Tassels

When I was a child, my grandma had a table cloth with long, heavy tassels. I loved them and could spend hours (actually probably not hours, but it seemed like it to me then) braiding them, unraveling the braids and braiding them again. They were so shiny and pretty.

Although I own a book about beaded tassels that a friend gave me to me, I never made anything from it because I didn't know what to do with a tassel. To make something with real thread tassels, never crossed my mind at all - until our JAC challenge mistress picked the topic "Tassels or PomPoms" for the November/December challenge.
Pompoms, pom-poms, pom-pons, pompons - feel free to choose your favorite spelling - were right out. I have pompom makers for two different sizes because I thought I could make some myself for Gundel and den Dekan to play with, but was never very good with the cardboard rings, but even with pro equipment I either suck at it or der Dekan is extremely good at disassembling pompoms. It's probably both. Anyway, I'm a bit miffed with pompoms now, so I had to pick tassels.

Of course I could have grabbed my book now and fight my way through instructions, something I don't have much patience for, also I remembered that all of the projects would have called for a bead order, another thing I didn't have the patience for at the moment (bead orders take me really long because I am obsessed with not forgetting anything, not that that ever works out).
I also didn't want to order a bunch of thread tassels most of which I would probably never use, and I definitely didn't want to make any myself if I didn't have to.

I know, that sounds as if I wasn't very motivated, but that wasn't it. I thought I would definitely do some kind of beaded tassel, only not quite as ambitious as the ones in the book.
Then, however, I remembered that I had bought a strand of beads sometime ago that had thread tassels on each end and that I had kept them after cutting up the strand. Lucky me because now I just had to come up with something for the top!

That's where my advent calendar from 2022 comes in, the Christmas Bells, to be precise. How about using their top part for inspiration and building something up from crystals - firepolished instead of bicones - and seed beads?
So that's what I did, with the help of a Christmas movie for background noise (Hallmark which one of our TV channels is running up and down right now, so I didn't have to worry about not catching important information, and guess what, there was a happy ending 🤣).
I think they fit the festive season quite well and I promise not to braid the threads!

Fall harvest

"You may use any materials you wish and interpret the theme in a way that makes you think of a Fall Harvest."
That's what our Jewelry Artisans Community challenge mistress wrote.
I had a plan almost right away, but was stopped in action because I couldn't find the essential item for said plan.
It's so embarrassing, I started looking for it on August 22 which was when the challenge was posted, I nagged about not finding it on August 27, then again on September 20 announcing that it was driving me nuts, and I found it on September 29 - IN EXACTLY THE PLACE I HAD LOOKED FOR IT THE FIRST DAY AND AT LEAST FIVE TIMES AFTER THAT!! Not mentioning all the other possible spots.
I had been looking for a box in my drawer, but I had already taken the baggie out of the box and thought it was something else.

I know that you can't wait to hear about my plan now.
It includes one of my little wire crochet baskets. No, don't leave! I'm not harvesting yarn.
The mystery item is a cute little Halloween pumpkin from clay (actually there are two, but I only used one).
Sounds like an easy challenge, doesn't it? I harvested a pumpkin from the haunted garden, put him in a little basket and took it home. What will happen there, no one knows yet.

Not that easy, actually. The pumpkin is not a bead, but a charm with a little loop at the top. How was I supposed to attach the little one in the basket if I didn't want to glue him in (which I obviously didn't)?
The only way to do it was to attach him to the handle.
So first I had to work out what size to make the basket, so I could fit the pumpkin in without hiding his face, but also without him slipping out. Then I started wrapping my handle as usual, but added the pumpkin in the last two wrapping cycles. So far, so good.
Now all I needed were some green wire tendrils. If you wonder how a harvested pumpkin manages to wrap all his tendrils around the basket handle, you have obviously forgotten that he comes from the haunted garden.

Next up was the basket filling. I couldn't just let the pumpkin dangle from his tendrils in there, it didn't look right.
After trying it with wire at first, I settled for a nice dark green needle felt cushion instead. You can only see that a little in the picture, but it's actually very important for my little pumpkin to sit on very comfortably.
He sure looks very happy with it :-)

Summer, sun, sun flower

When our challenge mistress from the Jewelry Artisans Community chose sunflowers for our new challenge, my reaction was that I was all "sunflowered out" because I had made several in the years before.

