Rust can be beautiful!

Well… as always I find time slipping away and the next thing I know… weeks have flown by!!!  Ethan was off school for a couple of weeks… Succot holidays… my parents were here… for the holidays and for my cousin’s bat-mitzvah in Jerusalem, which was a lot of fun!!! I made the jewellery for the gorgeous bat-mitzvah girl! (if I get permission from my cousin I will post photos at a later stage)…

Whenever my parents are here they take my car (ok, their car seeing that they paid for it) I become even more of a hermit than I usually am and become almost house bound… well what can one do when stuck at home???… bead of course!!! and bead I did!!! :-)  Apart from the necklace and earrings I made for my cousin, I made 2 necklaces, 2 pairs of earrings and 3 cuffs… would have made 4 cuffs and 3 pairs of earrings had I not been busy with family festivities and had I not got my car back today :-)

Here is the first necklace:

Diamond Rust – OOAK Bead Embroidered Necklace

 
I’m so in LOVE with this necklace, the photos don’t do it justice!!! it’s a really long piece and it was hard to photograph it all without making it look really small (which it is not)…. I was inspired by the colours of rusting metals… I used a gorgeous MAKUstudio raku cab (the square top one) and lots and lots of gorgeous burgandy Swarovski crystal pearls… I really need to take this picture on a body to show it in it’s best light… will get round to it! :-)

For now got to go and work on the photos for all the other pieces… hopefully I will post them all during the week… so come back and check them out! :-)

Reflection & Resurrection

In the last few months I have not been the most productive… between an operation I had to have at the beginning of March, the 6 weeks convalescing that followed… and my dad being in hospital for the last month… well… lets just say my mind hasn’t been where it should be! :-)

I'm all healed up!!!… my dad is still in hospital but he’s doing much, much better… the hard part for me is being so far way from him… he’s in London… and I’m not :-( I did manage a quick trip to London for 4 days to visit him… and it was really hard leaving him there in hospital… but since I got back home his health has improved tremendously!!!

During my time convalescing, when I wasn’t allowed to drive, exercise, pick up stuff, do housework (which I really didn’t mind), basically was supposed to rest and heal… I found it quite hard to bead, as unfortunately beading does require a sitting position and  for the first month I wasn’t able to do so for more than 30 minutes at a time… this gave me lots of time to reflect on things… life… and everything else… and as soon as I could, I created these two pieces.

Reflection – OOAK Necklace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflection was created around a gorgeous MAKUstudio OOAK copper raku ceramic cab.

Resurrection – OOAK Necklace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resurrection was created araound some gorgeous polymer clay beads that I purchased a really long time ago from Valerie Aharoni.

I can’t begin to tell you how gorgeous these pieces are in the flesh… I found photographing them really difficult and I’m afraid I wasn’t able to convey their real beauty… and they look so incredible on!!! I love both of them so much and find it really difficult to pick a favourite!!!

As for other things… well I’m almost finished making another beadembroidered bag… but I lost my box of needles, containing my leather beading needles and as the back of the bag is leather I can’t finish it till I get some more needles… which reminds me… must do that today!!! :-)

I’m also working on some earrings for a workshop I will be teaching in the near future… apart from that…. just trying to get my life back on track…. still haven’t done any major housework :-) maybe if I did I would find the missing box of needles!!! :-) Nahh… I’m sure they’ll turn up eventually!!! :-)

Till the next time…. happy beading! :-)

Leather Cuff Making Frenzy! Part 2

So the madness continues…. I just cannot stop making these cuffs!!! I really love making them and I really love how they turn out!!! 

I even started on a new bead-embroidered bag, when one quarter of the way through, I found myself back on the leather cuffs… and the next thing I know four more were made!!!

Here are those four + the previous ones that I didn’t get a chance to post yet (cos I was busy making leather cuffs :-D).

As there are so many, I’m just going to post the photos, if you are interested in finding out more about them, please click on the photos for detailed information.

 

 

 

Top two, 2nd row right, 3rd row: cabs by Golem Design Studio

2nd row left: heart cab by MAKUstudio

4th row: striped cab by Naftali

I hope I haven’t overdosed you on leather cuffs!!! I promise I will do my upmost to stay away from them for a while…. or at least till I finish making the bag!!! :-)

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead!!! :-)

Arearea - Joyousness

I finally finished my new bead embroidered bag Arearea – Joyousness. I honestly never thought it would get finished!!! :-) but each and every single stitch and bead was put there with so much love and enthusiasm, because I absolutely LOVE this bag and LOVE how it turned out!!!!

I created this bag for the Bead Art Originals (BAO) Team’s December challenge. The challenge was to create a piece inspired by one of our favourite famous works of art; a famous painting, sculpture, photograph, etc...

The painting I chose is Paul Gauguin’s Arearea – Joyousness (1892)

This is one of my all-time favourite paintings and I have a postcard of it (that I purchase in some museum about 15-18 years ago) pinned to my note board next to my computer.

I love this painting for so many reasons, the composition, the exotic feel to it and the colours. Both the exoticism and the colours are what inspired me to create this bag.

