I had to look it up, my last piece of jewelry was the pair of tassle earrings more than two months ago!

What's wrong with me, you want to know? I wish I knew. I have a whole list of ideas, but I'm still in the middle of an embroidery project, and while I used to have several projects on the go, it's something I can't seem to do right now.

Of course, it would be the easiest to blame my thumb joint again, but while it is part of it, it is, well, exactly that, part of it, but not everything.
Some of it is probably my overall mood, news-related, which sometimes seems to paralyze me. Some of it is feeling as if I have been chasing my right audience forever and doing that year after year tends to get mentally exhausting time and again. I'm by no means alone in that, I have seen it in other jewelry friends, but of course also in other creatives, no matter what the medium. Some of it might still be hibernation mode.

Usually it takes me a bit to get out of that and then I'm back happily experimenting and playing, but this time it seems to be harder for me to just grab something and give it a go although that is something that has always worked pretty well for me before. Just slap a cab on some backing and start stitching. Just take a wire and my crochet hook and do it.
Weird about it is that my brain is actually creating in theory and waits for my fingers to follow suit.

So I thought a stash tackler would be perfect.
Nothing super experimental, just something to get myself kick started.
I took one of my labradorite cabs, glued it on, picked some colors for the bezel and started stitching. It's amazing how good that felt already although it was not very creative.
Bezel done, I started looking for beads to add and as the lab looked a bit gloomy so far, I went for a sparkly blue, separated by tiny hematite beads which created small open spaces between the crystals which I could fill up with button beads and how about some tiny silver beads on the other side ... yes, it seems the kick start had worked!

That's when it hit me - the January/February challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community.
What had our challenge mistress written?
Symbols: Snowflakes, icicles, evergreen trees
Colors: White, silver, blue, dark green
Herbs and Flowers: Sage, pine, juniper, snowdrop
Crystals: Garnet, clear quartz, hematite
Themes: Reflection, introspection, purification, new beginnings

I had "ice" from the button beads, I had silver and blue beads, the lab is shimmering in blue and green, I had hematite, and this was my new beginning for jewelry this year - and nothing of it had been planned.
It was downright perfect ... until I cut the edges. Don't ask me how it happened, but snip snip, there went not one, but two important threads. Honestly, am I jinxed? Are my eyes too crooked to see a thread? I didn't know if I should cry or laugh like a madwoman. Crying wouldn't have helped much, though, so I saved what I could meaning I cut it down to the bezel, glued and sewed on another piece of backing and started all over again hoping for the best.
In the end it turned out just a tad different because I didn't remember exactly how I had placed the tiny silver seed beads and the hematite it the first time round, so maybe there is a tiny bit of experimenting in it after all.
It's so shiny and sparkly, the pictures can hardly do it justice, especially because I took them when it was already dark. I just couldn't wait until tomorrow to show that I'm back! Hopefully, that is.

The cat moth

I live on the first floor and sometimes I get little night guests at the window behind my bed. Mostly they are moths, but I've also had grasshoppers stop by which probably live in the plants on the roof terrace above me.
I can never resist attempting to take photos of my visitors, but it's not easy because of the reflection, because of my small old camera, because I can't use flash although it's night, because this particular window is definitely not the cleanest in the house (I hate having to move the bed), and a cat hoping to claw its way through the glass to get to this fun toy also doesn't help. Ponder went completely nuts for visitors and would keep tapping the glass to which all of them have been surprisingly oblivious, some even stayed for an hour.

The other day this beauty came by, let me take a few pictures and then flew back into the night, as if it had just come by for me to admire it shortly.
Its color was kind of a ghostly white, very pretty, but the light of my reading lamp changed that in the picture. I love that I was able to catch the shimmer in the wings a little.

Shortly after that, Heather (my New Zealand artist friend whose cat paintings I use for the HeatherCats) sent me a picture from an Instagram account. koty_vezde edits animal pictures to give them cat heads or faces, with very surprising results at times. My reply was that I would probably have freaked out if my moth visitor had had a cat head, and Heather wrote that I should make a cat moth.
It didn't take a second for me to know that I indeed would do that.
A while ago, I hadn't been able to resist some fabulous ceramic cat heads with fangs although at the time I had no idea at all what to do with them.
Now, however ...

I went right in.
Bead embroidery, obviously.
I couldn't bead a bezel for the cat head, due to its shape, so I could just as well use the loop for the bail construction.
Sequins for the wings, of course.
A sparkly, "fuzzy" body, just because.

I began by drawing on where I wanted the head to go. It wouldn't be glued on completely as the idea of an edging around the ears didn't appeal to me, and I didn't want the ears to get in the way while embroidering the body.
Next I started the body with some old bugle beads that a friend brought me from an American fleamarket, so I knew nothing about them. She got me different kinds and my first choice was a gunmetal, but my needle didn't even go through most of them twice which was very annoying, so I gave up after a few stitches and turned to the other kind instead. They look black, but if you look at them in the light, they are more like a very dark garnet with a luster which makes them sparkle really beautifully. They are not regular, but I think they worked well here, anyway.

