Thank you!

I can hardly believe it's almost June, almost summer!  Time flies and on its wings it carries away so many of our day-to-day joys and pleasures.  I know I often need to slow myself down and savor the good moments.  One of the things that has lately made me truly grateful is how membership on this  blog has grown!  It is, of course, all due to all of you, who stop in from time to time to read my posts and leave me your warm and thoughtful comments. In the beginning,  I wasn't too sure about wading into these blogging waters - unsure what I'd find to write about and unsure whether anyone out there would find any of it remotely interesting! So I truly would like to thank you all so much for visiting and sharing your thoughts with me.

I thought this week I'd like to do a giveaway to express my appreciation for my readers for all you add to my life as a beader! As I've lately passed the number of 130 members here, I've decided to offer a $65 gift certificate to each of two winners, to be used for tutorials in my Etsy shop.

To enter, simply leave me a comment here letting me know you'd like your name thrown into the hat, and include how I can get in touch with you if you win.  On Tuesday, June 5, two names will be drawn and I'll notify the winners. 

If you're a winner, visit my etsy shop - PeregrineBeader - make your selections, and Convo me to let me know which tutorials you'd like to have.  I'll send them along to you right away!

This is my way of thanking all of you for taking time out of your busy days to visit with me!

I've been beading away this week on my "Battle of the Beadsmith" pieces.  Both of these are a stretch for me, which is just how I wanted it!  One is perhaps a greater risk in terms of its design, but both represent an attempt to get my beadwork a little beyond anything I've done before.  For me, that's the challenge and the FUN of this tournament.  Whichever I submit, after the contest deadline is past, I'll write about and post photos of both of the pieces.  Next post I'll be blogging a little bit about the inspiration for each of them, while keeping the details a secret, of course, as the rules require!

Hope you're getting ready for a fabulous summertime.  It'll fly by all too fast, as well, so stop and smell the roses, sip some lemonade and make plenty of time for the people and things you love best!!

Happy Beading!

Of Cupcakes and Battles

"Cupcake"  Ring

Life for me has been a bit of a whirlwind lately. I'm not at all a lazy person, but I do tend to prefer tranquility to hecticness.  However, that isn't always fated to be a part of the mix, and you can probably relate! 

Phase two of our family's move begins in earnest this week, so we'll be occupied again with boxes and trunks and unpacking, sorting and storing.  I know it will end, but sometimes it has seemed endless.

Even in this lull before the storm, I haven't found as much time for my beads.  This week I started out making some little beaded elements that I'd intended to be strung onto a beaded chain and worn as a necklace. The elements were the next step in my exploration of cubic right angle weave.  I've been focussing on square shapes but wanted to make something round.  I started with a circle of cubic RAW and began embellishing it.  I liked it fine, but then one day last week I received in the mail a shipment of 39ss chaton stones I'd ordered and it hit me how much fun it might be to set a stone in the center of one of the circular CRAW elements I'd been beading.  When I had placed the bezeled stone into the embellished circle, I realized it would make a very nice ring.  One of my daughters was visiting and had painted her nails with some little cupcake designs, and her sister commented on how much the ring looked like a little cupcake.  I had to agree, and so the "Cupcake" ring was born.

I do plan on doing a tutorial for this ring.  It's fun and fast to make and will be playful or dramatic depending on the bead choices.  My "Cupcake" model has a birthday this week, so I've given her the ring to take home, and will bead up another one soon as I get the tutorial underway.

But it will be a busy next few weeks.  The Battle of the Beadsmith gets underway today - an invitational, single elimination beading "tournament" which I am enormously honored to be a part of, so I will be beading like crazy for the next seven weeks! I've been paired with Susan Brackett of the US and I'm getting ready to bead my heart out!  I'm looking upon this as an opportunity to really stretch my limits and produce something out my "comfort zone." Participants can't give any glimpses or talk about our pieces under construction, so it will all be 'hush hush' for now.  But if I'm a little slower than usual bringing out new work, the tournament and our family's long anticipated final move will explain that, I hope.


