Walking Through Fire

Beauty is never apparent when you first meet someone. I am using beauty ubiquitously and not gender specific here. When I meet someone I never trust what my eyes are telling my brain, I want to wait, I want to listen to what my heart says and disregard the visual information that I am met with. I find that the better I know someone, the better I can see them. The true beauty, the inner beauty translates to that person's physical appearance, and it becomes what I see. It has always been this way for me. When I first noticed it happening, it was startling, I could not understand how the person I met just morphed into something completely different in front of my face. Over time, I have accepted that this is going to happen, and I enjoy seeing that beauty reveal itself. Sometimes happens slowly, other times it is quite fast, but it is one factor that I have been able to set my internal barometer by. The more I see this beauty develop in someone, the more comfortable I am with them, because I know I am on to something good.

I am surrounded by amazing people. Beautiful people. People that I met, and at the time, had no idea they would influence my life and my thinking the way they do now. I keep meeting these beautifully amazing people. I am the type of person that charges face first into situations assuming everything is what it appears to be at first evaluation. Most of the time they are. Luna was not. (I am again using an alias for another friend). When I met Luna, she was going by Louis at the time. Louis appeared to me to be an average guy, just starting his job with Von and myself. The three of us were great friends right off the bat, and I could not be happier to have them both by my side during this new venture. As the friendship with Louis grew deeper, he revealed that he was transitioning. I only knew a few cursory things about his situation at the time, and I just happened to ask the right question, and that was when Luna told me who she really was. She was not ready to reveal to everyone around her at the time that this was going on, so for a very long time, I was entrusted with this information. I guarded it closely until she was ready to come out.

I have no idea what to live as someone different than who you present as. I would not even presume to venture a guess, because unless you are going through it, what is there to compare to? She gambled on every relationship she ever made, using her happiness as currency. and it is not even over yet. She has told her world what she wants to do, who she wants to be, and now she has to actually go through this long  process of change. She could have lost any one of these relationships, but for her, it was more important to be herself. I can get behind that. It might be scary to think that someone is going to hate you for trying to be yourself, but who needs that person in your life anyways? I know we are living in an era that is more accepting than any that has come before, and I am extremely grateful for that, but she is still made of far stronger stuff than I am. That is the only way I can  express how I see the strength in fluidity.

When I set out to design her piece I wanted to capture that fluidity, the strength, and the inner fire. This piece was probably the most deliberate item I have worked on since I started beading.I am not a deliberate person when it comes to design. I prefer to design on the fly and never really commit until I know it is right. When it came to color, I had a big palette to chose from. Her colors were orange, purple, brown and some greens. I had a lot of leeway there, there were many combinations that would have been just fine. I entertained the idea of brown orange and green, because it just smacks of nature, and there would be plenty of metaphor to be found there. Trees, day/night cycle, season, moths butterflies, moon phases. She also has that whole hippy vibe about her. To easy. I decided I did not want to be that concrete with the theme, I wanted more abstract. I went with a grapey matte purple for the main color with bronze metals, and a fiery orange contrast. I also had some rivolis that I was in love with mostly purple but flashed this brilliant orange in the right lights.

 When I first got my materials together, I had selected a large round Swarovski sun pendant as the main focal, and this is where I found myself deviating from my norms again with this piece. I let the recipient have a say in a major piece of the work. I showed her the focal and she seemed pretty noncommittal about it as a whole. I started pulling out other things and the second I saw this cab, I knew it was the one. I handed it her, and her eyes just lit up. Awesome. I have a dark purple  canvas and a lighter purple focal. What am I supposed to do with that? As she observes the sea sediment, she flips it over and she hands it to me and says "This side." I look and there is this little flaw, this small imperfection in the middle of the stone. She loves it, and now I have to rethink my design once again.

At this point I am at a bit of a loss. I have some bicones in the matching purple for the center stone, so pulling in that lighter color was going to be simple but it was that teardrop center, I could not think of a way to incorporate it the way I had begun seeing this piece. I had always wanted something asymmetrical, and I had a plan for that asymmetry when the focal was round. I was not dealing well with having that plan changed on me. I opted to ignore the focal, and instead work on the rope. I knew that this piece needed to be versatile, so I wanted a rope that was elegant, yet substantial enough to stand on its on should she want to wear it without the focal. I had seen a necklace that I loved that employed the use of herringbone in stripes of varying thicknesses, and I loved the look of it, but herringbone was too dense. I settled for chenille stitch instead, the open lacier look lended some delicacy to what would be a pretty thick rope. I did the bobbles in herringbone with 2 different sized seed bead, and it gave the rope some weigh. the transitions from chenille to herringbone were incredibly easy, and just as easy going back. It worked seamlessly.

When it came to the clasp, I kept it simple, and just worked it in the matte purple, but the rope ends, I did not want to just round them off. I opted instead for some herringbone bead caps, and closed the gaps with orange bicones. The rope at least was done.

