O Tannenbaum

A quiet combination of artisan beads, larimar and wood - each element reflecting the next.

Glossy,  smooth yet rustic wooden nuggets echo the branches of the regal fir tree of the clasp, and the darkness of the wood is picked up in the organic larimar slices, which also reflect the cool blue-turquoise tones of the button.

Linked together with the grounding quality of the forest olive green  - the tiny seed beads springing from the handwoven round, running through and closing the clasp and connecting the beads themselves. 

Available in my Etsy shop now. 

Hello, and other ramblings...

 Hello there! It's been a while since I carved out a little spot of time for blogging - even though I frequently think to myself "I must blog about this or that", somehow the time slips through my fingers like so much sand. I am now feeling like my blogging muscle is a little rusty, so I am just going to do one of those rambling posts; lots of pictures, telling you a little bit about the pieces and what else has been going on, in no particular order. Ok? 

If you follow me over on Facebook, you'll have seen that I recently returned from a fab surprise holiday in Tenerife. I know a lot of people are a bit snotty about the Canaries, but I absolutely love them! Sunshine, gorgeous coastal climate, great food, lovely people - what's not to love? We stayed in the north-east of the island, doing the Air BnB thing, and this meant we were in a totally non-touristy thing too - an added bonus, as far as I'm concerned. As usual, I packed up a shit-ton of beads (I have problems...!) so that I could sit in the evenings, and make away to my heart's content. All accompanied by a glass or 4 of local Sangria! I say local in that way that local somehow makes it classier, but what I really mean is local i.e. from our local supermarket. Like a glass of local Lambrini here in the UK. (Although I'm sure you will agree, local Sangria over local Lambrini EVERY TIME.)

Sometimes when I go on holiday, I must admit, my eyes are bigger than my bead belly, and I end up coming home with a pair of earrings and half a bracelet, but not this time. I was seriously productive! We were in a lovely wee apartment, complete with a mountain-view balcony (we were very lucky - right on the edge of the capital, Santa Cruz, which is all industry and skyscrapers, but the from the block of flats we were in you would never have known) and so we ended up eating in most nights - fresh veg, fresh bread, local (ACTUALLY local) cheese and the occasional Gambas Pil Pil (a long-standing family favourite), all washed down with the aforementioned Sangria. Slurp. 

Anyway, this wee bracelet is one of the first pieces I made on holiday. I've made a few of this design lately, and I do love it - the combination of the larger elements with the double-stand of more petite beads - artisan elements here from Soul Silver, Something to do with your hands and myself, along with a heavy helping of freshwater biwa petal pearls.  I'm really enjoying using those teeny tiny seed beads more in my work - linking my handwoven {song}beads with the rest of my designs in an organic way. 

Another holiday piece here - a really easy-to-make, easy-to-wear piece. Birds, flowers, artisan quirky beads and my favourite red and turquoise palette.  

I bought a whole bunch of different sterling silver clasps from a new favourite findings supplier, TH Findings, as I'm finding with my own metalwork, I'm using silver more and more. I still love my patinated copper and brass, but it's great to have silver as an option too. This is such a simple bracelet, it would be easy for it to be a little nondescript, but I think that wee heart clasp really makes this piece work. 

 As you may be picking up, I'm going through a bit of a bracelet-y phase. I know, I know - what's new?! - but I'm just going with it. The bead shop, it's fair to say, had a fairly slooooow start to the year, but things started to pick up in March and April, and so my time for making became a little limited. For that reason, I'm just going with my gut when making at the moment, rather than imposing my brain upon the process too much - must make more necklaces! must make more links and earwires! - and such like. The ebb and flow of Curious is back to a bit of an ebb again, and so I am anticipating having a little more time over the next week or so - which is always the silver-lining of a bead shop ebb :-) This bracelet is one I've made since getting back from holiday, but I feel it's got some of the lightness that a good holiday always leaves you with. 

That cool bottle bead is one I snagged from Lorelei Eurto's recent destash. No idea what Nehi is but I love the colour and design of the bead nonetheless! Again, you can see those seed beads doing multiple jobs here - my beaded beads, spacers between the larger beads, and forming a wee extension chain. I can't tell you just how long these take compared with popping a bit of chain or a few links on the end of the bracelet, but I love the visual texture of them, and how they keep the colour going within a piece. 

