I work-work... I work-work...

Hi, dear all!

All over the sudden the stars came into a favorable alignment, providing me with a combination of aa free moment, enough energy, will to write, and caring enough to keep my blog going.

I am not kidding about working, though - guess I shared with you my career change. Bye-bye research career, hello working in management. And my boys are growing and require quite some attention. And, finally, I am taking care of my health and working out several times a week. All that means that I do not bead every day anymore. But my heart does still belong to beads.

For those who would like to meet in person this year, I will have a exhibition together with Anna Lindell in Stockholm in May the 11-17th, more info coming later. I will be also teaching classes at Bead Lovers Meet in Lund in March 8-11 and Beader's Best Fair in Hamburg in August (http://perlen-poesie.de/en/one-kind). Guess there will be more exhibitions and classes, but those above are definitely set.  

Well, enough writing. Let me show you some beads in action.

The pictures below are from a commission I had last summer. I met this lady at my first Stockholm exhibition. This necklace went all the way to Russia, and I am very glad for it. The given task was: rose , silver and greys; ribbons instead of a clasp and Art Deco inspiration.

This is my palette - rich rose-pink rhodochrosites + 24K white gold Delicas, sterling silver-plated beads, freshwater pearls, some Bohemian 3-cut seed beads + diverse japanese seed beauties. 

This is my focal. I like shopping at this Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/mygemgarden2. The owner does great job on those cabs!

This was one of my first sketches, but the customer preferred one below:

                           

To us both it was more Nouveau than Deco, but oah well ;o) It was a pleasure working with this customer, she has a great taste!

Here is the final look:

A friend has suggested to call it "Ashes of Roses", and guess it is quite an appropriate name for this necklace. The roses of rhodochrosite are surrounded by silvery grass, lilly of the valley branches and some simple leaves. 

And here be some close-ups:

I am happy for this creation of mine, it's owner will take a good care of it.

'Nuff for today, folks! See you around, however uncertain how soon... :)

HUGS!
Olga

Custom order - the last day.

I'm done! :)

It was a fun project. With all latest bead embroidery items (I'll blog about those soon), as well as the embroidery course, I have forgotten how much fun it is to make freeform! It was a very refreshing experience.

Latest addition - right side:


Customer had some points about the color scheme, and I have made some changes.
1. Added some green and yellow beads to the red part, to soften the redness.

2. Added some extra of that gorgeous Jablonex LA Orange mix of orange, yellow an amber around the donut connector and next to the bronze "belt".

That's my clasp solution:

"Clasp on":
"Clasp off":
Pfew! :)

Two "old" pieces that I have forgotten to blog about :(

Well, not exactly forgotten... They have been etnries to two of local Swedish beading competitions.

This is one (Trubute to Coco) was made for the BraPärlor's competition. The entry would have to be made in any technique, but most of the beads in it had to be freshwater pearls. The winner piece was totally stunning, you got to check it out!

I made the pendant using a technique that was totally new for me. It is very similar to Quilling, you just use a braided cord instead for a strip of seed beads. Please have a look here for the description, and make sure to visit the site of Dori Csengeri, the creator of this exciting technique!

A very short disclamer - I could not get the color of those blue 3-cuts right, no matter what I tried! In reality, they are of the same shade of navy-blue as the cord wraped around the cabs.

The second piece is en experiment, inspired by spectacular embellished netted collars by Zoya Gutina. It took the second prize in Zionesse contest #2. The entry had to be made with 80% Miyuki and Jablonex exclusive seed beads and the topic was "New Year". It is called Winter Solstice. As the matter of fact, I was going to bead champagne. That is why I made that 3D freeform embellishment with 15/0 that was supposed to look like the bubbles in the sparkling wine. But when I started making pictures, the necklace started to resemble the sun, I thought. I usually listen to my pieces ;). It has been named "Winter Solstice".




The spring is coming, I can feel it in the water... ;)

Rebellion Monkey

Why monkey? Dunno. It's brown. Many monkeys are brown. See the trend?
Logics is some pretty cool stuff! Glad I am good at it ;)

Last three months I have been doing mainly contest and challenge pieces, as well as some commissions. Excluding perhaps just the Blooming mosses. Know what? I am tired of beading under pressure and/or constraints. Hence - the Monkey the Rebellion.

It is done against all laws of symmetry. I have introduced its focal element here. It has been lying on the shelf next to my beading table staring at me ever since. Until a day before yesterday, when it became talkative. It has coincided with a fever-top, interestingly enough :) And than I knew exactly what to do with it!

Do stones talk to you?

Couple of weeks ago, I had an honor to meet in person three Swedish beaders whom I respect a lot: Misan, Asanda and Karton (who does not have her own homepage yet, but some examples of her work can be seen here, here and here). It was an amazing day spent chatting, laughing, sharing ideas and beading. Misan, Karton and myself did some talking awaiting for Asanda to arrive, and one of the things that came up during our conversation was: how do we find our inspiration, especially when working with large stone cabochons. All three of us said almost in one voice - the stone tells us how it would like to have it. It is amazing, we seem to listen to the wishes of the stone about the bezel design!

One of the results of our creative meeting with the ladies was trying out new media for bead embroidery. My Blooming mosses is a direct follow-up of that.

This green turquoise cabochon wanted to have bronze-colored beads around it. I did not mind.




So, do stones, and other beads talk to you as well? I know that they do talk to Swanee and I love that conversation! :)

PärlPlatsen's Word Challenge - CLOWN

Word challenge is a game played at PärlPlatsen.
This time I got the word "clown" straight in my face. After 10 minutes of a total shock, I got an idea - the clown's wig. Red and orange. Huge. F l u f f y.
At first I wanted to make a bracelet. Than earrings. Finally, I have cut those ideas down to a single pendant.
I've recently got some great Jablonex seed beads in several shades of purple. I love red and purple together, and my husband is the biggest fan of Färjestad hockey team. Purple and orange are the colors of their sponsor, Löfbergs Lila. Well, I have quickly blessied myself with a cross sign, and started beading.

Well, does it look like a clown to you?

Tropical Holiday - Etsy Beadweavers February Challenge

FINALLY! I am done with that challenge...

Here is its story.
When I read about the topic, I have immediately started to think about tropical flowers. The truth is, I was quite inspired by Kerrie Slade's flower designs and wanted to try to make something by myself. My first idea was to bead bougainvillea, which I thought would be pretty easy. But one flower would not look nice, and I would have to bead a bunch. BORING. Good I did not, dare I say ;)

Than I thought about orchids, but there are already quite many patterns out there. BORING.

Righty, than I have decided to bead Strelitzia.
No Delicas, just Jablonex. And some 6lbs-test FireLine.
Voilá!





The beaded bug-button made its appearance today. Originally, I have put memory-wire inside the rope. Well, the necklace was lying for a week, waiting for a sunny day for a photoshoot. You know, Sweden... midwinter... So, 5 min before taking photos (I asked another person to make pictures first), I've noticed that the wire has pierced the rope, despite that I've bent loops at its ends. I could not fix it. So, I had to re-invent the clasp, and there came the Bug. We'll call it a moth ;) However, it also meant that I could not use the photos taken earlier with professional equipment.
But, finally, it is done and listed!

Please visit the EBW team's blog to see all the amazing entries that the members have created this month! Please do not be shy to vote for your favorite between February 9 and 15!

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!

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...