The Beads! The Beads!

On Friday, I decided that I just needed a break from it all. I started Week 1 of The Artist's Way, and this time around, I'm finding that doing my Morning Pages at night is more therapeutic for me. It lets me get out of my head everything that keeps me awake at night, and I get some more restful sleep.

That said, I decided to dedicate some serious time for beading this weekend.

I started out making one of my favorite right-angle weave jewelry bases, thinking that I'd make a killer cuff bracelet with some of the gumdrop beads. But wouldn't you know - I didn't have enough beads to create an entire cuff. So what did I do? I turned it into a necklace, of course!

This is pre-fringe and pre-embellishment, which seems to be taking for-ev-er. But overall, I'm extremely happy with this piece, and have started a second version in amber/green/silver which will be what I photograph (with other variations) as a tutorial for my Etsy shop.

Then I started picking out colors for a second collar that I've been tossing around in my head for a little while. My wonderful friend, Nancy Vogel, who has had some crazy adventures cycling around the world with her husband and twin boys, went bead shopping in New York City a few weeks ago, and she sent me a small Priority Mail box packed full of beads, nailheads, and vintage West German glass cameos!

I loved these amazing carved wooden totems that were included in the box, and I've been dreaming about making some kind of tribal-inspired collar with them. The final bit of inspiration arrived when I received another gorgeous sample pack of Czech glass beads from Perry Bookstein down at York Beads. So, I chose my palette of beads and colors for the next collar project.

But before I get started on THAT beaded necklace project, I got a little sidetracked. I wasn't having such a good day, digestive-wise, and I don't know if it was the heat, the stress of the last couple of weeks, or a combination of everything, but I wound up spending most of the day in bed, trying to keep my food down. To distract myself, I started stitching up a twisted herringbone rope using some more of those amazing Czech striped seed beads from York...

So, the ideas are there! They're flowing! Thankfully, many of them are flowing into my notebooks for next week after Bead Fest Philadelphia... That's a whole other adventure that I need to prepare for this week.

I'm leaving in exactly 48 hours for Philadelphia, and beading classes with Jill Wiseman, Nikia Angel, and Gail Crossman Moore. Am I excited? You betcha.