Stop by in a couple of weeks for my next post; it's giveaway time!!

Till then - hope you're enjoying a beautiful Spring with lots of time for beading!

A New "Favorite Stitch"

Layer Cake Cuff

For the past few weeks, my beadwork has been an exploration of the architectural nature of cubic right angle weave.  I really love this stitch - how about you?  I think it's easier to execute than either flat or tubular right angle weave, and that ease goes far with me to offset the way it chews through both beads and thread with an alarming appetite!  I've focused on creating square shapes of late, but I'll be experimenting with cylindrical shapes and other polygons going forward.  The possibilities for embellishment seem endless.

I finished up the Layer Cake Cuff a short while ago, and this design grew directly out of the design for my Alhambra Tiles Cuff from a few posts back.  The concept began with that same open frame, and I carried it a bit farther by stacking a second embellished frame on top.  Instead of using pearls or other beads to link the frames, this design uses peyote stitched tubes. I couldn't resist, as they reminded me of the candles on a birthday cake!  The same square loop and toggle closes this bracelet.

While this isn't an ultra-quick, "stitch it tonight, wear it tomorrow" kind of project, it's nevertheless great fun to work on and, as usual, I think the color possibilites are endless for this one.  The tile will make a terrific ring, and I'll make instructions for the conversion (as soon as I get them written up) available as a free tutorial on this blog. So if you buy the tutorial now, you'll be able to access those instructions for your use later if you'd like to convert a separate tile into a ring.  The tutorial sells for $10 USD and you can buy it here.

I'll also be putting up a couple of new free tutorials on basic stitches and techniques.  If you have any suggestions for those, drop me a comment. 

Stay tuned to upcoming posts for a giveaway announcement!  I've passed the milestone of 150 "Likes" on my Facebook page, and I'm approaching that number of readers here,  so it's time for me to celebrate.  Haven't decided on the giveaway details as yet, but an announcement will out shortly!

Have you experimented with cubic right angle weave?  If not, give it a whirl.  It's an incredibly versatile and fun stitch to have in your beadwork repertoire.

Till next time,

Happy Beading!

Taking a Break

Empress Josephine Necklace

I've had a stack of beading trays on my work table this past week, as well
an unfinished sweater for my grandson, and some yarn that's been calling out to me for weeks. 

But I decided to take a break.  Play hooky, I guess you could say.  And I have to admit it, I enjoyed it!

A few months ago I purchased a few Swarovski open crystal frames in Bermuda Blue.  It was an impulse purchase, wholly,  as I had nothing in mind other than the long-standing wish to see what I might do with them.  Every now and then, when looking through my stash to find this or that for another project, there they'd be.  Oh, yes, I'd think; I've been meaning to do something with those.

Quite awhile ago, I'd bought some vintage Swaro 29ss chaton stones in the pale, minty color "Chrysolite" and I really liked the way they brought out the green in the squares.  So I rounded up some Delicas and seed beads trending more toward the green side of aqua and figured I'd figure something out. 

I was thinking of a bracelet at first, but as soon as I connected the first two frames together and got one of the chatons bezeled and mounted, I realized I had a necklace under construction! After getting all the crystal frames linked and working a four-around herringbone strap, I was left with whether to do something for a focal at the center.  My first thought was a tassel, but I pretty quickly discarded that idea as being to fussy and taking too much away from the rest of the elements, which were working together, I thought, pretty well.  I settled on this modest, loopy fringe, hoping it would pick up on the circular and somewhat floral forms that the bezeled chatons had acquired, and that it would contrast with, but also compliment, the square frames. 

The whole necklace came together very quickly, so I suppose it was "meant to be."  And I won't have that jarring feeling anymore, looking at the unused frames and wondering what their future would be!
I got this new piece listed this morning on Etsy, and you can visit the listing here.

Layer Cake Tile

I also followed another notion and completed this little component. I'm calling it "Layer Cake",  and it really does resemble a birthday confection.  It's a bit whimsical and a fun use for cubic right angle weave.  I'm planning a tutorial for a bracelet version and a ring.  The design is a total spinoff from the Alhambra Tiles Cuff ; it couldn't have come to be without that earlier design, but I think the two are totally different in feel.  I really love it when one design leads to another!