I know on the other side of the pond - and Australia too, I think? - it was Mother's Day last Sunday. We had ours a while back, but Sunday *was* my Mum's birthday. Mum is a great supporter and wearer of my jewellery and whilst she of course has a great deal of patinated pieces (which is own my preference for most of the time), she is a shiny silver girl at heart. It was the push I needed to get back to the torch - sadly neglected by me this year, despite the acquisition of a proper bonafide jewellery bench. The torch came out, the hammer and block came out, the pickle was switched on - the tumbler did its magic, and so Mum ended up with some shiny shiny earrings and a shiny shiny necklace. 

Shiny!

 A break from my bracelet addiction....

More beads acquired from Lorelei here - I just love this soft Spring colour palette. I made those tiny peach {song}beads just for this necklace - just the right shape and colour to go with these sweet pink/purple freshwater pearls - as well as that gorgeous bouquet on the ceramic pendant. 

 More pearls here - I go through phases - quite long phases(!) - with pearls, and this phase shows little sign of waning - more peachy, subtly textural pearls in this new bracelet below.

Another bonus of the holiday was the amount of swimming I did over there. Ok, not all swimming, there was a lot of obligatory bobbing around in various pools in the sunshine, but also swimming. I made a point of starting the day by having a bit of a lie-in, but as soon as I was awake, getting into my costume and hitting the pool attached to our apartment block. I really wish my flat here in Edinburgh had a pool out the back! Although I think indoors would be vastly preferable here in Edinburgh. I did a short blast of 20 lengths each morning, but the routine of it reminded me just how much I enjoy swimming. Believe it or not, when I was in primary school, I went swimming 4-5 times a week with Heart of Midlothian Swimming Club . Over the past fifteen years, I've tried again and again to get into running, going to the gym, yoga, pilates etc. and all without real success i.e. being able to stick to them. (I actually really enjoy yoga and pilates, but find that I am a quite intimidated by the idea of joining a class - I imagine everyone else will be lean and beautiful, and live off green smoothies and little else - you get the picture. The type of class where I'd stick out like a sore thumb, in my mind at any rate!). I don't know why, but I've never really given swimming another go - not properly. But on the Monday after our return, I went along to some local swimming baths and joined up for a month. Not cheap, but not too pricey - and since then, I've gone every day but two. Slowly but surely, I've been building up the distances I've swum - I'm now doing a mile every day. A brilliant thing about the membership I've bought is that it allows me to use any of the ten council swim centres we have here in Edinburgh. So the past two+ weeks, I've been working out where these pools all are in Edinburgh, and fitting my swims into whatever I'm doing on a day - the pool near my acupuncture clinic, the pool near the parcel office, the 2 pools near my wife's work where I can get a lift to in the morning if I'm feeling like a super-early morning dip! I am not making any promises to myself - I don't want to let myself down and feel all the guilt that that leads to - but right now, I'm really enjoying it being part of my day to day routine. Which pool today? How many lengths today? Sadly, I'm not a size 8 already (what? Two weeks of daily swimming - WHY NOT?!) but I am feeling really good about it - and *actually* enjoying it. Long may it continue!

The last little piece I have to share with you today is really a pair. One of my lovely regular customers wrote to me and said that these two would go well together, and of course when I looked at them I knew that they would. I am never sure what I think about sets though. I like jewellery collectors to be able to pick and choose what they wear together - but yes, I would definitely wear these two as a pair. 

As you'll see, I'm continuing with my love-affair with gemstones, as you may have spotted from several of the pieces above. A couple of weeks ago, when I was in the throes of a horrible throat infection which floored me for several days, I scraped myself out of bed and onto the bus to the Knitting and Stitching Show, which I knew from my Mum's visit the previous day had several bead stands. Including a really, really awesome gemstone stand - Ilona Biggins - and, well....let's just say I went to town a bit there! She had very kindly passed on a free entry ticket to my Mum for me (otherwise entry would have been £16 - outrageous!), so she'd saved me a fair bit of cash already, PLUS I got a wee discount - probably because I spent so much it would have been rude not to. Oops. But just look at all the beautiful gemstones and pearls I snaffled! Well, you can't most of them - but have a look at those you *can* see! The gorgeous agate above, but more than that, the rough-cut amethyst. SO AWESOME. It is part of a mixed strand of amethyst and citrine (you can see a spot of that in the necklace above) and I could NOT leave it behind. Could I?! 

