My Favorite Color

It's probably not a secret, but I love blue and all its shades. Over time, I've gotten away from so many blue accessories in my home. I embrace many more colors now. But if you analyzed my wardrobe, you'd see I have a lot of blue -- royal and turquoise being my most prized. So here's my latest necklace creation using all those wonderful colors. It's my first free-form bead weaving necklace since I learned the technique in Beverly Gilbert's class. You can check out my previous post and the necklace I created here.

I started with one of her bead soups, a mixture of blue, green, and purple beads.


I strung four interconnected rows, then started building the focal piece.


I added a chain at the end to make it easy to fasten. Here's the final necklace.

Golden Raspberry

I recently made this necklace with Beverly Gilbert's Golden Raspberry bead soup. I added a few glass beads to the mix, and made it a three-strand necklace. When attaching the strands to a 3-strand magnetic clasp, I purposely didn't match up the strands so that it would give a twisted look. When you wear the necklace, it appears like it's one long strand that has been twisted around your neck a couple times. This mix of beads has a lot of shiny gold seed beads, so the necklace is quite stunning and really catches the light. You can now see this necklace for sale at my Etsy Shop.

100th Post and Giveaway!

Whew -- it took me 26 months to get to my 100th post. I'm definitely doing more posts per month now, but I'm still a little erratic. I'll do 4 in one week then skip 3 weeks. Ah well, that's just how it goes. But I'm very excited that I've reached this milestone. I love that I have this venue to showcase my jewelry creations, my experiments with painting, assemblage, artist trading cards, and other art pursuits. To celebrate, and thank all my blog readers, I will be giving away one of my necklaces to a lucky reader. I'll be drawing a name from all the comments to this post, but I have a request. My last couple posts I've been talking about the bead class I took from Beverly Gilbert. I love taking classes and would love to hear about more. So in your comment, tell me about an art class you took that you really liked. Who was the instructor? Where was the class?

As a special bonus, I'll be sending a 10% off coupon that can be used in my Etsy Shop to the first 26 readers who post a comment. Keep your comments coming, and keep them interesting. I love hearing from people all over the world, and I love visiting your blogs in return. Make sure you have a link to your own blog in your comment so I can stop by.

I decided to do a mini-tutorial to show how I made this giveaway necklace. I started out with one of Beverly's bead soups, and a piece of 18 guage sterling silver wire to make a pendant.

I used my round-nosed pliers to make a loop at one end. I always make the loop that will attach the pendant to the necklace first.


I continued using the round-nosed pliers to bend the wire into an attractive shape.

I used my steel block and chasing hammer to hammer the wire pendant flat. I used the large end of the chasing hammer. I didn't hammer the ring at the end of the pendant because that tends to open up the ring.

I turned around the chasing hammer and hammered with the smaller end to make little dimples in the flat wire. I like this look because the dimples catch the light and make it even shinier.


And finally, I strung the beads and attached a lobster clasp.

Here's the final necklace that will be given away to one reader. Get your comments going!



Thanks so much for stopping by! I'll keep this giveaway open until October 30.

Jewelry on Whidbey Island

In my last post, I told how I was heading to Whidbey Island, Washington to take a bead class with Beverly Gilbert. The class was called "Wander with Color," and she had 11 students. We took it in her wonderful house right across from the beach.
We were set up in her back room, spread over two tables. It was quite comfortable, and cozy so you could easily chat with your neighbors while beading.

This was a 2-day class. The first half-day was spent talking about color theory and how that works with beading. Essentially, you can't think of the color wheel in beading the same way you do with painting where you can just mix two colors to make another. With beading, the colors will be side by side. But can you truly make, for example, blue and orange sit side by side and look good? Beverly taught us how to gradually "wander" from one color to the next. So for that example, you might start with blue, then work with lighter blues, to a lighter yellow, to a darker yellow, to orange. Then you might go with red to get back to the blue again. I chose blue, purple, and copper as my colors. We started by piling the beads on a paper to make our own palette. Here's what I came up with.

We used a free-form bead weaving technique called netting. Here's my creation with just a couple rows of beads strung.

And here are some photos of how my necklace progressed to the finished project.





Be sure and stop by tomorrow when I make my 100th post. I'll be giving away one of my necklaces to one lucky reader to celebrate!

Bead Soup Necklaces

I've been playing around with these fabulous bead soups that have been created by Beverly Gilbert. If you haven't seen what she can do with color, you have to stop by her website. I'm heading out to her vacation home in Whidbey Island, Washington, tomorrow to take some of her colorful bead weaving classes. I can't wait to see what I come up with. I already own a lot of her bead soup mixes, so I looked through my stash to decide which color theme I wanted to go with for my class project. I ended up calling her to see what mixes she had on hand. She said not to worry, she'd have a dozens of new color combinations to show me and I could just decide then. She said I may even change my color ideas a few times before I decide on the final project. I'll post some photos from Whidbey Island as soon as I can get my hands back on a computer. For now, I'll show you some photos of necklaces I've made with her bead soups.

Shimmery Desert Sand


Dark and Tangled Seas


Hike into the Rainforest


Crackling Ice Floe


You can soon see these for sale at my Etsy Shop.