Treasury: Winter in the Woods

The winner of last week’s winter bead giveaway is Linda - congratulations, and thank you so much to everyone who entered! This month, I asked about your favorite holiday color palettes, and as always the results were varied and full of inspiration.

Linda’s picks were sparkly white with sky blues and the greens of a winter forest. With these color inspirations in mind, I set out in search of some pretty winter inspirations. The bead and jewelry picks especially put me in the mood for snow!

Frosted glass and soft mossy greens do make a gorgeous combination - and one that is easily achieved with beads. May all of your holiday projects be full of cheer!

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November Bead Stash Favorites

Yesterday morning all of the puddles in the neighborhood were frozen solid - winter has arrived. I suppose that means it’s time to start thinking about festive bead colors and holiday jewelry designs. Although I love a good red and green combination as much as anyone, I often find myself drawn to the more elegant and fancy holiday palettes, like burgundy and frost, gold and emerald, or plum and cobalt.

This month’s bead picks include two new favorites, and some beads that I’ve been neglecting lately due to so many other ideas and designs vying for my attention.

First we have a lovely bunch of shiny, gold dyed freshwater pearls. I love the organic shapes - not only are these slightly imperfect pearls very affordable, but they have a primitive quality that I adore for ancient inspired designs. Although I’ve added a lot more pearl and shell to my stash this year than I usually do, I couldn’t resist snapping these ones up.

I’ve been so busy with Egyptian Gods and craft fair goodies these past few months, I keep forgetting that I’ve been eager to make ladder cuffs using my new selections of Czech bugles from Shipwreck Beads. These opaque white bugles are perfect for Egyptian and tribal pieces, but would make for lovely frost and ice designs in winter as well. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do.

Finally, I have some transparent cobalt 8/o seed beads that I can hear calling to me daily. I recently started keeping a list of bead styles and colors that I wish for when designing pieces, so that I can remember to add them to my purchases and bead shopping time. I don’t know how I ever got by without one of my favorite colors in this size, but it’s been remedied thanks to these beauties from Fire Mountain Gems. The large boxes that Dyna-Mites come in are a little too big to fit in my usual storage bins, so they’ll soon be heading for some baggies.

Do you have a new favorite bead to work with this winter?

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Work in Progress: Magatama Collar

Last week I had planned to share the final rings that I was making to take with me to the craft fair, along with a promise that it would be the last ring update. Unfortunately, I was so busy preparing the rest of my inventory that I never got the chance.

Now that the fair is over, things are back to normal on the drawing board and the bead tray. This week, I’m just finishing up a piece that I started during the show. I brought along a few favorite bead colors and enough thread to start a project or two, to keep me busy during slow periods. On the second day, I nearly finished a pretty new collar with opaque blue and green seed beads and lovely little 8/o magatamas in transparent lime.

The new chevron lariat that I was working on for Set turned out great! It took some time to find just the right accent sizes, and I ended up with some additional colors like blue and green. Still, the Christmas beads added just the right amount of personality. My favorite part of the design is the colorblocked fringe. I find myself returning to this style more and more often since Apep, and loving the results.

What are you working on this week?

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Pipe cleaners dwarfs tutorial

These cute little dwarfs take only a few moments to make.  Here is my tutorial

You need pipe cleaners red and green (Or any other color of your choice),
a wooden bead, a piece of red felt fabric for the hat.

Cut two 5 cms (2 inches) long red pieces and one 3.5 cms long green piece.
fold the two red ones in half and join them as you see in the photo.  Place the green
piece between the upper fold and twist the red halves tightly together.

You can make them smaller by cutting away a few millimeters from the legs and arms.

Now you can now start pushing the twisted part through the wooden bead. Push until you
reach a neck size.  You can always cut away what is protruding and cover it with the hat.

Cut the hat from the piece of felt and glue it on. That's all!  You can always add a beard if you like.

While I was not looking, the cute little punks invaded my plants.

I wish you all a pleasant evening and blessings.