Hope you'll get around to visiting the EBW Team blog this week - it's voting time for the April Challenge, "Seed Beads Only."  I think the level of creativity for this challenge was incredible!  There are so many beautiful entries, please take a peek and vote for your favorite!

That's all for this week! Break time's over for me and it's back to work, but hey - is beading ever really "work"?

The Hard Slog of Tutorial-Writing

Alhambra Tiles Bracelet in Bronze and Gold

I enjoy few things more than designing a new jewelry piece!  How about you?  While it isn't always an easy task and usually comes complete with any number of rip-outs and re-dos, still it's the just the beads and me, working our way together from scratch to something (hopefully beautiful) which hasn't existed in the world before.  A good feeling. 

Then comes the tough part -- writing and illustrating the tutorial.  It's not that I dislike tutorial-writing; I don't at all.  But it is an extremely challenging and demanding process.

When I bead, I do a great many things intuitively, and I'll bet it's that way with you, too.  When you're very familiar with a certain stitch or a particular process, it's second nature to you, and you perform it without thinking about the whys and the hows.  The thread path flows fairly logically through the beads and you find your way without needing to think so much about how you got from point A to point B.

But if I wish to explain to another beader how to replicate what I've created, suddenly I must be quite precise.  It isn't enough to say, "Pass back through..."; I must specify exactly which beads must be passed back through. I have to precise about what bead or beads are involved in a step up, about numbers of repeats and about where in a given step a repeat might occur.  If I'm doing the beading, I might see exactly where I need to go, but if I'm telling someone else, I must be specific and illustrate that thread path carefully so there's no confusion.

Using very precise language may be challenging enough, but illustrating is for me the hardest part.
I'm clumsy with software, no matter how much I may practice.  And occasionally I get caught by a technical slip up:  This week, my anti-virus software prompted me to restart my computer, and I complied without first saving several pages of illustrations!  Of course, after the reboot, everything had vanished, and I had to begin all over. *Groan*  Aftering recreating those illustrations and inserting them into the text, a proofread revealed that I had failed to include some very important beads in several of the diagrams and their absence could lead to confusion.  So, back to square one again!

And then there's the matter of how much to write, how much to illustrate.  Precise language is important, but being too wordy creates confusion of its own.  And while a picture may be worth a thousand words, a thousand pictures would make a horrible tutorial!  I try to keep the page count down, in case a buyer wants to print herself a hard copy. 

It's a balancing act, and I hope with each tutorial that I haven't lost my balance!  My wonderful buyers give me good feedback and have often helped me to revise and improve tutorial instructions and illustrations.  I can't thank them enough.

No matter how many tutorials I may write, I'll always be in the process of learning and improving.  It can be a hard slog, but it gives me a great feeling of satisfaction when a fellow beader sends me a photo of my design interpreted in her own unique colorway or modified to suit her own style. 

I'm featuring today a new tutorial for my Alhambra Tiles Cuff bracelet, interpreted in a new colorway for the tut.  If you'd like to make your own version of this bracelet, you can click here to purchase it now.  The tutorial is 13 pages and sells for $10.00 USD.

It's a fun project and really will be beautiful in any colorway!

Happy Beading!

An Anonymous Beader

Spring is arriving by leaps and bounds here in Western Massachusetts.  You can almost see the green leaves unfurling from their velvety catkin cases with the speed of time-lapse photography. It's a breathtaking awakening. 

This past weekend, my daughter Cara, her husband Eric and their two boys, Holden and Soren, went out for an early spring ramble through the woods near their house.  The object was just to stretch their legs and probably see if they could spy some Indian Pipe, Dutchman's Breeches or Lady Slipper orchids peeping out from the forest floor.

Instead, they found this earring!  Like a tiny wildflower, it was lying along the edge of the trail and might have been easily overlooked.  She brought it home to me and I immediately recognized Swarovski crystal in Air Blue Opal - one of my favorites!