And then, in a sudden burst of productivity and supported by the 80s charm of Richard Carpenter's "Robin of Sherwood" for background noise, I started making a pair of earrings.
Don't get excited, this is just another example of two earrings magically turning into one pendant.

I bead embroidered the two centers first. How could I not notice that added petals would make these into very large earrings?
Well, actually I did notice and still decided to keep going. I have always been a fan of wearing big, fun earrings myself.

After starting on the happy yellow petals - I really remembered my childhood love for yellow again these days - it quickly became clear to me, however, that I would not be pulling this through. So many petals! One row of brick stitch petals, a slightly smaller one in herringbone stitch and a third small one as an edging for the center took me much longer than I had anticipated, like so often.
Just thinking of having to do this a second time made me revise the earring idea.

One hidden bail and a cute little lampwork bee later ... tadaaa.

Under the blue moon

I really have to blame den Dekan for this or thank him. Probably both because it was definitely him who had hidden the blue dichroic glass cab, but because he also made me find it again when he hid something else in the same place before my eyes.
It was a nice surprise, and as I was still in "moon mode" from the moon hare that I made for the JAC challenge "Moon and Stars", I started humming Blue Moon. That's a lot of moon ;-)
We had the old single by Elvis Presley, so that's always the version that comes to my mind first. Those were the times, me trying to convince my mother that I HAD to do my homework to background music aka all my father's old singles from the 50s and 60s.
Luckily we had the old "Musiktruhe" that I have shown here years ago, a TV/radio/record player combination. One of its very useful features was that you could put on several singles at a time (the family doesn't agree exactly on how many) which would then drop down and play one after another. I doubt my Mom would have approved of my getting up after each song and changing the single while doing homework.

And here is Elvis' voice in all its 1954 glory.



My mind began wandering.
Sitting near a lake listening to the sounds of crickets and frogs ... spotting some dragonflies having settled for the night ... under a blue moon ...

With the blue moon, the nightly background, and the dark green blade of grass, I wanted a contrasting color for the dragonflies, so I chose a mix of red beads to embroider them, with clear AB sequins for the wings.
It reminded me of the time a red dragonfly visited me in our little garden once. We don't have a pond, so I guess it had come over from another garden to say hello and then headed back.

Quite some time and a bead order later because I ran out of background beads, I thought this would have made a fun bracelet instead of a pendant, but with the backing already sewn on, I finally decided against that and added a hex bead rope instead.
I tried to take a video to show how sparkly this necklace is, but that didn't work, so it will have to be a late night picture for now.

The moon hare

Believe it or not, but my life with animals did not begin with cats.
Some of our first companions were bunnies, our own, but also guests from the zoo.
The last one was my crazy boy Buster.

As you can see, the love extended to other bunnies as well, and there are more, in metal, as pictures, or in plush, such as this little old Steiff fellow.

It is not surprising that bunnies also made it into my work before, like the needle felted bunnaroo or these bunny siblings.

I could keep going, but it's time to get to the point.
The current challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community is "Moon and Stars". Perfect for me as a moon lover.

What a lucky coincidence that my last bead order contained some more "moon" cabs, the faceted kind that I had used before, for example in the Moonlight Ravens, but also a few larger cat eye cabs.

I glued on one of the latter and that's when it hit me that a motif I had been wanting to do for a long time was even more perfect for me than just moon and stars - the Moon Hare.

While I learned about the Man in the Moon here, other cultures from Asia to America see the Hare or Rabbit in the Moon. The legends about the Moon Hare vary from country to country, if you are interested, you can find them here. It's really fascinating to read about similiarities and differences.

Now to some other rabbits that I have been fascinated for decades. The story is wild, kind of traumatizing as well, but the ending is beautiful. I'm talking about "Watership Down". I love both the book and the movie although there are scenes that still break my heart. I never fail to cry at the end when Hazel, the chief rabbit, is taken away by El-ahrairah to find peace after a long life.

El-ahrairah was the first rabbit, and although he upset Lord Frith, the creator of the world, he got the gift of speed, cunning, digging, and good hearing.

This is him after receiving that gift (thank you to Nightpaww for the GIF).

Several rabbits I knew were named after the book by us (unforgotten are Blackie Blackavar, the best rabbit mom ever, and sweet little Hyzenthlay) and the inspiration doesn't end there.

This is my bead embroidered Moon Hare.

