Experimenting continues

As a part of my New Year - resolutions, I have promised myself to try new techniques.
This Sunday I have bought some fairly cheap brass wire at Pärlboden, came home, watched some wire-wrap instructions on internet and started bending. Seriously and honestly, I have really tried to follow this tutorial first! But just after couple of bends I got bored and started twisting wires my own way.


Disclaimer:
I know it is not perfectly straight;
I know that I have damaged the wire with my pliers;
I know that I need to invest in a file to fix those ends.
Hey, this is just a first attempt ;)

Have a great day!

Two new bracelets

I have started working again. It was not easy to concentrate on that bloody DNA-stuff after being at home for seven months. It would be certainly easier if my head would not be filled with all those craze bead-design ideas ;) But I am getting there and learning to set up correct priorities again.

Here are couple of my latest "creations". It was a while after I have tried free form brickstitch, and it was about time to pick it up again. Guess it is not difficult to figure out why did I call it My Funny Valentine... Besides colors, my brain was actually playing that jazz composition while I was making it ;) It's on display on Etsy.



After the tribute to St. Valentine's, I've made another bracelet, The Polar Night 2.0, by order of the same friend of mine who got the necklace with black stones from the previous post.

I just love those Jablonex seed beads! The golden ones - permanent finish Tohos.

And now - two tiny sneak-peeks. The first one was inspired by a fabulous necklace I've seen on one of the Russian beading forums. I have contacted the author and asked if I can use her idea, but got no reply whatsoever. Pity. Anyhow, I have no intentions to repeat somebody else's design. Right now I cannot decide what do I want to do with this... Is it going to be a part of a necklace or a bracelet, or perhaps a pendant. I am also meditating on its final shape, style and type of backing and the complementing beadwork, of course ;)


And this is my second sneak-peek - a view of my working table at the moment. This is the materials for my entry for one of the Swedish beading contests that cannot be published before the competition is over. But I am allowed to tease the audience a bit ;)


That's all for now. Stay well!

Beading like there is no tomorrow...

Now, The Beach-challenge is done. I have tried different ideas but settled on this one: a bit kitchy bracelet that got named "After The Storm".


I was born in Jurmala - little town close to Riga, lying along the beach of the Baltic coast, known for its spa-resorts. We have moved to the capital when I was five, but still were spending summers there. I remember walking on the beach days after first autums storms. Than the sea surface would be calm as a mirror, the air is clear and is smells only like the sea air can do. And than there are piles of sea-weed all the way along the shore. As a kid, I loved to play with those piles and search for treasures. Sometimes, one could find pieces of amber amongst the junk. I think my mom still keeps my colelction of beach findings.

I have faced two personal challenges while making this bracelet. First of all, I am still very uncomfortable with blending colors. Usually, you would see many shades of the same color or two close neighbors in the same piece. Here I blended two different parts of the spectrum, and I liked the result ;)
My second personal challenge was to bead a 3D-freeform peyote. Also a thing that I have never tried before (inspired by art of the fellow EBW team member Dini Alves, actually). This is just a pretty pale first try, but I will surely come back to this technique - it gives such a freedom! Like spreading-your-wings-and-just-letting-it-go sort of feeling!
I will put it in my Etsy shop shortly.



And this is the second piece that I'd like to share with you today - a comission necklace made for a friend of mine. I had some trouble with attaching the cabs to the rope; you see my third solution. I've had some brainstorming with other beaders from PärlPlatsen and got some good critique about what could be improved. The person who ordered it liked the necklace in its current state, though. And it looked quite well around the neck, actually. :)

The large stone is onyx, two smaller one are obsidians.

And this is just a picture to show the Jablonex seed beads in all their glory. Love those!
That's all for today :) Thank you for visiting my blog!

The Angel In Real Life

This is how the Snow Angel looks like on its owner :)
Featured with kind permission of my sister in law.

Africa-challenge: I did it!

Pfew, I'm done with the Africa challenge.

First of all, I discovered that I know virtually NOTHING about African art. Ok, voodoo, masks and sculptures do not count. And I knew a little bit about kitenge or kangas, the fabric that can be used as a gown or as a baby-carrier, here is the picture of the one I use for my kids:

But back to the challenge... First that came into my mind was batique and those huge spiral wire necklaces and earings that masai women are wearing. But then I learnt that batique was brought to Africa by Europeans. As to masai necklaces, they indeed are gourgeous but hardly comfortably wearable.

And than my husband took me for a day-long trip to Stockholm right after the Christmas. We were browsing in the Old City and I have discovered a tiny shop of African art not far from the royal palace. There I've saw those fantastic bronse handmade beads, made by craftsmen in Burkina-Faso. I just got to have them. There were several multistring necklaces on display there as well and all over the sudden I understood what I wanted to do. This is my little tribute to African folk art:




I've put it on display in my Etsy shop, somebody perhaps might like it enough to buy. ;)

Still figuring out the Beach and Tropical Hollidays...

I need YOUR help to identify those stones! Thanks!

This is a freeform peyote bracelet that I made for Etsy and called Arctica. The cabs that are used in it were bought from Firemountain Gems in a half-kilo pack of assorted stones. So far I have two guesses - it might be a sort of white opal mined in Russia under the name kaholong, or it might be a moonstone. The first guess comes from girls from a russian seed-bead site, the other one is a guess of a lapidary artist from a little shop in Stockholm. He even said that the stones are of superb quality and rare to find nowadays. I am a bit doubtful about his guess, since the pack of one pound has costed me only 12 US dollars. What do you say?


Stone Nr1:
Stone Nr2:
Stone Nr3:

And this is just a picture of it on our patio:



Thanks in advance!

Challenges / Utmaningar

Happy Hollidays wherever you are!

We have survived Christmas :)
My generous Swedish maternity leave has come to its end. I will start working on 12th of January. That might mean less time for beading. Or, it might also mean as much time for beading as before, but less time for sleep ;) Will see, will see.

Now, to the challenges. I have become a member of Etsy BeadWeavers (EBW) Team, and would love to participate in their monthly challenges. Here you can read more about the EBW December challenge. January topick is Tropical Holliday... So far I've got nothing besides aloha and orchids on my mind.

As a member of PärlPlatsen, I have two more challenges due in January: Africa and beach. It seems that peopleare gitting tired of winter here ;)
I've made some research on African art and bought couple of gorgeous handmade brass beads from Burkina-Faso i Stockholm yesterday. It will be a necklace, I think.
As to the beach-theme, I think it will be a bracelet with amber. More I dare not say, I had some ideas that did not work.

However, my biggest challenge this moth will be finding time to bead for those challenges ;)

Stay tuned!

P.S. Spell-check is out of function. Sorry about that ;)