 

Just look how fantastic they look with the ceramic shards in these earrings! They came as part of a small set from France, with the bird in the bracelet above. Oh, and I should mention another bead in that bracelet above - the amazing lampwork disc beneath the bird. Look how *glowy*. How magical and otherworldly. All from the subtly wondrous hands of Julie Wong Sontag of Uglibeads. Seriously, if you didn't notice it a minute ago, take a wee scroll back up and have a peek. Yep, see what I mean? 

Anyway, you've made it through this epic post! Well done, if you're still with me. I'll be back SOON with slightly shorter posts, when I don't have approximately 2 months so gallop through! Thanks for sticking with it and I promise, I'll see you soon. 

From trash to treasure: Big Sky {Tapestry}

Ok, so you've probably clicked on this post and are now thinking 'where's the trash?!' At least, I kind of hope that's what you were thinking. Not that kind of trash. 

A while back, I was lucky enough to score a MEGA destash bundle from one of my favourite jewellery designers, Eve Smith of Silver Meadows. Eve used to work with (and had an eye for) some really special lampwork glass beads, but since moving on to working with silver (and if you take a look, you'll see she's really found a beautiful and unique voice!) doesn't work with them to the same extent. 

However, this all worked very much to my advantage when I purchased her destash at the end of 2014. Seriously good stuff - fellow art bead-enthusiasts, you would be sick to the back teeth at the goodies I  scored! SERIOUSLY GOOD STUFF. 

Because of one thing and another (essentially, 2015 being a bit of a bugger of a year for us), it's taken me a while to dip my toe into the wonder that is my destash wonder-haul. But recently, I've managed just that. Perhaps even a couple of toes, or even a whole foot. 

One of my favourite things about this type of purchase is that (although Eve furnished me with a full round of pictures), you somehow don't really know what you're getting. Eve had beads from so many lampwork artists - some of which were familiar to me, and some of which were unknowns. Some of these artists don't even make beads anymore, which makes this finds extra special, somehow. 

That was the case with the bead artist here - on double-checking with Eve, Beverley Hicklin. These beads were ones that particularly leapt out at me when I took a good look through my stash again a few weeks ago. They have amazing depth and layers of colour, almost like a slice of rock or agate.

I knew I wanted to do something that just show-cased their astonishing beauty, but that they needed something special as their surroundings....and so I immediately thought '{song}beads'. It took me a while to find the right colours to complement the lampwork, but I remembered I had a tube of slightly odd-coloured beads - beads which had been described as 'Coated White Opaque Lila Gold Lustre'. Sounds gorgeous, right? All shimmery, with maybe a hint of purple, Lila being the German for purple? 

Nope. Kind of oatmeal with a light Picasso. Not what I was hoping for at the time, so they just got tossed into my bag of tubes and boxes of seed beads. But when my mind started whirring with what to do with Beverley's beads, I remembered and thought that perhaps that oatmeal would be just the ticket - and what do you know, it was. A touch of blueberry Picasso in the mix to bring out those blue layers in the lampwork, and this bracelet almost stitched itself. (It didn't though. These handwoven glass bad boys take around half an hour each - ouch!). 

I'm pleased with the finished result - and although I've entitled it Big Sky, which seems apt given the landscape quality which the lampwork beads have, in my head I've also called it 'Tapestry'. Something about the layers within the lampwork glass being paired with the woven nature of my own beads. 

You can find Big Sky {Tapestry} in my shop here. 

Three Bracelets

Three wee bracelets for you today, all quite different from one another. 

Most frequent readers will know that I *love* colour in general, but I think it's fair to say I tend toward to vibrant. I reached for the softer tones here though, and I'm pretty pleased with it's gentleness. We can always do with a wee bit more gentleness in the world.

Ceramic bird - Something to do beads

Polymer rondelles - Alison Sachs

This bracelet seems very 'me' to my eyes. I love flowers (especially in bead-form, it must be said!), I love turquoise and orange/red and I love birds. And if you add in a piece of vintage brass chain from Paris, it can't hurt, can it? Unfortunately this bracelet is an absolute pest to photograph. The chain section just doesn't behave when sat on a flat surface. Much better on the wrist. I hope you still get a good idea of it nonetheless.