As you can tell, El-ahrairah has inspired part of it.
By Frith, who has been on my bead looming list for ages, I got inspired to choose a flowing free form for the pendant.

Again, I used the beautiful dark blue hex beads for the night sky and golden AB ones for the stars.
I just love that magical sparkle when moving the piece, and this will definitely not be the last time for the hex beads to turn up in a design of mine.

There, now you know (almost) the whole story behind my love for rabbits and why I not only had fun making this pendant, but also why it brought up a lot of memories from the last 36 years, some of them bittersweet.
While I miss my bunnies (and the rest of the zoo), two cats are quite enough to keep me on my toes and also I wouldn't trust dem Dekan to leave a rabbit alone. So who knows, maybe I will be reviving more memories through my work instead.

Rip it up - The painting

"Rip it" - use the components of a piece and make something new from it, that was the March/April challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community.
I'm practically a professional rip upper. Up ripper? Jack the Ripper? You know what I mean. I could put on my shop sign "Ripping up since at least 2012". Because that's when I first wrote about ripping up stuff for a JAC blog carnival.
The other day a fellow jewelry maker asked how long others wait to rip up pieces or offer them at sale prices if they don't sell. For me, it often depends on
- how much I like a design - endlessly hoping it will find its person eventually
- on the materials and if I will be able to reuse or recycle them easily - I rip up fewer silver items than other things
- how difficult the ripping up will be - wire crochet or knit items with a bead in each stitch are the absolutely worst, but it's also no big fun to pick tiny thread bits out of beaded items.

Just like in 2012, my urge to rip something up usually comes over me like a sudden wave.
For the challenge, I had picked up two items, but both them were nothing but wire and pearls, and I didn't have an idea for just pearls. So I went wild and ripped up five items with stones instead, a Cantera opal, a small Boulder opal bead, two jasper cabochons, and a tumbled rock that I have fallen in love with many years ago.
Latter is the stone I want to show you today.

I don't know what kind of stone is, but to me it looks like a tiny impressionist landscape painting, a stormy sky over fields. So pretty.
I messed up royally.
My first mistake was to go for a wire wrapped bezel, a technique I had only just started and that I tried to make work on a very slippery rock, with wire just barely long enough. That led to mistake number 2, adding some "decorative" wire strands stabilizing the bezel and, frankly spoken, looking as if someone peeked at the landscape from behind very strange bars. The tiny dangle definitely couldn't save anything.
The pendant went on the "rip up" list pretty quickly.

This time around, I opted for bead embroidery. I had a leftover piece of beading foundation that looked like half a navette shape. Its center was just big enough for the rock.
My plan was a simple bezel and for the sides a few mookaite beads picking up the colors of the stone and flowing lines around them. I hated my first attempt. I didn't like the second attempt much better.
Ripping up a piece twice that was part of a ripping up challenge, oh, the irony!
I left the center with the stone, with a peyote bezel in metallic bronze, but the two sides had to go, snip snip.

That's when it hit me. I had a painting which needed a frame and nothing else. No flowing lines, no beads, nothing on the sides, nothing dangling from it.
Was it coincidence that the current episode of my favorite show about artisans was about a gilder working on an antique frame?
I read that impressionists would have preferred white frames for their work, but that collectors and museums wanted the valuable look of gilt frames.
To enhance the "old frame" feeling, I added an edging around the bezel using a mix of light and darker metallic bronze and gold.
Sorry, it's a very grey day, I still have to take better pictures.

If you have been wondering about the shape, by the way, you are right. The stone is not symmetrical as this picture of the back shows, it's more like a drop shape if you look at it vertically. So the pendant isn't symmetrical, either, but I think it still works.

And did I feel the urge to add dangles after all? Of course I did, it's not something I can just turn off. I just had to look at my little painting, though, and the urge went away.

So, what do you see?

Waiting for spring

At first I was completely without a plan when reading that the inspiration for our first challenge at JAC this year were daffodils.
I didn't even think I had yellow seed beads, but found two different tones in my box, much to my surprise, so that excuse was gone.
My beaded pin is just a little something, but it made me think of spring which fit the challenge theme "Yearning for spring".

Bead embroidered Christmas stockings - The second door

In 2014, I wrote about the tradition of Christmas stockings (I also linked to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine with pictures of a variety of vintage ones).