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Jewelry Display Makeover

One of the great things about being crafty is having the ability to adapt when things go awry, or to find creative solutions to problems like tricky storage or broken tools. Why buy something new when you can fix it yourself?

A while back one of my favorite jewelry displays took a tragic fall and broke into several pieces. The polystyrene hand that I had been using for ring photographs lost a finger, making it just about useless. Luckily, it didn’t shatter into millions of pieces like porcelain or other materials might have. All it needed was a little glue.

I first tried repairing it with what I had on hand - some Gem-Tac with tape to hold it together while it dried. Everything seemed fine at first, but after a day or two the pieces just came apart on their own. I really wanted to have this display intact for the craft fair, so I needed a different approach.

After adding some E-6000 to my supplies for knotting projects, I had what I needed to do the repair right. Once the pieces were back together, the display still needed a makeover to cover up the cracks and leftover glue from the first mishap. At first I considered using decoupage with a layer of paint over top, but knew it would be both time consuming and too likely to go wrong. Although the texture might have been a nice effect, it was really an unnecessary step. Instead I gave the display 3 coats of paint to match my other displays - 2 out of 3 mirrors from a set I bought for the show. They made perfect bowls for displaying rings, while the largest mirror I saved for helping customers try out pieces that they liked.

It’s great to have this piece back in action! Have you rescued any beading tools or fixtures recently? How did it work out?

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Baskets and planters

Dear readers,

I needed more baskets so went to that huge store with the tiny craft corner to buy more.  Guess what -
the ones I bought several days ago were all sold out.  There were bigger ones which at first I couldn't figure out what they were for.There were 9 in a packet which also is unusual.  Then I caught on -
Hanukka of course! These are candle bases for the diy Hanukka candelabrum which has nine branches.

They make great planters.  Down the street where I live, there is a small tree with flowers and leaves
similar to these.  The flowers give out a heavenly perfume, especially at night.  I sometime pick up
fallen flowers and keep them in water for a day or two.  They smell good for a long time.
My flowers are paper ones which I made myself. The leaves are plastic commercial.

I used all 9 already.  There are swaps and gifts to prepare for both Hanukka and Christmas. I have
to get to the store again and buy more before they are sold out.  They make excellent knitting baskets and lamp shades and can be painted any color.

Here is the one I used as a hanging planter beside the new one.

I also found these cute scissors.  Pity they are too large but can be used as shears maybe. I believe
they are Barbie size.  Couldn't resist buying  them.

I use every spare moment to work on my gifts.

A warm welcome to my new followers.  Thank you for following.

Isabel, Veronique, Victoria, Dorien

I wish you all a wonderful weekend and blessings.

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Bead Color Ideas: Winter Green

Here on the West Coast, winter scenery is a little backwards. All summer long the grass gets baked to a golden brown, and then becomes lush and green again with the almost constant winter rain. This climate quirk has inspired me to try out some winter palettes with a more vibrant green than the deep velvet of holly leaves and pine needles.

The perfect character to play this part are some beautiful carved bone tubes from Happy Mango Beads. The finish isn’t uniform, giving them an organic, mossy finish. The colors range from olive to chartreuse, with little white stars scored into the surface.

First I paired the green bones with light and wintry blue, and shiny jet black for contrast. Although we miss the leaves when they’re gone, the look of branches in silhouette on a bright winter sky is a welcome one! The greens definitely have a coolness to them in this trio, like moss with a layer of frost. There’s a certain watery-ness to this palette, which I decided to call Frozen Creek.

Of course I couldn’t resist trying out some bright opaque red. Adding white seemed a little too obvious, and probably wouldn’t have a very festive effect on the lighter greens. Instead, I tossed in a handful of gold Swarovski Elements pearls. Antique Centerpiece has a warm elegance, like a favorite decoration that gets passed on from one generation to the next.

Finally, I wanted to try out a complementary palette, starting with lovely olive green seed beads. Transparent rootbeer brown provides a little light and some additional organic color for this palette. With so much green, this one could only be called November Lichen.

Are you using your winter greens right now? Which shade do you prefer?

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