Bead Table Blog Hop

Sorry I am a little late with this post.

First thank you to Lisa Lodge of Pine Ridge Treasures  for setting up this blog hop and providing such great beads to work with.  Here is what she sent me.  Special thanks for the darling cat head bead.







The beads seem to sort themselves into two groups, the amethyst chips forming the basis of one and the candy came stripe beads anchoring the second.





I chose to work with the amethyst group and in the spirit of the hop worked only with left overs from previous projects and repurposed materials.

Recently I've being playing around with kumihimo so I started by making a spiral braid of embroidery floss and C-Lon cord with the amethyst chips on the raised cords of the spiral.




















 I added fringe to the braid using the 4 purple and white flower beads in the center.

The larger beads are strung on C-Lon to form the back.  The clasp is a repurposed brooch, I removed the original center of the flower and replaced it with a pink pearl, the same pearls used in the fringe.











To see what everyone else made:

My Bead Table Blog Hop

Your Host: Lisa Lodge

Molly Alexander, Beautifully Broken Me

Audrey Belanger, Dreams of an Absolution

Ginger Bishop, lilmummy likes...

Tanya Boden, Fusion Muse

Lisa Boucher, Lisa’s Clay Happenings

Michelle Buettner, Mishel Designs

Eleanor Burian-Mohr, The Charmed Life

Mikala Coates, Maybe Just Perhaps

Marlene Cupo, Amazing Designs

Kathleen Douglas, Washoe Kat's

Mary Anne Klinglesmith Flesch, Hand Crafted Serenity

Therese Frank, Therese's Treasures
Mary Govaars, MLH Jewelry Designs

Tanya Goodwin, A Work in Progress

Mary Hicks, Falling Into the Sky

Tina Holden, Polymer Clay Bytes!

Shelly Joyce, Au jour le jour

Carolyn Lawson, Carolyn's Creations

Kathy Lindemer, Bay Moon Design

Susan Lloyd, Designs by Susan

Cynthia Machata, Antiquity Travelers

Kashmira Patel, Sadafule .. always in bloom!

Inge von Roos, Inge's Blog

Kristen Stevens, My Bead Journey

Sonya Stille, Dreamin' of Beads

Christine Stonefield, Sweet Girl Design

Toltec Jewels, Jewel School Friends

Norma Turvey, Moonlit Fantaseas

Sandra Wollberg, City of Brass Stories

Tidying Up the Blog . . .

Blog clean up day -- it's so much easier than cleaning up the house or (shudder) my work space.   So please excuse the odd missing photo or blog update message.

Photo above is the focal for necklace made with torn silk, this time the flat braid is accented by size 8 seed beads.  The "bail" is macramé  C-lon cord and torn silk with seed beads crochet creating the fringed edge.

Nightmare Bead Challenge

My first Blog Hop Challange reveal!  Thank you Jennifer Cameron for including me.

 My Nightmare Insomnia bead turned out to be a dream come true. I live where the sage of the high desert meets the granite of the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe waters, my bead is granite grey with sage green and blue spots. What could be better?

 I recently purchased some sage sari cloth, knew I wanted to use that right away, also pulled out silver Krienek braid and C-Lon cord. Went hunting thru my stash for grey silk, I didn't find any but there was white silk organza I'd stamped with black paint. Rip, rip, ribbon! From my bead stash I pulled pale grey size 6 seed beeds, some dark metallic glass pearls that matched the ends of the focal, miscellaneous sage and blue beads and all the bits and pieces of antiqued silver I could find. I kumihimo braided the fibers and the grey seed beads and then sewed the pearls on the braid using the beads as anchors. Great!

All that was left was attaching the focal to the braid. I tried micro macramé and it didn't look right, nor did a beaded bail, I haven't worked with wire . . . Stuck. A few days later, I went to work on finishing the ends of the braid. I tried a couple things, including some silver spacers. Eureka! I worked one of the spacers down to the middle of the braid and I had my bail.  I finished it off with C-Lon cord, making the three framing braids and the fringe. Not crazy about the fringe, but . . . Here is the finished product.

Now to see what every one else created . . .

Beti Horvath: Stringing Fool

Gretchen Nation: Art Food Lodging

Karen Totten: Starry Road Studio

Kathleen Douglas: Washoe Kat's

Keirsten Giles: The Cerebral Dilettante

Kristen Stevens: My Bead Journey

Lola: Bead Lola Bead

Lori Anderson: Pretty Things

Nancy Pederson: Something Heartfelt by Nancy

Pam DeBoer: Purple Notes from the Studio

Rana Wilson: Rana Lea Designs

Shannon Chomanczuk: For My Sweet Daughter

Oops!

broke the big ceramic bowl we kept on the dining room table  . . . shattered it.  Cleaning up the shards, some of them started to look a lot like polished stones.  So I got out my beads and set some of the shards in peyote stitch bezels.  I put them together using free form peyote.