The stockings I want to write about today, however, are not vintage.
I made them for the Jewelry Artisans Community challenge. The challenge was to make Christmas jewelry inspired by the famous American "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem.




I had several ideas, but settled for the "stockings hung by the chimney with care" in the end. With everything else going on in my life, I didn't manage to get my initial plan to bead embroider a little chimney with stockings realized, instead I made individual ones which can be both pendants and little tree ornaments.
Aren't the silver lined beads with the matching sequins so festive and sparkly looking with the icy matte tops? I simply couldn't stop until I had used all of the silver lined colors in my stash (except my other two green tones because they were too similar) and almost used up the matte beads.
Only when working on the last, smallest one, it came to me that earrings would have been cute, too. As you can see, all stockings have different shapes because I drew the outline quite randomly on the backing. The patience for symmetrical earrings I just couldn't muster. What do you think, though, should I put them on my list for next year?

Someone should please tell me to start earlier next year, anyway, so I can also try some patterned ones!

P.S. A few days after scheduling this post I found yet another color. The only difference is that the golden one doesn't have a matte clear top, but a pearly white one as I didn't have enough of the matte beads left. There's always one that has to be different! ;-)

Seeing spots - A JAC challenge

What's your first thought when you hear "spots"? Mine were lampwork beads with dots, but when I checked out my stash, I found that I had used most of them, and I simply didn't have an idea for one lonely lampwork bead (yet).
My second thought for the Jewelry Artisans Community July/August challenge, however, were sequin spots on ladybugs. Now that was something I could do, even if a bead order was necessary to finish the project.

Ladybugs have turned up in my work several times, in bead loomed bracelets, earrings, even as the one polymer clay sculpture that I really like.
All of them have seven spots like the original Coccinella septempunctata, the European ladybug, a species which has also been introduced to the USA.
Have you ever seen clusters of ladybugs, in your house or on an outside wall for example? Those were probably Asian ladybugs or harlequins. They were introduced to the USA for controlling aphid populations and also came to Europe from there, but have proven to be a very invasive species. They come in different colors and can have any kind of number of spots on their elytras.
I remember seeing clusters like these twice, once on the bathroom window of a hotel room that had been left open. Luckily, the door to the hotel room itself had been closed! The other time was on a path just outside Cambridge. There were so many of them that we decided to take a different path because it would have been impossible not to step on them.

These ladybug earrings are the European kind as you can tell from the number of their spots, black sequins that sit on bead embroidered red wings.
They come on their own "leaves", an edging from matte green AB cube beads.

Challenge goal achieved! :-)

P.S. A little tip - don't spill black sequins on a black surface, especially not if it's already night. Actually, don't spill shiny black sequins at all. I spent more time than I liked with picking them off my hand with a needle because they kept clinging to it.
P.P.S. I have been thinking of making melon earrings in the same manner. What do you think, good idea or are there enough melons around already?

The beach is calling

Our bi-monthly challenge mistress at the Jewelry Artisans Community has been messing with our minds. The challenge is bi-monthly, by the way, not the mistress. See how my mind is already messed up?? ;-)
Let me try this again. Every two months we have a theme challenge at JAC and the good lady chose matching earrings. Great. We all know that matching earrings can be very hit and miss for me. Nevertheless I made some, only to find that she had changed the theme to beach to make it easier for us busy people. Serves me right for skipping that one post.

Beach, beach, beach, there was the beach in Wales we never found despite the signs (I still think they were fake and just meant to lure me into a field full of cows). The only beach I really remember was the one near Bodega Bay. Such a long time ago that I was there the last time, more than 20 years!
Seagulls, weird stuff on the sand - probably algae and remains of jellyfish - sand dollars, other birds and shells ... I knew it would be shells.
Shells are so easy to use in jewelry and I had a bunch of bigger ones that I had been gifted by a co-worker. I have netted shells and crocheted around them with wire, I made them from polymer clay, but you may have noticed, I'm having a lot of fun with bead embroidery lately. Sorry if it gets boring, guys.

The hardest part was to choose one of the shells, and once I had glued it onto the backing, the next hardest part was to decide what to do with it now. Actually I thought it was pretty without adding too much to it, and as luck had it, I happened to have the perfect beads to make a bezel in the colors of the shell itself. For a moment I was tempted to just leave it like that, but then added one single row of bronze metallic beads for contrast.
Now it needed a few pearls. I know, I know, that's not original at all, but shells just scream for pearls.
My first idea was to add one row, but then my dangle addiction raised its omnipresent head and I couldn't stop myself from making a little fringe in the center.

