'Blackberry' and 'Sky' Goddesses

Why 'Blackberry'?  Because that's what she said to me while I was stitching her.  She is finished very simply with one of my polymer clay cabochons and just a few lines of beads and a couple of flowers for embellishments.  I added eyelashes to her face purely because the clay I used was so dark that you couldn't really see her features and I felt that the eyelashes would define her eyes.  I really like the clean lines of the beading round the cabochon and especially the bit round that green bead right at the bottom.

At the same time as I was stitching 'Blackberry' I also stuck/stitched down the main features for 'Sky'.  Her face reminded me of fluffy white clouds and I added lots of pale blues/white/crystal clear beads to continue the theme with the central bead being a really big crackle glass bead.  It reminded me of ice and sparked another idea...

'Citrine' Goddess

I was aiming to make a range of these for my Etsy store as 'Healing Goddesses', using the properties of the stones but I really struggled with this one so have decided not to bother with that and just go with the flow in future.  Hopefully people will see the beauty in them as art pieces and will want one (or more) to hang on the wall or to give as gifts.

'Citrine' is named after the lovely citrine bead on her belly which determined the rest of the colours and beads I used, including some really pretty carnelian rounds, fire polish crystals tiny flowers and glass leaves.

'Butterfly' Goddess

Once I started working on my BJP pieces I fond I really enjoyed the fact that the Goddesses were 'art' rather than jewellery and sort of went a little bit mad making more.  I haven't included them in my BJP folder but thought you might like to see some of those too so I shall be posting them in between my BJP pieces.  I find them incredibly peaceful, both in the stitching and to look at once they are finished and can see me making lots more throughout the year.

'Butterfly' was stitched immediately after I finished my January Goddess and I made her with the intention of hanging her in my bedroom.  The butterfly on her belly is a small lace applique piece that has been beaded over and has a few sparkly crystals added.  I had to figure out a way to bezel a 3mm chaton for this which was a bit of a challenge but I like a challenge! ;o)  The colours are very 'me' and I am really pleased with how she turned out.  I used different stitches/patterns for each section to create visual interest and lots of different textures and her face is made from polymer clay using a push mould so that I could get just the right colours that I needed to match the beads.

For those of you mad enough to want to to bezel a 3mm chaton here is how I did it:

Pick up 10 size 15 seed beads.  Go through all 15 again, and the first one a third time and pull into a circle.

Work one row of peyote using Delica beads, place the chaton in the centre, pointed side down.

Work 1 row of peyote using size 15 seed beads.  Go through all five 15s again, keeping a tight tension to pull this last row in over the edge of the chaton to keep it in place.  Finish off the thread ends.

February Frustrations!

I did think that my February BJP piece would be a little softer and more loving than the January one, after all it does include Valentine's Day!  Unfortunately so far it has been a month full of continuing frustration so I chose to use lots of red and orange beads to signify this.  The frustration is caused by a number of things.  My panic attacks, of course, but a huge chunk of it is to do with Steven's job.  He is assistant manager at a local pub but the last few months have been spent with him doing the majority of the work without getting any recognition of the fact that he is spending so many more hours there than he is getting paid for.  His contract states that he should do 48 hours but he has been averaging 15.5 more each week.  One week he did 76!!!  As you can imagine, it is putting an extra strain on our family life that we could well do without and no amount of complaining about it will make it right.  It would be a different matter if he got paid for the extra hours but, as he is on a management contract, he doesn't.  It is just expected.

This Goddess really lived up to her theme too with me undoing enough of the beadwork for me to start to worry about the backing holding up!  Fortunately it did or I fear she would have been consigned to the bin.  The eye cabochon is from Liz Reed at TheCrimsonMoon and is me keeping an eye on his hours, represented by the two opaque red beads that are like the hands of a clock around the eye.  The heart has white 'lace' edging for Valentine's Day (had to include it somewhere) and the pink/yellow beads are to signify the clashes we have had over it all.  The black spots are, well, black spots and dark times and the crystal on her cheek is perhaps a tear.