For the wings, I decided on two different colors, black (shiny and matte) because it fits a slightly creepy little cat moth and cognac to pick up on the head's color.
After finishing, I felt that the body was too flat next to them, so I generously added black bicones and black-blue firepolished crystals to it. Major sparkle!

Next the head got glued on, and with all the shine and sparkle, I spontaneously decided that this was not just a cat moth, but a magical fairy cat moth who needed a little headdress (I blame Mabel, my muse, she puts things in my brain).
And while I was already going over the top, I couldn't resist tiny dangles (size 15 beads, by the way, that I had to pick bit by bit off a dustpan after somecat threw the bead tube on the floor and the lid came off by itself).
Last but not least I put on a faux leather backing and did an edging. It was tempting to go completely wild with it, but it would have been too much, so it had to be very understated matte black seed beads.

I'll be showing you several pictures to give you an idea of how much the angle changes the color effect and I also have a not so great video to really show you the sparkle.

Tackle that stash - Bead embroidered brooch with blue lace agate

If you ask yourself now if I will ever show anything but bead embroidery again, the answer is no.
I'm just kidding! It's just that my latest wire and felting project got stuck somehow and the brooch I'm about to show you got finished.

The blue lace agate has been another one of my long term companions, so-to-speak. It's a very irregular stone that is drilled sideways at the top, and it has become another one of those seemingly eternal experiments. I won't tell you what it was once before because then you may have a hard time seeing anything else in it ... but maybe that was just me. Possibly someone else would have had the perfect idea from the start.

The only thing I actually planned for this piece was to glue the agate onto the backing and bead a bezel for it. The first problem came up when I tried to find a good way to deal with the inwards curve on one side.
From there the piece - I didn't know then if it would become a pendant or a brooch or a component for a necklace - took over. It demanded something to run across the stone and secure the bezel for good. Not that the stone was about to fall out, but the curve in the bezel just didn't look right. I wanted it to follow the stone better.
And I wanted to make said "something" look as if the stone were overgrown by the beads from the bezel. When I looked for beads to add to the edging, I came across a pair of earrings I had started ripping up because the seed beads in them had started losing their color just by lying in a drawer (just in these earrings, though, very strange). The royal blue crystals looked like the perfect match for the mostly icy colors I had already used, with a hint of blue added by the thread.

In the end I thought a brooch would be the best choice for this piece. The small asymmetrical fringe is right under the "growth" to emphasize the organic feeling.
I can tell I'm slowly getting more comfortable with making asymmetrical pieces. After all the stone didn't give me a choice, so it was easier to go with the flow.

This is what the brooch looks like worn. Sorry, the vintage dress my manikin is wearing is not the best background for it, but I didn't have anything better on hand so quickly.

Tackle that stash - Lampwork, silver, and crystals

Lately I have been working on making more earrings. You know I sometimes struggle making the same thing twice, so this is not always easy for me.
When going through my lampwork stash in search of inspiration again, however,  I found these beautiful drop headpins on sterling silver by Iced Moments.
The easiest way to use them is just bending the silver into earwires, I "made" a pair of earrings for myself that way. For these I wanted a little more, though not too much to keep the drops the main attraction.

In my crystal stash I still have some 2 mm crystals, and these three colors - a sapphire blue and a grey and light blue in kind of an opalite shimmer - seemed to be perfect for the earrings, so I wrapped them on using a fine sterling silver wire.
Just a pair of my handmade earwires and there you go. It doesn't always need much.

Tackle that stash - Beaded rivoli pendant

Open the window, let some air in and my bead mojo, too!
It was high time to have a look at my stash and do something with it. This time I picked some tiny crystals that I have had for a very long time.

Lately I have been practising peyote bezels for cabs or beads, both with Super Duos and seed beads - Delicas are still on my list. And then there are still the rivolis a friend gave me. I once crocheted a silver bezel for a rivoli and the memory was enough to make me not trust them, slippery little fellows. I still have a lousy picture of it and checked, that was six years ago! I really had to get over that fear ;-)

First I made a pair of earrings for a challenge to practice, and then I went a little further with the following pendant to which I didn't just add "rays" on one side - for that starlike look - but on both sides and filled the gaps up with two rows of the crystals that I mentioned above.
At first I was thinking of just one row, but I had exactly fourteen of the white crystals,  just how much I needed. That was a sign, right?
 
Voilà, and here it is! Now what next? Stay tuned!

