Bead table Wednesday

I 've had a long absence from bead table Wednesday, but I love to look every week.  I'm still working my way through the Bead Soup Blog Party.  I am almost two thirds of the way through...so many interesting components and solutions to be seen.  I know it will take me a while longer as I'm doing about 10 a day - pairs, that is!

Here's what's going on my table,  a whole lot of photography!  I've given up on the natural light setup except in desperate circumstances and have decided to do a  little permanent photography 'cave' with these tiles.  I can use light colored backdrops in the 'cave' when I get sick of the dark, but for now, it's working and it's quick and easy...I can also use a custom light reading on the camera that reads the contrast fairly well and is, of course, not as fickle as sunlight (or lack thereof).

There  in my cave are the recently finished sets and singles to be listed on Etsy, Zibbet etc.  This has been a fairly productive week and I am pleased to get stuff moving along.  I love to look at the colours all together and notice that this week, red and pink with blue featured prominently.  Some stuff has been sitting around while I thought about it, some for quite a while.

Some flat connectors which have been popular....

More pod sets, I'm still loving the exploration of surface...
Will soon vary the forms a little...

Some sculptural 3 dimensional pods - not every one's cup of tea, but fun to look at!

And rough, but also moving along, is my prototype toggle, very rough and it hasn't been colored yet, but I'm going to finish and use it myself to see how it functions - the first shot is together, obviously ,and the second shows the independent bits.

Have some more ideas along this line - I guess I'll see what happens!
Off the the bead table  Wednesday group on Flickr to see what's happening.

What I got for my bead soup!

Just thought I'd post about what I got for my Bead Soup from my partner in California, Cherrie Fick.

I'm pretty sure this will be a challenge for me simply because I usually make supplies, and struggle greatly with putting anything together.  This is why I join the Bead Soup Party, really.  It forces me to confront my fear of decision-making in the making of jewelry!  And because I'm working with things I may not have ever have thought to choose for myself, it broadens my horizons considerably.

Cherrie sent me a lovely selection of stones, bones, ceramic and glass and a lovely clasp by my dear missficklemedia.  I already have a couple of ideas which will present these in a different way!  I will publish another altered photo as a sneek peak when I get a little closer to finishing the piece.

 Please note the extraordinary and subtle range of yellows, ochres, oranges, reds and browns that she has sent for me to try.  Lovely!   Included are ceramic ( the flower focal), glass, bone, carnelian, agate and copper.  Can't wait to get at it as I know it will take me quite a bit of time to do the components justice...


Many thanks, Cherrie!  Hope you can work with what I sent!

The really big hollow bead...

 What's on the table this week?

Another week and more tweeking to be done.  It's endless, but fun.  I've been struggling with the writing of a tutorial and I'm getting near the end - fortunately, I have a couple of wonderful people who have offered to try it out and see if my instructions are as clear as I think they are - but I suspect that after they try it there will be some revisions to be done.  It isn't nearly as easy as you might think to tell someone how to make something....

It has been a tremendous help to read other people`s tutorials to see how they lay out the material and illustrate it.  Thanks particularly to Shannon of missficklemedia and Lynda from scDiva,  both of whom write great tutorials.  Check out their stores on Etsy if you are interested in some new techniques!

The first basic tutorial is one I've had in my mind for a while, namely, how to make hollow forms without armatures or core material.  For myself, I've found that working this way has given me tremendous freedom to explore form in a way that is not possible when you commit yourself to a mold or a core to build over.  Beads can evolve and change while you work on them.  Later, I plan to do another tutorial to explain how to decorate the hollow form in various ways while it is being made, so that the decoration can change with the piece, rather than being imposed on it after curing. 

I 'm so hoping that people will be interested in this tutorial - I have plans to sell it in a couple of places, but more on that later.  While tweeking the content, I made this bead to see if I could push the limits a little!  Apparently I can make beads this large..( and larger if necessary, but is it necessary?).This could easily have changed  into a large hollow lentil at the last minute (a nice feature of this technique) but I wanted to finish a really large round bead.  When I went to pick up my husband at the arirport today, I saw 2 or 3 necklaces walking around (on women, naturally) with round beads this large or larger.   Maybe someone would use it...heck, maybe I`ll use it!

Here are a few more shots of the big bead, I've even included a shot with the ubiquitous penny (so annoying, I know...) so you can see the scale more readily.  It measures 1 and 1/2 inches in diameter.  Bigger is possible if you remember that as you increase the surface area,  the amount of clay needed  increases exponentially.

 

So what have you been up to?  And more importantly, would you put this big sucker round your neck?

True to my word ..

 I just listed 10 things on Etsy today - new pods previewed in my last post, and some of the new connector bead pendanty things. Wow, I am happy as the new listing process went live yesterday for everyone (finally) and it IS GOOD.  Can finally save a draft without having to email it to myself.  All on one page (we have waited a while for that).  Can tweet or facebook directly...no more changing to short urls separately!  I am convinced this will make a huge difference for me, now that I also have a better handle on the photography side of things.

 I'm including pictures of the pods because they have been selling quickly - so this time I posted them all at once instead of in dribs and drabs.  There are 3 more sets going up on Monday!

Have a great weekend!

What's on my table...

Can't believe two weeks have rocketed by.  I do have a number of posts up my sleeve, but today is Wednesday.   So, without, I promise, further carping about the mess on my table, I will show what is lying on it.  Mostly, it has been a finishing up kind of week.  I've had some interesting custom orders which took some time to percolate down from my brain to my hands, and there are some extras which will be going into the shop in the next day.  Mostly pods....all different.  The ones on the outside of the ring are waiting to be finished.

Along with the pods came scrap.  What do you do with your scrap?  I can never resist the temptation to try something with it, as fiddling and poking and altering scrap has in the past generated some of my more interesting work. ( Alarming - what does this bode for my more deliberate work, one wonders?)
I'm thinking connectors and pendants and this is what came out.   Fun, part painting and part collage...
They will arrive in my Etsy shop in the next day or so.

Be sure to head over to Flickr to see what other people in the group are working on!