Hopefully March will be a better month!

Beady Notions

I recently opened a second Etsy store to sell all my tutorials from.  I found that having both the finished jewellery and the tutorials/supplies in one place was getting a little confusing for me, and probably for customers too, so the solution was to split them.  Beady Notions by Delicate Sparkles was opened before Christmas and I am slowly adding all the tutorials, kits, cabochons etc to it.  I hope this will make it much easier for people to find what they are looking for and make it simpler for me to keep track of too.  I am hoping to have a few new tutorials listed soon along with some new polymer clay cabochons.

I spent a few happy hours playing with the polymer clay yesterday and coming up with what I hope will be some new styles of face cabochons.  I need to make some to use in my BJP goddesses and none of the molds that I have were quite right so I made a couple using the mold and then re-shaped them and adjusted the features to try and get something more suitable.  There are a couple of them that I really like and I am planning to make my own molds from them so that I can easily reproduce them.

These are the basic cabochons, fresh from the oven yesterday.  I will probably have another play with these tomorrow while I have the house to myself.  It's Steven's day off today so it's likely that nothing will get done.

New Year, New Challenges

Last week I decided to sign up for the Bead Journal Project as a way of detailing my moods/feelings throughout the year.  Due to certain events/situations in my personal life over the last few years, the panic attacks that I have suffered with for years have got much worse to the point where I am often unable to leave the house for weeks at a time.  The bad situations are all behind us now but the panic attacks remain and I need to find a way to deal with them again.  This is my first step.

The idea behind the BJP is that you choose a shape or theme and then stick with it, making one piece each month.  I am using a simple goddess shape and bead embroidery for mine which I hope to eventually turn into some sort of calendar to hang on my studio wall.  It will hopefully be a reminder of how far I have come from this first piece.

I always find January such a depressing month.  It is dark and dreary and all the twinkly lights from Christmas have been put away.  I thought that this would mean my January goddess would also be dark and dreary but in the end she turned out to have a bit of sparkle too.

To start, I picked out a pale pink gemstone bead for her face and a mottled grey gemstone bead  for her belly.  I found a pretty little hematite heart that was gifted me with a bag full of beads from a friend a little while ago and decided to use that as it was small and dark just like my mood.  I edged the heart in dark red seed beads and added a line of baby spikes down one side to represent my prickliness.  Originally she was to be faceless but I decided that was maybe a little creepy and decided to give her a mask instead as I often feel that I am hiding behind one myself.  The mask is simply a piece of blank ultrasuede edged with seed beads and stitched over her face.  The swirling seed beads are a representation of my changing moods and the crystals, the points of brightness in my days.

Overall, although the description makes her sound depressing, I rather like her.  She has an optimism about her that I didn't expect and I am looking forward to seeing where the remaining 11 take me.

Time To Put On Your Big Girl Panties!

How often, when there is something you don't want to have to do, does someone tell you to 'put on your big girl panties and get on with it'?  At the start of this week I had a few conversations where it came up and suddenly I had an image in my mind of a beaded pair of panties.  Strange what gives us inspiration, isn't it?

I sat down to come up with a basic design and started beading.  I ended up with these two fun brooches:

They are bead embroidered with a picot edging to represent a frilly/lacy edge.  The leg/waist holes I beaded in a matte, slightly darker colour to make the front stand out more
When I posted them on FB in the beading groups I am a member of they got a great response so I offered to post the template online.  I also had people saying I should do bras, skimpy knickers, boxer shorts etc...  so I did.  They are not beaded yet but I have the templates all done and ready to go.  Here they are:

Hopefully you will be able to download them and print them out (I drew them on an A5 size sheet of paper originally) so you can make your own fun brooch for yourself or as a gift.  If you do, I'd love to see them!  You can post them on my Delicate Sparkles FB page.  

The possibilities are endless.  Have fun! :oD