More Geometric Beadwork

Hi everyone!  I hope you're having a great day!  I wanted to share with you my continuing obsession with Contemporary Geometric Beadwork.  Developed by Kate McKinnon and some other fabulous beaders, the method has me completely engrossed!  When I think of beading now I think of the geometric piece I'm working on or the next piece I'm going to start.  I started at the beginning and I'm working my way through the process and inventing as I go along.  And, that's the idea of Kate's book.  To take the basic instructions and fly off in your own direction.  When I last blogged about this subject (which you can see here) I mentioned that you would be seeing horns and wings next.  Well, here they are in my newest bracelet.

 

 

 

Honestly, the choice of prop was unintentional.  I didn't realize how it mimicked the bracelet until I was editing the picture!   Anyway,  I used my favorite colors, turquoise, lime green and lavender, along with black and white.  The beads are Delicas and drops, along with some 15s to pull in the edges.  I started in the middle of the bracelet with Kate's technique of MRAW which stands for Modified Right Angle Weave, and took off from there.  In the beginning I was only going to do the horns in the middle and then put a plain peyote band on either side.  But, the pull of the wings caught me and wings there are!!!  The Horns are the dimensional peyote in the middle bands and the Wings are the lovely things on the edges. For the clasp I stitched two clear snaps to the ends and added triangles to hide the edges which I could see but probably no one else could!   I could do this kind of work all day!  Here are a few details.

 

 

 

A wing.

 

 

The Horns tipped with a drop bead.

 

The clasp hidden by added triangles.

 

 

I have another finished piece which grew out of a class I took with Jo Ray at Bead Soup.  Jo has started working with the bellyband, the name used for the MRAW starting band, and has done some wonderful bezels based on it.  I just finished my variation and I'll be taking some photos today, so stay tuned.  I've also just started a Rick-Rack bracelet which is another version in Kate's arsenal of great ideas! 

 

Thank you so much for joining me today.  I hope you have a wonderful week and create something you love!

 

 

 





Bling Rings!

Hi everyone!  It's good to have you join me today.  I have some bead talk for a change!  Last month my bead group got together for a Friday session of beading a free pattern.   It's an informal group and we work on patterns that the artists put out for free use.  This one was something I like doing, making beaded rings.  Not finger rings but wheel type rings to be used as components.  Sabine Lippert offered this on her website.  It was a great pattern, called Bling Ring.  Here is what I ended up doing with the pattern.

 

 



I don't often make multiples of a pattern but sometimes a component really catches my interest and I keep thinking of ideas for creating more and more of them!  That's what happened with the Bling Ring pattern.  I started with black seed beads, lime green AB drops, jet AB2x crystals and black AB Delicas.  The first ring I made is to the left of the center ring.  I liked it so much that I decided I was going to do 6 more and string them on a black ball chain.  Yeah, well, when I decide I like something I really go at it!  I decided to use the same black seed beads, Delicas and crystals for all of them.  I used lime green and turquoise seed beads for the start of the other rings, along with more of the black.  I made 4 in the original size, starting with 36 beads.  I started three rings with 48 so that they would be  bigger rings.  I used black beads and black drops for the larger rings and used them as spacers between the colored rings.   Here are some details.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

I like the necklace so much that I'm thinking of making one in all brights for summer!  It's light and comfortable to wear and I feel I can wear it with almost anything.  Great for me since I don't wear really dressy jewelry enough to justify spending the time it takes to make.

 

 

Thank you so much for visiting today.  I'll be back on Monday with my entry into Tanya's Shibori Ribbon Blog Hop.  See you then!  Have a great weekend.