The last decision to make was the chain. I thought about a bail, hidden or not, two bails, chain, cord, everything I didn't have, so I ordered beads for a simple beaded rope.
Voilà, here we go!
Do you think it will please the challenge mistress?

The Dragonfly

I have always loved dragonflies. They are like small flying jewels.
I know they sew your lips together if you believe Snoopy ;-) but actually this is just an old superstition as the Britannica tells us: "The term devil’s darning needle is derived from a superstition that dragonflies may sew up the eyes, ears, or mouth of a sleeping child, especially one who has misbehaved." I've never heard of this superstition in my area, but I know that some people thought a dragonfly could sting or would drill into your eyes.

At the Jewelry Artisans Community we have a bimonthly challenge and the first one of this year - take a look here - was to try out something new, a new material, technique, or tool.
My first thought had been to finally use my Kumihimo disks, but somehow I just didn't feel like it. I don't have the right weights or spools and on top of that I have been too lazy to check out how exactly it's done.

Then, inspired by a documentary about embroiderers in India that I have watched a while ago, I thought of sequins. As I don't sew, I had never used sequins before except in a very short polymer clay jewelry venture with a friend 30 years ago. In fact I'm not even sure if I used them, but I had some scattered in my old stash boxes at some time.

What to do with sequins, though? Well, I love dragonflies ...
I looked through dragonfly pictures and I looked through my stash to decide on a color combination.
There was this acrylic cab on which I then based my choice of seed beads. Luckily I had everything except the sequins in my stash and could start right away while I was waiting for the sequins to arrive. It was more difficult than I had expected to find what I wanted, 4 mm clear AB sequins.
I had already decided not to make the body from single bigger beads, but to embroider the whole piece. For the wings and body I used seed beads in different sizes and different gold tones plus black and alabaster white, also gold lined bugles, and for the head I used gold coated hematite beads and bronze Twin Bead eyes.

To enhance the overall golden look, I chose to sew the sequins on using the method of adding a bead on top.
This is the end result. Almost.
I took this picture in my hand to show the size. Now what? I didn't trust an ordinary small needle to work. I hate big brooches with small needles. A necklace?

A friend convinced me that my dragonfly would make a good pin and advised me to check out hat needles etc., and that's what I did.
I found some that had larger filigree disks attached to the pin which I could sew to the backing easily and, which is much more important, safely.

Unfortunatley it's a rather grey day today and although I could see a beautiful green shimmer in the sequins at one moment, my camera wasn't able to pick it up. You'll have to believe me when I'm saying that the wings shine in different colors and are more beautiful in the pictures.
Here's a closer look at them, by the way, to show you how the sequins are sewn on.

I have to admit it was much more fun to work with sequins than I had expected, so much actually that I already used them again on a second project that you will get to see soon, I hope!

Art Elements Challenge - Blue

Actually I would have liked to post this on Friday because it's a real stash tackler, but I just didn't make it in time although I had started working on it weeks if not months ago.
Originally this was not supposed to be an entry for the Art Elements challenge. The challenge made me pick this neglected WIP up again, though.

Let's start at the beginning. I had ordered cabs, among them a carved labradorite cab. My order arrived, I had a look and noticed that the lab had a crack and the next thing was me having two pieces in my hands. Don't you just hate when things like that happen?
I didn't throw it away because I thought I could try something artsy with it. I know, I know, but I'm a Swabian, so I am bound by stereotype to not throwing things away until I'm really, really, 100% sure I can't use it in some way. In ten years maybe. Also, when I held the pieces together I was reminded of a fish of the kind we used to draw as children, with that one curved line separating the face from the body.
Every time I was at the cab drawer, I saw the little "fish", and finally I decided to give it a try with bead embroidery.
I glued the cab, beaded the bezel and gave it a bead eye. Then I put it in my box with the bugle beads that were leftover from the beaded sneakers and the Twin Beads from when I had ripped up a bead scarf the other day. I simply didn't have an idea for hiding the crack yet.
The box has a permanent spot on my bed, by the way, with my macrame board on top because a certain little cat loves to sit on it. Anything for my mistress!

