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! :-)

Barrettes!

A few weeks ago I was asked to teach a bead-embroidered barrette workshop… so I got busy making a few barrettes to show the class different variations and of course to write the instructions… These instructions are now available as a tutorial here:

For a better look at the actual barrette, see the photo below:

Silver & Turquoise Bead Embroidered Beaded Hair Barrette

So I made a few of these, one to leave as a sample where I teach, one for my shop, one for myself :-) and then started making a few variations, here is one:

Blue Lagoon - Hair Barrette

You may have noticed that I'm back on the turquoise!!!  I’m not apologizing for it… I LOVE turquoise!!! It is by far my favourite colour… so I’m sure they’ll be more to come! :-)

On a personal note, my best friend went back to London… it was great having him around… and Ethan had a ball with him!!!

Here’s a couple of pictures taken of him & Ethan goofing around (hmmm good job he doesn’t check my blog too often cos I know he’s not going to be happy about the ones of him diving at the pool… honestly he can dive, I just had a really hard time catching him in the act… poor lighting as it was raining + using my mobile camera)

A few minutes before the rain…

  

A few minutes after the rain…

and although the temperature here is still pretty high… I guess him going back to London marked the end of the Summer for Ethan and I :-(

so now… back to work… and back to beading!!! :-)

Almost 3 Months!!!

I cannot believe it’s been almost 3 months since my last post!!! Shocking! Shameful!! Terrible!!!!  and for some of that time I have some excellent reasons (excuses)… I went to London in the summer, stayed with my baby sister and her family – had a great time… the highlight of my holiday (apart from spending time with my sis and my lovely nieces) was going to the Lollibop Festival where I was picked out of the crowd whilst watching the AMAZING performers Osadia… and this is how I looked afterwards :-) 

Photography by Size Barnes

Bare in mind that I had to ride the bus through London and go to Friday night dinner at my parents looking like this!!! :-) What an amazing experience!!! if you ever get the chance to see Osadia perform… go and see them!!!

Also, whilst in London my son and niece celebrated their birthdays… so I made cakes, of course! :-) Ethan wanted a ghost castle and my niece a beehive

and whilst there… and because I don’t have any nice pictures of my son and I together, my friend Dawn, who is a photographer, took some gorgeous pictures of us, here are two of my favourites:

Photography by Dawn Aitman

and then we did come back home, but Ethan was still off school… so I spent lots of time with him at the pool… summer holidays ended… school started again…

and I went back to teaching workshop…

So, through out it all, I found it hard to sit down and do some serious beading… but somehow managed to make (and finish) these two new piece:

Tropical Waters – Necklace

Tropical Waters – Cuff

 

I have a few more pieces on the go… and hopefully as soon as my friend Michael, who came to stay for two and a half weeks,  goes back to London (yes, yet another wonderful distraction)… I will bury my face into my beads and get some more pieces finished… till then… HUGE apologies for not having been around for so long… but sometimes life takes over and thankfully this time it was all good! :-)

Happy beading everyone!!!

Sinai Glitz

Anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE turquoise and love ancient Egypt art & jewellery… a while back I bought two lovely turquoise vintage glass cabs depicting an ancient Egypt figure… so I had to use them… and this is what I made:

Sinai Glitz – OOAK Cuff

The colours remind me of the landscape in Sinai… turquoise skies, copper/red mountains, scorching hot sun (gold) and the cuff of course inspired me to create these earrings (which I absolutely adore!!!) 

Sinai Glitz – Earrings

I started working on the second cab… supposedly to make a matching necklace… but no ideas have come to fruition yet…. we’ll see… and a week ago I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow BAO member, Janice Abarbanel of Naftali who is visiting Israel and who makes the most beautiful polymer cabs and jewellery… we met in Tel Aviv  and we went bead shopping of course!!! I got some beautiful coral and turquoise beads as well as some gorgeous dark blue and copper Cryscholla cabochons (which I'm yet to decide if to use with my metalwork or with my beadwork)… I had so much fun!!! it was so lovely meeting Janice!!! and look what she gave me from her own jewellery line…

This pendant is soooo beautiful… my photo really doesn’t do it any justice… and it looks even better on!!! So very sweet of her!!!  My only regret is that I didn’t take pictures of our meeting… I forgot I have a camera on my mobile… Janice however did, and I hope it comes out, as I would love to have a memento of our meeting in Tel Aviv.  If you are not familiar with Janice's work, I would definitely recommend heading over to her website http://janiceabarbanel.com/ and her etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/Naftali (although at the moment her etsy shop will look empty as she’s on holiday and her shop is on vacation mode till 14th July).

Ok… now lets see what I can do with that second cab…

Till the next time :-)

What’s Been Going on + New Tutorial

Where do I begin???? I’ve been busy doing bits and pieces…  some custom orders… some classes…  some metal work… and a new tutorial!!!

First of all let me show you how my first pair of metal worked earrings turned out! :-)

 
Not bad, considering I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing!!! :-)  These earrings are made of copper, sawed, filed and textured (battered) with a hammer and then shaped with a wooden thingy majiggy (don’t you just love my technical jargon!) I think it’s called a dapping die set :-)

What I learnt from making these?  well… I’m not very good with the saw… I am very good at breaking the saw blades…. it’s going to take me a much longer time than I expected to make things… I guess my learning curve is pretty abysmal… I wish I could go to some classes :-)

Then… I got really excited because I found instruction for how to make those really cool leather wrap bracelets… I've wanted one for years!!! and now I have about 7!!! :-) I’ve been making one after another, some for me, some for friends, some as gifts for my son’s teachers for the end of the year…. some still have to be made… but in the meantime here are some of the ones I already made.

These are soooo much fun to make!!!! and I just can’t stop!!!! I even started making buttons for the closures out of copper…. with my newly found metalwork skills :-)

And finally I taught a workshop last week for my Rosette Earrings and now the tutorial is available in my etsy shop:

 

I think that’s it for now… I’m still working on finishing a bead-embroidered bag… I think I’m about 5 or 6 months into it!!! It will be finished soon… I hope! :-)

Wishing you all happy beading! :-)

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! :-)