Tackle that stash - Beaded bangles with crystals

It was pure coincidence that I rummaged around in my "various beads" drawer and received the YouTube subscription email in the same week. That way I was not only reminded that I still had some tile beads in my drawer, but I also got an idea what to make with them. I had only worked with tile beads once before and that had been inspired by my ribbon and bead bracelets (that are made using a loom, but are not bead loomed). While my tile stash wouldn't have been big enough for another one of those, the Bollywood Bangles design by Jill Wiseman worked perfectly.

Only my bangles are so not Bollywood at all. My tiles were silver and a marbled lavender and beige, I only have two colors of size 15 seed beads (for a different project), black and gunmetal, and my Twin Beads are limited in color choice as well. I could have used some bright colored crystals to make up for that, but for now I decided to stay subtle.

For this bangle I used the marbled tiles with brown and gold lined seed beads in size 11, matte metallic golden Twins, but instead of using size 15 seed beads and smaller bicone crystals as in the video I chose these bigger beautiful firepolished crystals (originally I had got them to use them with a tutorial that I lost patience with). Actually I think they sit better than the bicones, and I don't mind that you don't see as much of the tile beads.

Then there is this set of bangles with crystals in grey, pink and a light burgundy. They are very sparkly in the light and they do look great stacked!

I already have some more ideas for small variations, but that will mean a bead order which is not in my plans for the moment as I really have to finish up some WIPs first. Remind me, though, if I forget! ;-)

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!

Oldies but Goodies - Crystals

What do you think of when you hear the word crystal? Probably bling to the max. Crystals come in all kinds of materials and shapes, from snowflakes to gypsum crystals (have you ever heard of the Cave of the Crystals?) to glass.
As always the JAC Oldies but Goodies challenge delivered a variety of items, this time - you've guessed it - with crystals. Enjoy!

1 Violetmoon's Corner
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 MC Stoneworks
4 2 Fab Fristers
5 Cat's Wire
6 Echoes of Ela
7 The Crafty Chimp

Wire calling

With all the bead looming I have done recently my wire started to feel neglected and I heard it calling to me.

It will never stop being fascinating to me how different the feeling is if I pick up the bead loom or the crochet hook.
Once I get to the bead loom, I usually have a pattern ready that I have to follow and there are not many changes I make during the process.
The hook, however, lets me change paths in the middle of a piece. Although you don't see much of the wire here from the front, the back is built up from several randomly knitted layers which make the pendant sturdy and helps the crystals to sit right.

The pendant is now available in my DaWanda shop.

Green and black

It wasn't planned that way.
Sometimes if I am kind of restless, I pick up some wire and my hook. I either make a bezel for a cabochon and see what happens or I start crocheting or knitting a few stitches. Not always, but often it helps me to calm down, and I don't even do it to have something to show later.

It may start with a tube when I suddenly decide to fold it up and knit a disk around that suddenly gets folded up over the first layer, so I can add a second and third disk which I wire together, so I can put something inside or maybe not because instead I turn it into a bezel after all and put a stone in there or maybe a bead and you know this would look fun as a ring if I add another layer and then attach it to some thicker wire or maybe not?

I do know this is not good writing, but my brain doesn't take a break to think about grammar or punctuation when it is in that mood. It just keeps running and babbling and ticking which may be a good thing or leave me with a tangled mess of wire that looks like an experiment gone wrong. Well, which it actually is.
You can't always tell from the piece how many layers went into it, but it doesn't really matter, does it?
Only the result matters and sometimes it ends up in the trash.

Not this one.
I spent more time on this pendant than I would want to admit, but I do like how it turned out.

Available in my Zibbet shop

Who is this?

Honestly, I have no idea. She just happened. With that headdress on she looks like a queen from an old time or maybe a sorceress or a priestess.
One thing is for sure, she took her sweet time to look like this. I frogged, I bent, I folded, I added, I took away and all the time she stayed as tranquil as she is looking now.
I'm sorry for not having a better picture at this time of night, but I felt I needed to take one right away after I spent the whole evening with her ...

Catching up

Hey guys, what have you been up to lately?
I know it seems as if I am hiding in a big hole, but that's not completely true. True is that my motivation to blog is not the biggest one at the moment, that has to do with the fact that I feel a little torn. I'm still struggling with getting the flat fixed and things are not exactly going too smoothly. I'll be getting there, but it's draining my energy.
I recharge my batteries when I'm creating, but the part that comes after the creative process ... the pictures, the listing, the, erm, blogging ... I'll try to be better.

Let's have a look at what I have been playing with, shall we? A few things at least, I don't want to overwhelm you with pictures.

Remember Jo, my doll model head? This is her pal. I'm almost sure I had a name for her as well. I do know she looks French to me. Let's call her Jacqueline. You might have seen part of her in shots before. Jacqueline has one problem, she's bald. She borrows Jo's wig from time to time, but that wouldn't have worked for this shot because the wig is black and that makes it hard to see the necklace.

