Upcycled jewelry: PASTA

I recently won a cool book from Bead Unique
  for my submission to their upcycled jewelry contest.
I had a bunch of stuff I'd created for
a previous April Fool's Day Beading Daily post.
  I called it FAUXLYMER jewelry.

Here's a group of pasta noodle beads. I used Sharpie marker to add color and stripes, wooden accents (Also striped with a marker) and annealed steel wire. 

Detail: This bead has a slim ziti inside another ziti. 

Ridges are colored with Sharpie marker, 

and the ends wired with annealed steel.

 My fauxlymer cuff was the piece which won me the book.

More ziti, waxed linen and wooden accent beads.

Thanks Bead Unique!

Totally tubular beaded beads

On my beading mat April 18th, 2011:
I'm making really super fast and easy peyote beaded beads by stitching small flat strips and zipping them together into tubes. I'm making a ton of them in about every shade of green Delica I have–and if you know me, you know I have a lot of green beads! I made tubes using some shiny hexes too.I am just tubing away, because I need to have as many components as I can in order to play when I make whatever it is I will make. Yesterday Mike and I drove to Baltimore (met friends, had Bertha's mussels) and I beaded in the car all the way there and all the way back!

Tip for car beading--work in larger sizes, it's easier to get your needle through larger bead holes if your needle is bumping around! I worked in size 8 hexes and size 10 Delicas. Hardly any finger stabbing at all. ;-)

I'll be combining the tubes with the Swarovski Dorado 2X crystal bicones #5328 into... something! Stay tuned!

Getting Twisted with Beadalon at Wire Fest 2011

Bead Fest Wire was more fun than I imagined. I did demos for two straight days for Beadalon.

The biggest attraction? The twisted tool! Can you tell that I was enjoying myself? You can see the blur as my hands whirled the handle around and around making a twisted cable. Talk about having the right tool for the right job.

So here's how it works:

Attach up to 5 wires (I used about a yard each of various gauges of Artistic wire, between 26 and 20 gauge) to a disk with holes in it, just twist them onto the disk so they wouldn't come off, nothing fancy. Then  attach the loose ends to a clamp or a chair rung--anything which you can use to pull against for some tension. Then just turn the handle as I'm doing in my photo. The end result is a cable of surprising hardness--perfect for making jump rings or wrapping stones, making bails, etc. Even using two wires made a hard enough cable for rings.

Lots of people (of all ages as you can see!) stopped to admire my seed bead work, too. I showed them the three colors of WildFire I use, and though I did not demo any stitches I did point out how the WildFire thread held up to different stitches and different beads, including Swarovski crystals.

Thanks to Meredith and Madeline of Beadalon who were so fabulous in teaching me how to best use the tools and make me feel really a part of the design team. Somehow that floor in the convention center doesn't feel quite as hard when you work with great people!

Meredith and I collaborated at the demo station on some new designs with the Katydid components, too. Meredith has such style in her designs--I hope they'll post those pix on the Beadalon blog site soon.

How to end and add thread to bead work

Don't worry about ending and adding thread to a piece of bead work. See if my Doodlebeads video helps simplify this task.
Check it out here on You Tube: Click the arrow to watch!
Leslie's video on ending and adding thread

Transform ready-made elements into hand-crafted style

I have these great, ready-made silver-plated quick link rings from Beadalon, shown at the top of this photo. They're about the diameter of a quarter. They're really cool, but for my style they're just a tad too shiny, too perfectly formed. Others love these attributes, but I like more of a hand-crafted look in my work.

First I hammered them with a small rivet hammer, flipping them on my steel block to hammer both sides. Those rings are shown in the middle of this photo. They looked way better to me, but I still wanted more.

I decided to oxidize them. Using bowls designated for crafts only (with  NOT FOR FOOD written on them in marker) I first mixed a neutralizing solution of baking soda and plain water in one bowl--about 2 tablespoons of soda to maybe a pint of water. Next I heated water in a glass bowl, and put in two drops of Patina Gel Liver of Sulfur. It's really stinky so open a window. I used tweezers to dunk the rings, watching them darken and removing them quickly right into the baking soda water to stop the reaction from getting too black. Then I rinsed them in plain water and dried them off. My oxidized quick links are the bottom rings in this photo. They totally look like fused silver rings that I made myself!

 Cool, huh! Plus, the liver of sulfur solution degrades in a couple days and makes a great fertilizer. Just store it in a jar until it turns clear, then water your tomatoes!

Tucson wrap up 2011

Back from the not so warm but still FABULOSO realm of the Tucson shows. I find it hard not to post all my photos and share all my stories. Let's start with my recent acceptance as a CREATE YOUR STYLE with Swarovski Elements Ambassador. I have rarely been among such creativity and camaraderie in one group. At the meeting held to introduce new innovations, trends and colors, we got up close and personal with the STYLE BOOK, a binder of mixed media concoctions so dense with fabric, fashion notions, texture, sparkle and color that we salivated ... and it wasn't from the champagne! The trend book plays the role of gathering the latest from Swarovski CREATE YOUR STYLE looks in one place. Yum.

Each ambassador received a "candy box" with samples of some of the new shapes, colors, and materials. Be on the lookout for the BeCharmed Helix Beads, Trapeze Crystal Buttons,  rich and creamy Crystal Vintage Gold pearls and the Organic Cosmic Triangles.

To better see the remarkable faceting in the newest elements, HUGE versions were on display--tons of bling!

Here I am at the party Swarovski threw for staff, ambassadors and guests. On the far left is Kristal Wick, my successor as the editor of Beading Daily.com, and Tammy Jones is the editor of Jewelry Making Daily.com.

This party was so rocking even the bar staff were dancing along with everyone else!

Teaching for Swarovski was a blast and an honor. I had 7 students learning to make my Comet Anemone Cuff. They were all wonderful and I hope they take more classes with me.

Here's a neat trick: wet your raw stones to see how their natural color will be after the oils from your skin patina their surface. But take note--don't wet them until AFTER they are weighed for price! This is a strand of unpolished turquoise I bought. You can see the richer greens in the center where they're wet.

At the TierraCast showroom they had a new theme of Steampunk Victoriana. If you're into that style (as I am) you'd go bonkers-- every shape of key, wings, all sorts of chain, locks, mechanical-looking ephemera, hearts, and every color metal from brass to black. Truly extraordinaire, mes cheres. To make things even more memorable, a small stage was set up with period props and costumes to pose for photos. With me (I'm in the striped top hat) are Denise Peck, the editor in chief of Step by Step Wire Jewelry, and Karen Keegan, one of the best event managers at Interweave press.

And, though the temps may not have been as high as we all hoped, there was a lot of warmth and sizzling creative energy everywhere.

There's still no place like Tucson during the gem shows!

New demos for John Bead in Tucson

Here I am in the John Bead booth at the Doubletree Hotel. People were really interested in what I was beading with the new Miyuki tila beads.

A second demo brought more people to learn about farfalle beads, little peanut shaped beads with center holes. Lots of shoppers knew me from my Doodlebeads DVD and my work on the TV show Beads, Baubles, and Jewels. They all said that my drawings helped them learn bead stitching better than any other way they tried!

More posts to come. Today I have one more demo and then I'm off the the Gem Mall.