The bag is made entirely by hand (hand stitched) in chocolate brown genuine suede, and is lined in bright purple Ultrasuede, beadembroidered around three gorgeous MAKUstudio One-of-a-Kind ceramic cabochons (1 heart and 2 discs), beautiful Swarovski crystals in Montana Sapphire, burn orange and Golden Shadow, Swarovski Crystal Copper elongated bicones and loads of multicoloured fresh-water pearls all beadembroidered with Japanese seed beads in light bronze, dark copper, Swarovski Montana Sapphire crystals and Czech copper bugles.

The strap is a gorgeous and sturdy beadwoven spiral rope encrusted with the Swarovski Montana Sapphire crystals and the multicoloured fresh-water pearls.

I have fallen heads over heel in love with this bag!!!! I must make a similar one for myself, as soon as I can find the time!!! :-)

Let me know what you think & wishing all who celebrate it a very happy Hanukkah!!!

Please visit the BAO team blog, http://www.beadartoriginals.blogspot.com between the 16th and 20th of December and vote for your favourite entry by leaving a comment on the blog post.

Waiting for Autumn

It’s been an incredibly long and hot summer here!!!! Temperatures have rarely gone below the 30 degrees centigrade since around May!!! We had 2 glorious days (10 minutes each day) of rain and a drop of about 5 degrees… making us all think that autumn had finally arrived…. well after the second heat wave this week and temperatures back up to 32+… we are still waiting!!!! The only difference, thankfully is that the humidity is down and the evening are a bit cooler…. but it’s almost the end of October… even I, who hates rain, is hoping for some relief soon!!!

Ethan is back in school and I’m back in my studio (bedroom) beading my little heart out!!!! I made 5 cuffs and am 3/4 of the way through finishing a beadebroidered bag!!!

This is the first of those cuffs – as soon as I saw the gorgeous MAKUstudio raku cab I thought of the autumn that isn’t quite here… the colours are just so gorgeous – gold, bronze, green with flashes of red, and with that bright green leaf in the middle it really depicts the colours of our so-called autumn!

Waiting for Autumn – OOAK Cuff

The MAKUstudio raku cab is surrounded by bronze and green Japanese seed beads and dark brown Swarovski pearls. The cuff is covered with genuine leather on top and chocolate brown Ultrasuede on the inside – I love how this cuff turned out!!! Let me know what you think… in the meantime I’m going to go and have a nice refreshing shower trying to escape the sweltering heat!!!

Volcanic Collection – 4 New Pieces!

It all started off with me receiving some absolutely stunning cabochons and buttons from MAKUstudio… and that was an accomplishment in itself!!! Every time a new cab was posted on her facebook fan page, I would click on the link and…. it would be already sold!!!! Am not surprised because her pieces are so yummy… anyway, so I managed to put an order in and received them about a week later… and got out the few I had bought from her a while ago…. and all I could think when looking at these gorgeous pieces was…. fire… earth… lava… volcano… ancient… tribal… primitive…. so I gathered my beads (another accomplishment as they are spread all over my flat) and started to bead my first piece which is designed for the Bead Art Originals “No Bones About It” September Challenge. We are supposed to design a piece inspired by the TV character Temperance Brennan from the series "Bones."

The character, Temperance Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist who works together with the FBI to solve murders. She is often seen wearing gorgeous tribal and ethnic jewellery and I love this series!!!! :-)

Her jewellery style and her profession inspired me to design this gorgeous primitive/tribal-influenced piece featuring two of MAKUstudio’s gorgeous cabochons (actually the top one is a button that I used as a cab).

Volcano Goddess – OOAK Necklace

Then as soon as I finished this, I got loads of ideas for making more pieces with MAKU’s raku ceramic cabs…. first came the cuff:

Volcanic Rock – OOAK Cuff

then another necklace…

Volcanic Rock – OOAK Necklace

(both the necklaces and the cuff above use all MAKUstudio raku ceramics)

and then of course the earrings…

Volcanic Rock – Earrings

and I wanted to make more… but I run out of dark copper beads and almost the black ones too!!! (more ordered and on their way!)

So I put this collection aside… and started a new one! Still have to work on the photos and decide on a name…. but I’ll tell you this, the colour combination for it is coral red, black, ivory and gold… and it is GORGEOUS!!!! and I made THREE necklaces and THREE bracelets!!! I’m in a total beading frenzy!!!! and…. just now as I was typing, the doorbell rang…. the postman is here with my order of copper and black beads!!!! The only problem is, I actually run out of Fireline… my dad, who is coming to Israel on Tuesday is bringing me loads…. so I guess no beading till then :-) and just as well as I have loads of work to do for my ‘real’ job! :-)

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead! :-)

Primeval Forest - Collar

A new piece!!!  I recently bought some gorgeous cabochons from MAKUstudio and as always, spent a rather long time ogling over them before actually doing anything with them.  So a couple of weeks ago, as I already had all my copper beads out on my worktable, I decided to beadembroider one of Maku’s beautiful creations…. and then I got stuck and became very uninspired (not with the cabochon, just in general) … but after a few weeks of no ideas coming into my head,  I got inspired once again and found the perfect necklace for this piece – here it is:

Primeval Forest – Collar

I picked all the colours that I could see in the cabochon and made this lovely herringbone-stitched collar, finished off with a pretty complementary square-stitched toggle and peyote loop.  

 

 

  I love the colours!!!! this looks so good on, especially as I’m quite tanned now! :-)

Go and check out MAKUstudio for some more gorgeous cabochons and jewellery!