When I saw that this month's topic for the AE challenge was blue, I had almost finished something else and I had found a blue/green bead soup baggie in my stash drawers. It had been a gift and you could tell that someone had made this soup on purpose as the colors were really pretty together. My motivation was back!
I also had an idea for the crack now, a simple beaded strip from size 15 seed beads that was stiff enough to hold the curve and hid the crack perfectly.
Then I embroidered an ocean for my little fish using the bead soup and some of my leftover bugles and last but not least I gave him fins - no idea why, but he looks like a Rudy to me.
Finally, to make his ocean a little more interesting I sewed on some button and potato pearls.

But now what? A brooch, a bracelet focal, a pendant?
I found it was too big for a brooch and I didn't have any pins that would have been big enough, anyway. So I finished off the back as I didn't have to prepare the Ultrasuede for a pin.
It looked kind of nice held against my wrist, but not nice enough to think of a solution for how to make this into a bracelet now.
It needed some kind of beaded rope, but the blue beads were much too irregular for a rope. There were the Twin Beads in my box, though, and I had a lot of the clear mix (clear, silver lined, AB) that I could use for a Herringbone chain with the "ocean" seed beads at the sides.

Here's the result. I have to confess that part of me thought about adding a fringe, but that would have been over the top. What do you think?

I should add that this piece is not going into my shop of course, after all there's a broken stone in this one. It will have to stay mine :-)

This is not a blog carnival anymore, but I will add links to other challenge blog posts later as they come in. So please check back at the end of the month!

Sun ring - Tackle that Art Elements challenge

The latest Art Elements challenge had the topic "summer solstice". Art Elements changed the format for the challenge, it's not an official blog hop anymore, but is in its own Facebook group now. So this is an inofficial post so-to-speak ;-)
Actually I hadn't intended to participate at all this month. I was so busy with my big projects, the box, the doll outfit, and the tiara that I couldn't even work on ideas. It is mere coincidence that this ring fits.

Some years ago a jewelry forum friend of mine made a pair of silver wire macrame spiral earrings and they were beautiful. I'd like to show you, but I can't find a picture of them anymore. I kept going back to the pictures to admire them.
I never learned macrame when I was a kid or teenager although it was the 70s and wall hangings or pot hangers flooded the neighborhoods. I had a little macrame owl hanging from my tote because a friend of mine made them enthusiastically and very well, too. Later I had it hanging over one of my cabinet keys, but eventually the cord broke. I'm absolutely sure that the owl is still somewhere, but I couldn't find it or I would have taken a picture it.
Anyway, when I saw the earrings, I told myself that one day I would try that myself.

Hey, it only took ten years!
Of course I have just learned one knot so far, the square knot, and made one ring with help of this tutorial by CSL Designs. I struggled a lot with getting the knots regular and I messed up about six times having single knots that were a little bigger or smaller and that wouldn't do.
I didn't give up, however, and am quite happy with this try. Joining the ends was a little difficult. That part is not as pretty as I would have liked, so I thought I'd hide them with a bead. I tried some crystals first, but then I went through my stash - yes, that's the Friday stash tackler part in this! - and found this bead with a sun on it that a friend once gave to me.
That's when I thought I could make a little something for the Art Elements challenge after all.

See, sometimes things come to you even if they haven't been planned at all or even inspired by a topic which is the reason why I only have to offer this short blog post.
Time to show my little ring :-)

Dainty

The moonstone in this pendant has been an old companion of mine. In fact it has been around almost from the very start of my jewelry making journey. There were originally two of them that I had made into wire crochet pendants - not easy with a cab that size - one sold, the other one got ripped eventually.

I love moonstones because I love the moon. I really think they deserve their name.
As small as this one is, it still has a lovely blue glow which made me choose some silver lined light blue seed beads with the clear beads and crystals. I mostly used a thread also in light blue to give the clear beads a touch of color as well, only the picot edging sitting on top of the crystal row is made with white thread. 

Including the bail the whole bead embroidered pendant is only an inch, so it needed a dainty chain as well. When I went on YouTube to look for something else, one of my recommendations was a two bead spiral Herringbone rope tutorial.
I wish the internet would get out of my head!
Nevertheless that was one recommendation that really worked for me - I still don't understand why YouTube seems to think I'm into crazy disclosure stories about English Royals just because I watch one channel about Victorian cooking! - because the dainty look was perfect for my pendant.
Also it's not hard at all to do, and with everything that has been and still is going on, both personal and in the world, and which occupies my mind, it felt good to get lost in a repetitive process for a while.
To enhance the icy look, I chose clear and silver lined clear seed beads for the rope and finished it off with a simple click clasp.

