Do you have today off? If so, you might want to think about a little maintenance work:
Virginia, over at Art Bead Scene, has a great little tutorial on how easy it is to clean the tarnish off your silver! It involves baking soda and aluminum foil, which might sound like hocus-pocus, but I can attest to the fact that it works!
Thank you to Tammy Powley over at About.com’s Jewelry Making site! Tammy has compiled links to 8 different beginner projects, at least 5 of which would be fun for Christmas and other winter holidays. One of the projects is a simple ornament cover…once you try one of these and see how they work, the more complicated ones will not seem quite so daunting!
beads, beading, handmade-beaded, jewelry, wearable-art, mixed-media, ornaments, tutorials
Mexico Connect has put together a beautiful website filled with artwork by the Huichol of Mexico. There are links to articles on the culture and symbolism, as well as many fine images of artwork, much of it the beaded style that most of us immediately think of. This site is a treat!
Eclipse
Christi Freisen
The newly redesigned Bead & Button website has a marvelous gallery now, with pages and pages of inspiring images to make you drool. I have always especially liked the work of Christi Freisen, aka cforiginals. Many of the images included are winners of the Bead Dreams 2007 contest.
[tags]beads,beading,jewelry,
Beautiful example of Kanzashi by
Vivien Hoffpauir
These hair ornaments are fascinating! Visit Viven’s site to see all the different styles that she’s made. If you’d like to try giving it a go, there is a wonderful Kanzashi tutorial written by Kurokami-Kanzashi on deviantArt.
Carolina González is the owner and designer of NeoVamp Jewelry. Besides making wicked cool wearables, Carolina is full of great ideas for display. Check out this traveling display case that she’s made:
Dori’s work is different from any other you’ll ever see. At first glance it seems like bead embroidery, but her style and technique is truly unique. Visit Dazzle & Shimmer and see for yourself. From her website:
“While living in Paris, Dori started creating an original line of jewelry and fashion accessories, made in a needle work technique that is similar to the traditional “passementrie”. Back home, she set up her design studio in Tel-Aviv, some twenty years ago.
From here on, Dori developed and expanded her line of accessories and jewelry with an original, fashion oriented, but personal touch. Dori’s creations, referred to by some as “Modern Decadence”, present scene stealing pieces as well as classic designs. The collection is made in small, often changing series and includes one-off and limited edition creations.”
Other posts on bead embroidery:
Betsy Youngquist
handmade-beaded-jewelry, beads, beading, mixed-media, wearable-art
Harvest Moon
At last! The warm browns and golds that I love so much! I spent the month of October reflecting on the month that had just passed and creating Harvest Moon. I think I’m going to have a very hard time with the moon for October, which I’ll start the first week or so of November. It will be the Hunter’s Moon. It’s not that I have anything against hunting, having grown up in a school district that took the first day of deer season off without any sense of irony. It’s just that there isn’t really any hunting symbolism that really appeals to me to bead. Oh well, hopefully I’ll think of something, or else I’ll just make it an abstract.
You can find links to more of the Bead Journal Project’s participants on Robin Atkin’s blog.
You can also click on “Bead Journal Project” under “categories” in the right-hand sidebar (of my blog, that is!) to see the past three months’ beaded journal pages.
mixed-media, bead-embroidery, beads, creativity, bead-journal-project
My friend Amy Fraser has an amazing collection of pendants out for the fall and winter. She’s calling it the Prophecy Collection. Take a look!
Don’t miss the artist profile that Amy did for Bead Arts either!
handmade-beaded-jewelry, polymer-clay, beads, beading, mixed-media, wearable-art
And the winner is…Grace Danel! Grace is one of the participants in the Bead Journal Project, and we are so proud of her! Her 6 x 4 inch piece is called Justine.
Margie writes about the piece:
“Grace Danel’s bead embroidered piece uses a very muted, amethyst purple with bright yellow, and creates one of the most usual, and successful combinations. She very consciously limited yellow to a few distinct focal points. Her piece won by slim margin because of how successfully she used a wide variety of purple, violets, and lavendars with yellow. She combined an amazing array of tones and tints in exquisite balance.”
You can see all the other winner’s at Margie’s website. I think many of the pieces are amazing, but I have to be honest that I’m somewhat biased towards Grace’s since we’re both involved in the Bead Journal Project.
The slogan of this mission is “eradicating poverty one bead at a time”. Bead For Life creates a bridge between Ugandan women who want to build a better future for themselves and their families and bead buyers who can help them.
[tags]beads,beading,handmade-beaded-jewelry,Uganda[/tags}
Denise Perreault makes a lot of really neat stuff, and I love the way her website is arranged…it’s really easy to navigate. That way, you can concentrate on all the gorgeous beadwork instead of trying to figure out how to get “the-ah from he-ah”, as we say in New England. The thing that Denise makes that I’ve never seen done before is glass curtains. They are simply beautiful.
Visit Denise and take a look at her beautiful vessels and sculptures too!
I’ve never taken a workshop with Melanie, but it’s certainly a big temptation now that I’ve seen the stunning array of pieces that she teaches! You can look over her workshop topics and schedule at her website.
handmade-beaded-jewelry, wearable-art, beads, beading, jewelry, mixed-media
There’s a lot to love on Betsy Youngquist’s gallery site! I really love her older beaded paintings, but it’s her beaded objects like the ones below that totally blow me away! Not surprisingly, Betsy’s work has been featured in many books and beadwork magazines.
Lydia is inspired by ancient Mediterannean arts, including frescoes, architecture, and gold work.
handmade-beaded-jewelry, wearable-art, beads, beading, jewelry, mixed-media
Come on a journey through a bead and jewelry wonderland, where no item is considered too strange to use in making something...especially if that item has a hole in it! All types of beads are welcomed and cherished here, and no techniques are off-limits. You'll be amazed and inspired by the beadwork that is being done today!
Bead Arts Author(s)