I got to thinking about the anonymous beader who made this earring.  Who was she?  Did she make the earring herself?  Was it a purchase, a gift?  If she's a beader, she probably missed her earring for a second and then realized she could easily make another.  But if it were a gift or a purchase, she'd have
to toss her remaining earring into a box and hope its mate would turn up some day.  Ever done that?

If I could find her, I'd return her earring, but somehow, I doubt our paths will ever cross.  But if it were my anonymous beader who lost her earring in the woods, we'd have much in common:  the enjoyment of a stroll along a natural path wending its way through the leafy heartland of the hills, the camaderie shared with hiking companions and family, and of course, beadwork! 

My family loves to take very long hikes.  We set out chatting, then after the first mile or so, the rhythm of the walk takes hold; we find a comfortable single file on a narrow path; we become more companionably silent.  During those times, I like to think up beading and knitting projects, and not surprisingly most of my ideas spring from the natural environment surrounding me.  It's a fertile
source of  inspiration.  This little earring really does resemble a forest wildflower, and it's easy for me to imagine my anonymous beader dreaming up its bead placement, its thread paths, inspired by its natural context.

But perhaps not - I'll never know!

Berkshire Spring Necklace

This week I finished up my own jewelry piece inspired by nature - "Berkshire Spring" necklace - it's entered in the Etsy Beadweaver's Team April challenge, "Seed Beads Only."  I enjoyed the process of designing this necklace and took its palette from the bare brown branches just beginning to clothe themselves in the first glorious togs of spring! Visit the team blog:  www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com between April 9 and 15 to see all the entries and vote for your favorite!

Enjoy Spring in your corner of the world, and Happy Beading!

Spring Tomorrow!

Yep - and I can hardly believe it!  The vernal equinox is tomorrw so Spring is truly just around the corner.  After such a mild winter, it seems we're just sort of easing into warmer weather, but Spring is always a welcome arrival with her bright green leaves and sweet birdsong returning to the soft, warm air. 

"Faux Beaded Beads" necklace

I got to work this week on a new, very spring-y feeling necklace, just a wee snippet of which is shown here.  I'll list and post more photos when it's done.  It's a seed beads only construction and I've had a wonderful time working time on it.  I'll very like try to produce a tutorial for this, because the techniques are simple and build on earlier projects of mine which you might be familiar with.  More about this one to follow - for now, I just need to bead!

Also released a new tutorial late last week for "Kilim Beaded Beads".  These, too, build on an earlier project, the netted pearls included in both my Badlands and Tennant Ridge necklace designs.  I like to experiment sometimes by beginning from a familiar point and asking "what if..."  In this case, it was "what if I fill in the gaps in those nets?" 

As I began filling in the gaps, a rather angular, zig-zag pattern began to emerge and it was natural to see in this design the geometric forms found in Kilim carpets.  The association also sprang readily to mind as I've been mentally travelling along the Silk Road lately, and the Near East was an important stop along that ancient trade route.

Kilim Beaded Beads

The beads are quick and addictive to make.  I've made the ones pictured here around a crystal pearl core, but any finished round bead of the right size will work.  Using four seed beads colors as in my example will yield the greatest contrast and show off the pattern best, but the beads are beautiful worked in just a single color.  They have a nice, substantial feel and are wonderful for bracelets or necklaces - use just one or several - and make lovely earrings.  If you'd like to make these fun beads for yourself, you can buy the tutorial here. 

I've had a kind of busy time of it this winter, getting settled in a new place, and I'm lagging a bit behind in my tutorial-writing.  But this week I plan finally to get to work on the tutorial for the "Alhambra Tiles" bracelet, and have about finished a second bracelet in another colorway - bronze, turquoise and topaz - I think it'll be beautiful!

So those are my little snips for this week.   I'm about to head outside into the glorious sunshine and warm my bones a bit.  Hope Spring arrives soon in your corner of the world (if you're a Northern Hemisphere resident, that is) and that you'll enjoy her as much as I do!

Happy Beading!