At the Jewelry Artisans Community we have some tiny challenges - tiny because not many people participate - six times a year, the latest one was to make a piece of jewelry with your own chain.
I have often made wire ropes to go along with my pendants, mostly crocheted or knitted, but I never make chains from wire links on my own. My plan was to tackle one of those, but I didn't feel I had the nerve for it at this time.
So it'll have to be this instead.

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - Bees

I have to admit that I went into this Art Elements challenge without a clue or inspiration once again simply because I loved the topic Niky chose - bees.
Here's an old picture from our little garden in the back and one from the wonderful Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

Now to the challenge.
I don't have many yellow beads. I have some Delicas, some Czech seed beads, and I had a bracelet that had been waiting to get ripped up, with wire crochet flowers of riverstone and yellow cat eye beads. I thought the cat eye beads would make nice little bee bodies, but I could hardly paint black stripes on. So instead I decided not to make bees, but to loom something inspired by bee colors.
The plan was a bead loomed base in black and yellow with cat eye embellishments. For contrast I used black seed beads and yellow thread, and because I didn't want the cat eyes to sit too high, I thought I'd leave neat little cutouts in the base for them.
So I loomed and then started reweaving threads. Nine beads meant nine cutouts meant 54 more threads to weave in. The number was not the problem, I don't mind reweaving, but although I left the warp threads quite long on both sides, most of these threads were very short. After all they were no extra threads. The one row in which three cutouts "met" - not the smartest idea I ever had - resulted in having to get eight threads out of one long one. So mostly I went back along the warp thread with the needle, threaded it then, pulled through, went through one of the horizontal rows with the needle, threaded it, pulled through .... for just one of 54 threads. Repeat, repeat, repeat ... I do have shorter needles, but they are a little too thick for my taste.
Finally I could sew the cat eyes in. When I was done, however, I looked at my bracelet and thought, wow, that is really, really ... BORING! Ugh.

What now? I had to come up with something to spruce this up a little. I tried this and that, and finally I gave all of the little yellow bees wings from clear AB size 15 seed beads. They are rather delicate, so I didn't want them flapping on the bracelet, and I fastened each wing tip to the loomed base.
Unfortunately I still wasn't happy. It couldn't be helped, those bees needed their stripes. What if I gave each one a stripe from size 15 seed beads? Of course they wouldn't sit tightly on the bodies, but you'd get the idea of bees. Only when I had "painted" all nine cat eyes, I thought a second stripe might be even better o.O

Ok then. Hm. Now I wished I had thought of that from the beginning and given the bees a green base to sit on. Not that I would have had the beads to do that. Not that I wanted to start all over again. Not that it even made sense to think about now. Night flying bees. Are there bees that fly in the night? Obviously there isn't that much known about bees and their sleep, except that they do sleep or at least take naps. Worker bees in the hive also work during the night, but bees don't fly at night.
Well, mine did now and it looked rather dark. I could at least give them some flowers? So that's what I did.
Believe me, there is a LOT of thread in those base beads and a lot of time in the bracelet!
Now I just had to add the findings, though, in a gold tone this time which works better here than my usual silver or copper tones.

Wow. I honestly wasn't sure if I'd make it in time. I'm almost impressed by my own patience :-P

This is a blog hop, so please check out the other participants' posts as well!

Guests
 
Alysen - Cat (that's me ;-)) - Evie and Beth - Hope - Kathy - Kelly - Sarajo - Tammy  

AE team members

Cathy - Jennifer - Jenny - Marsha - Niky - Sue


I'll end this post with a picture collage of bees (flying by day ;-)) sent to me by a friend. Aren't they beautiful?

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - Gnomes

It has been a while since I last participated in the Art Elements challenges, and a lot has been going on since - and still is going on.
I'm not here to talk about a virus today, but about how I try to distract myself from it at least sometimes. The Art Elements March challenge seemed like a very good opportunity to me and I couldn't resist the topic that Jenny chose for it - gnomes.