Polymer birdie - Tree Wings Studio

This last one is a bit different in more ways than one. It's a return from Stringing magazine, where it was published in the Winter 2014 edition. The first issue with some of my designs featured - I was pretty chuffed! It was part of the issue's 'delicate femininity' section, and I love, love, love the palette which Stringing selected, part of which you can see below. Hand-cut tiny gemstones, a bit of organic rusticity alongside it's delicate palette and general dainty-nature. My quandary now is that I just don't know how to price this type of piece. It's unusual that I would use quite so many gemstones in one piece. I get most of my gemstones from Precious Sparkle Beads and honestly, the quality is second to none. So I am keen not to undervalue a piece like this with the wrong price. It may be that I just *have* to keep it for myself.....oh well, it's a hard life and all that! 

Macrame button loop clasp tutorial

I've been enjoying doing a bit more knotting recently. I am a little bit fickle when it comes to jewellery-making techniques - I get really obsessed with one thing, then abandon it for the next when something else captures my imagination. I used to knot *everything* and didn't use beading wire at all, but for the past year I've mainly used nylon-covered stainless steel wire. Now I'm back on the cord! I've not abandoned the beading wire though, I'm just enjoying the tactile and 'hands on' qualities of the Irish waxed linen cord. 

I've always been a little unhappy with linen cord loops, worrying that they weren't quite sturdy enough, even covered with beads, to really work as a clasp. A few days ago I had a brainwave whilst making a knotted bracelet - I had two really long tails left, and I came up with the idea of half-hitching one cord onto another to see what would happen. I am sure that many, many people have done this before me, and I'm certainly not claiming this as my own - but it was definitely a lightbulb moment for me! I thought I'd share what I did with you here. 

1. Finish knotting the main part of your bracelet, ending with two loooong cord ends. If you like, you can leave one much longer than the other so as not to waste too much. You do need a lot of cord to knot with for this! I'm not a measurer, but you may want to work out exactly how much cord you'll need after you've made a couple. My brain just doesn't work like that! 

2. Bring one cord (the working cord) over the other to make a u-shaped loop. 

3. Bring the working cord back through the loop. 

4. Pull snug to form a half-hitch knot. 

5. Repeat these half-hitch knots, using the same working cord, to form this spiralling rope. 

6. Tie the working cord around the base of the rope to form a loop. I tie a double knot and then added a few beads to the tails, crimping them on. 

7. Here's the finished bracelet! And another one with different cord/beads below:

Art beads from - www.mamacitabeadworks.etsy.com

www.helenjewellery.etsy.com

www.grubbi.etsy.com

Pressed glass, 7ply Irish waxed linen cord and Vintaj brass crimps from - 

www.thecuriousbeadshop.etsy.com. 

Song-ing followed by Bead-ing

Dear oh dear - here I am again, feeling like it's been far too long since I last blogged. It is an all-too-familiar feeling it seems! I always have plans for blog posts, but time runs away and I lose track of everything.....sounds like the rest of my life too! This time, I have a slight excuse - I have been preparing for and performing in a concert over in Glasgow, in the beautiful University Chapel, which was this past weekend.

Now, it wasn't a huge concert and my part in it was fairly minor. But, it was the first time I had sung in a long time - and I don't just mean in a concert, I mean not along with the radio, not in the shower; practically not a single note has passed my lips since I moved to Belfast. I seemed to lose my voice along with the move back in September. I have felt somehow silenced for the past 7 months - as if I had my throat stopped up. But a friend asked a couple of weeks ago if I was free for a concert he was fixing, he was in a pinch for my voice-type, and so I decided that a fairly low-key event would be something I could do. 

Of course, my stamina was at a literal all-time low, and the prospect of singing in public after so long was daunting enough in itself - coupled with my usual nerves! But I practiced, and I went and I sang, and god-damn it if I didn't do ok after only a minor psychological melt-down the morning of the performance. It felt like a real achievement for me at this time, and (dare I say it) I was proud of myself for taking even a small step out of my void of silence. 

So that has taken my mind slightly away from blogging and suchlike. The Curious Bead Shop has to continue, as do custom jewellery orders, so the things that fall by the wayside, albeit it temporarily, are often social media-based. I know, I should really figure out an automated system....but I haven't yet. One day....

Anyway, I arrived back in Belfast yesterday and spent the day packing up the weekend's orders. I then gave myself the evening off (that's allowed, right?) and did what my brain likes to zone out to - made some bracelets. Here are the spoils of my mental unwind ~ 

I'm pretty pleased with them. I can't tell you just how happy I am to have more of these gorgeous flower beads back in my life. Just in time for summer fair preparation. I have a few new colours on the way too and I am very excited to get my hands on them. I'm writing this up on my phone, on the bus (why am I incapable of organising my time?!) so I will add full links later, but for now, the art beads come from ~ 

www.swoondimples.etsy.com

www.elukka.etsy.com

www.secondsurf.com

www.magdalenaruiz.etsy.com

and the flower beads are of course available at www.thecuriousbeadshop.etsy.com. 