Yes, this is a necklace with black crystals. Today however the thought came over me that it would look fun as a head piece, too. Some hair pins in the right spots going through the chain and hair. Just an idea. This is a bad sneak peek picture of the necklace (Ms Newberry who's modeling it is still waiting for an outfit that works better with it). It's not listed yet for obvious reasons.

Then there is the second Bead Eater that's finally listed. The first Bead Eater was made in earthy brown colors, for this one I chose beautiful fall colors. Those triangle beads are pretty amazing. It's 125 cm or 4 ft long!
The name Bead Eater means that these pieces eat up my bead stash which is not necessarily a bad thing ;-)

Bead Eater in fall colors

The following necklace however did take even longer, actually a lot longer. I'm so in love with Miyuki's galvanized seed beads that I just couldn't resist making this fun and colorful loop necklace using different colors of wire and beads in different combinations. A friend said it reminded of coral and I liked the idea a lot.
I see loop earrings and maybe bracelets in this style, what do you think?

Confetti Loops necklace

Finishing touches

You know how from time to time I'm trying to finish stuff. I'm definitely not the only one with a load of WIPs around or with a stash of beads etc. that could buy me my own tennis court (no, I don't play tennis which makes the decision for the stash a lot easier) and every, now and then the moment comes to calm your own bad conscience and finish a WIP or use up a few beads (wire, cabs, clay, yarn, whatever your poison may be). Afterwards you can happily start fourteen new WIPs and put in a huge bead order and it will feel so right!

I actually did both (AND even listed an item) and I hope you are as impressed as I am about myself. I think I earned myself the right to order Delicas in abundance later. Now if I could get enough peace to take photos, everything would be fine, but it's hard to concentrate on the right lighting with a yelling cat sitting in front of the door. So you will only get to see pictures of one piece now.

This necklace actually started out as a sample for a custom order. The middle part is spool knit fine silver with my beloved dark red and black Swarovski crystals, a color combination that I'm crazy about because it looks so luscious. I crocheted a very slim silver rope to go on each side and added a little focus to where the spool knit part meets the rope by wrapping around two rows of crystals.

It's dainty, it's elegant, it sparkles ... and it will hopefully be listed in my shop tomorrow!

Big Bling Theory

A bad pun, I know, but after working on one bling Swarovski cuff after the other this weekend, I couldn't come up with anything smart.

Black, crystal, silver, padparadscha, montana blue, crystal AB, copper - you'll find all of these colors in the cuffs. They have different lengths and widths and patterns ... now I think I won't want to see a Swarovski crystal for some time!

Well, of course after I have taken photographs and listed these six ;-)

The weekend is almost over ...

... which means the day job is waiting for me around the corner. It's going to be so hard to get up really early again!

As I don't know if Mabel will be overwhelmed by this fact (I found muses can get bored easily) and run away to Maui or Australia (in which case she could bring me some opals) , I took the chance to quickly work on another piece, a huge cross with lots of Swarovski crystals - blue and clear - and a faceted midnight blue glass bead as focal.

The addiction has taken over, that went quickly.

Here it is, if you want to see more pictures, you can find it here in my ArtFire studio.

P.S. "She has been telling stories about us again." "Nah, you are kidding, what did she say this time?" "She said we don't use the new box." "Doh, what does she know? Let's show her."

And that's what they did this evening. In abundance. Greebo, Esme and Ponder.

Here's just one example. Let's make the human look like a fool. Well done indeed.

Let's have a ball!

Tricked you. I might have a good time, but neither alcohol nor dancing is involved. No flirting, no movies, no night on the town, no girls' night out.
Still my muse and I had, well, not just one, but actually two balls today and I am almost sure they won't be the last ones.
Maybe you remember my wrecking ball? The name comes to you courtesy of Maureen, an SJA friend (by the way, you should check out her blog and shop sometime). These balls are different. The wrecking ball is almost solid. These ones I wanted to make hollow, so I could fill them up, like a candy. Well, not really. A filled candy is meant to be eaten. I love liquid fillings and the sensation on the tongue once the outer wall is breaking. You shouldn't try to eat the ball pendants and I will tell you why.

First I made this one.


It is from black coated copper wire. I tried different things to fill it with, but in the end I decided to take a silver-colored kind of embroidered ribbon because it gave the best contrast.

Now I was eager to try other combinations. As I often do, I reached into the "current project bag" in my nightstand without looking inside and out came the green-golden colored wire. I tried different ribbon and beads for the inside, then I found the last bicone crystals that were left over from my "Green Fairy" necklace. Perfect!


I guess now you know why you shouldn't eat these pendants. Ribbon feels strange on the tongue and is hard to chew and crystals could break your teeth out.
Better stick with wearing them around the neck! ;-)