Even though being German, I never owned a garden gnome of my own. That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't see my share of them in other people's gardens. For some reason I remember those best that were in the very small garden behind a friend's house. There was only a rather small spot of grass with at least one lying fawn and a gnome. Classic. We had to move them over every time we wanted to play crocket.
Of course I know all the stereotypes, German gardens overflowing with gnomes, but I can't remember ever having seen one of those myself. Thinking of it, the gnomes I knew must have been very lonely.
Then again, maybe they enjoyed the solitude like the sleeping gnome I have shared on my blog before.

My project was inspired by several things.
One of them were pictures from childhood, much like the one with the snail riding gnome in Jenny's post.
Another one were my friend Star's incredible polymer clay snails some of which carried tiny pixies (the link is working now, I had changed it to go directly to the Flickr album and had mixed some extra links in, doh!). One of them is Maeve, the snail racer, and she's not even the smallest pixie rider (yes, that means you should check out all of Star's snails ... but wait, after reading this post!).

Of course my gnome was going to be a little bigger than those pixies, but I still intended to make him ride a snail. It started with the snail (not a kiss ;-)). I was determined to use a pair of my beloved small vintage glass eyes that I had only used once before.
A little reminder or for those who don't know it, my ex and I collected Steiff animals. One of our finds was a tin full of vintage glass eyes of all kinds for plush animals plus some other stuff. We used some of them or actually the ex did as he was better in attaching them, especially with bigger heads because you really had to pull on the thread to make the eyes sit right and then tie the knot.
There were those small eyes, though, that we never found a use for. The tin - and you may have been expecting this, it WAS a cookie tin! - stood around for many years as I haven't added much to my part of the collection and completely forgot about it. When I started needle felting, however, it caught my look again right away.
Just look how many of them there are! I even like the waxy paper bag they came in.

The glass "sticks" reminded me of snail eyes, so I figured I'd simply felt around the sticks and use a little glue at the top part to keep the glass from sliding back out. I poked my fingers a lot even though wearing my finger guards, but it worked the way I had imagined it, yay! I went from the eyes to the body which was okay as well, but don't get me started about the shell. It took forever because I didn't just want to add a ball on top, I wanted a swirl that was noticeable, at least a little. In the end I added the contrast color - inspired by our snails, the colors are just the other way round on them - to make it clearer.

Next was the gnome. I hadn't made a figure yet, but I knew I would need something to reinforce the limbs, and the pipe cleaners I had were way too big. I ended up using some of my stainless steel. There have been better ideas in my life, but although it took me even longer than the snail shell I did not give up.
Mr Gnome got some brown pants, taupe boots with black straps to go with this tall taupe hat that has a little red zigzag embellishment around the edge, and a forest green tunic that is highly fashionable thanks to his belt that I made from some satin gift ribbon and a copper jump ring.
His nose and hands are huge. I'm sure he can smell his way all around the forest and if he had an axe, he'd cut down those twigs like no one else! His eyes are seed beads (shhh, I think he may be a wee bit jealous of Schneggle's eyes).

Of course there was no chance in this whole wide world that I could move Mr Gnome's limbs afterwards to make him sit on the snail by himself. Maybe you can tell that I already designed him in a slightly sitting posture. I could have made him sit right and attach him (what a terrible thought), but he had become too big. The two of them kept falling over, and while they had a good laugh doing it, I decided they'd rather walk together in the end, well, or crawl.
Oh well, I'm sure Schneggle - which is Swabian for "snail" - didn't mind not having to carry Mr Gnome. After all he has two feet that (almost) work perfectly well, doesn't he?

This is not just a design challenge, it is also a blog hop, so please check out the others' posts as well! Thank you!

Guests

Cat (that's me ;-)) - Hope - Linda - Sarajo - Tammy  

AE team members

Cathy - Claire - Jennifer - Jenny - Lesley - Marsha - Niky



P.S. Hey guys. This is Mr Gnome speaking. I wanted to tell you what the lady is not saying. Schneggle and I have been trapped. Forest, my foot. Walking together? Inside a vase?? Yes, you read that right. She. Put. Us. In. A. Vase.
Of course she said it was only temporary while we are still hanging in the light tent. It's too dangerous there for us without a place to hide. Because of Gundel. The huge panther who has been trying to kidnap innocent felt critters like us. The other day she stole the voodoo doll, she said. And the black cat head. Both could be saved. It's no fun being in a vase. After all we are not genies!
So if you could tell her to set us free if she hasn't done so yet when you are reading this post, we'd appreciate it. A lot. Thank you!