A quick instagram

2 knotted bracelets from last night, with a humblebead toadstool charm, and a Jenni Connolly lampwork bead. Autumnal shades of my favourite colours.

Andrew Thornton's September Challenge

A very quick post here....it's late and I have a very early start in the morning so I'm scheduling this post and then turning off the light!

Here are the list of participants:

Lorelei Eurto
Sally Russick
Tara Linda
Paula Kramer
Melinda Orr
Beth Emery
(already posted)
Tracy Stillman
Heather Goldsmith
Lori Bowring Michaud
Rebecca Anderson
Debbie Price
Patty Gasparino

(also posting today due to postal hang ups!)

First up, a knotted pearl bracelet using Andrew's Mystery Component - a beautiful hand crafted copper clay coin. I loved this so much, I wanted it to really stand out on a simple piece of jewellery - and what better way to showcase it than with pearls? I included a few beads from the Luxury Bead Mix too.

Next, I used the very cool enamel flowers from Sara of C-Koop Beads. I have a current obsession with enamelled components and so these were perfect for me! I used some of the beads from the luxury bead mix to create the knotted backdrop for the flowers, some of the lovely Swarovski crystal elements, and a very cool pewter clasp from The Little Bead Shop. The photo isn't the best, but trust me - these pewter findings are gorgeous!

My final bracelet used the Soft Flex, which I was determined to have a go with, and more of the luxury bead mix. I rarely use beading wire (unless I'm teaching Beginners' Jewellery) and I have to say, it kind of stumped me a little. This bracelet, I'm a bit 'meh' about....kind of a waste of a pretty clasp if you ask me (again from The Little Bead Shop). Any thoughts? I find it hard to think out of the box with beading wire. So I might bust this one apart. Put the beads and clasp to better use.

And now to my favourite (using the beading wire no less!). I picked these gorgeous Vintaj floral bead caps up at The Manchester Bead Shop where I teach, at the weekend. They are absolutely stunning. And I had an image of them with little stamen poking out of them, using the beading wire and (yes, you guessed it ;-)) the luxury bead mix. I am very pleased with how these came out! They are really just a combination of very cool components, but I'm still happy at how they came together.

So there you go, another challenge completed, another blog scheduled! This one turned out to be slightly more stressful than necessary because I had accidentally written down the 19th as the reveal....not the 12th....and it was only when reading Deb's blog Monday evening that I realised I had to post on Wednesday.....hence the dark, flash lit pictures. Hopefully everyone else has been more organised than me! It's not hard....

I've still got quite a lot left over - some chain, the very awesome Grow focal from SwoonDimples, Swarovski crystal, dichroic glass, a Humblebead charm, Soft Flex - even some more luxury bead mix, believe it or not! So hopefully I'll get some more purple pieces up and posted soon.

THanks so much to Andrew for organising this wonderful challenge! I've really enjoyed it. Happy Wednesday!

Silk Bracelets

So, how's 2011 going for everybody? Ok so far? I went back to school on Friday and had a beading class this morning so everything's getting back to normal...We took down the Christmas tree last night which is always a sad event. The spot where is stood looks so empty! Poor wee Maisie rabbit was bereft - she scampered around the place where the tree had been looking very puzzled. However, the festive period isn't totally over for me - tonight is our friends Andrew and Tom's Winter Wonderland Extravaganza! They have a big formal dinner for their close friends every year after Christmas and we all exchange presents, eat turkey and drink lots of pink fizz! I was poorly last year and missed out so I must say, I am really looking forward to tonight.

I've done loads of beading these past few days - a kind of last minute reaction against all my free time being eaten up as of Monday when I'm back to college and work full time! Here are some of this weeks results - all available in my Folksy shop. As you can see, I've completely fallen in love with the silk cord I've been using, from Sowzere Designs and I think it goes perfectly with Julie's Lush Lampwork beads, which I've used in the top two bracelets. Poisoned Apple features beads from Loupiac - they have a gorgeous silvery sheen to them. Let me know what you think! Hope you're all having a peaceful weekend. 

Apples and Pears

Coral Island

Poisoned Apple