Now I had to move on to the focal, and I was dreading it. I had this picture of what I wanted it to look like, and I could not get the asymmetry to line up the way I wanted with this teardrop shaped focal, at least in my mind. Oh well, I still had to do the bezel. This was the first time I had tried to enclose a teardrop shaped cab. It was one of the most frustrating things I had attempted up to this point. I must have made 6 attempts at it before I finally got it right. The bezel turned out amazingly well for the amount of struggle that went into it, if not a little on the tight side. It gave be a really sturdy canvas to work on. So now I was left facing the dilemma that I had been avoiding from the beginning. How was I going to work out this focal piece? I talked with Von, she seemed to think I should keep it simple, as Luna is not much of an extrovert. Simple was never really an option though. I had followed Luna's Pinterest feed, and I had a pretty solid understanding of what kinds of style she was into, so I started sketching. I took the cab I had bezeled and put it on paper, traced around it and came up with a few different designs, each build for the cab itself. Nothing was striking me as the right design, so I came back to that asymmetric idea again.

After the sketching, I was drawn to the one that was closest to my original idea. I showed Husbeast, and he chose that same sketch as well. He made a comment about the duality it exhibited. That was it, all I needed to hear. The sketch does not reflect the finished piece as well as it did in my head, but that was ok. I started working on the fringe side of the cab, using a mix of bronze seed beads, capped with the milky purple bicones, the orange bicones, and dark purple pearls. At the bottom of the cab, the fringe comes together in this chunky longer cluster that comes up to the edge of the bezel. This section is capped off by larger fire colored bicones layered so there is this intense pop of orange there.

The rivs, I had beaded already, and from the beginning, even with the other cab, they were always intended to cross the main point, and slide down one side of the cab. I kept that element, and began to work m y way up on side of the cab maintaining the spacing so the 4th riv landed at the apex of the cab. This is where I had a complete meltdown. The asymmetry I was striving so hard to achieve was gone. The focal was completely symmetrical. The sides did not match, but there was no discernable imbalance. I was completely irate, and the necklace went to the timeout corner while I sulked over it for a week. While we spent time apart, I started thinking about how to attach the focal to the rope. The intention had always been to make the necklace versatile. I wanted the rope to be able to be worn independently, I wanted the focal to be able to be worn on different ropes, or even with ribbon or really whatever Luna wanted to do with it. I realized that I had kinda shot myself in the foot as far as simple bails go when I made those bobbles. A peyote loop would be a mess at that size and would totally destroy the look I was going for. I searched around and found a bail that would work. Kassie Inman has this incredible bail design for sale in her shop, The Beading Butterfly. Awesome instructions in pdf format, and very easy to read and follow. This was just the bail I needed. it was flexible enough to slip over the bobbles and would not distort at all. I whipped one up and as I did I started to realize that the asymmetry was not gone, this bail just needed a rivoli off one side of the bail! BAM! It was everything I had hoped it would be,

So I finished this piece in August. As you can see by the date, it has taken me a long time to write this post (Sorry Luna, I know you have been waiting). Over the past year I have watched Luna start to become herself. Each step she takes might seem small, but with every step, I see her shake off those preconceptions that people have of her, I see her challenge her own misgivings and come out a winner. I just wanted to give her something that was completely hers, something that was made for her with no one else in mind. I want to thank you for the beauty you have brought into my life.

Happy beading!
 :D

Francesca: The Red Queen

It has been almost a year since I first posted about this necklace. I posted when I finished, and promised pictures. Well, today I deliver. Here, dear reader, are the pictures I promised nearly a year ago.

There is something disheartening about taking pictures of your work and having to preface it with excuses. For the longest time I was taking pictures with a crappy cell camera, and it was never capable of capturing what I saw in front of my face. When I got my new phone, it came with a 20 megapixel camera, and is capable of taking some pretty nice photos. Still not as a good professional digital camera, but at least nice enough where I do not feel that my work is being misrepresented. This shot here really nails what this piece looks like in person.

I am by no means a professional photographer. I think that much should be pretty clear by the pictures on this blog; I did every one of them. This necklace is important to me. It represents a lot of milestones in my beading journey so far, and getting it here on the page has taken forever because I wanted- no, NEEDED to get it right.

The original working name was Apples. Symbolic, striking, biblical, sweet with a little bite, tempting. As I grew closer to finishing it, the name just did not describe what I was originally going for. It took on this mystery, shifting colors, touched with black at the tips, sharp and curved all at the same time. every time I held a piece of it up for inspection, I saw my friend Fran wearing it. Fran is no longer with us, she passed away a few years ago from a rare medical condition. I can still hear her laugh, and that is saying a lot, because the longer I am away from someone, the more I forget about them. I will never forget Fran, or her laugh, her smile or how she was more alive than anyone I have ever, or will ever meet. I miss her deeply. This necklace was always for her, I just did not know it right away. If she were here, she would have had this necklace 2 days after it was finished. It was just her style, and she is the only person I could think of that could wear this necklace and have it look like it belongs on her.

 The pic to the left is the first pic taken of this necklace that I liked. A fried took it on his back deck and immediately posted it to his facebook. After seeing the comments on that post, I embraced the idea that the working name had to change, and it became Francesca: The Red Queen.

When I originally started gathering the materials for this necklace, the intention was always to sell it. Every step I took I was trying to make it as saleable as possible. From the materials, to the technique, I did everything I possibly could have by the book. I have a larger that average neck, so when I was sizing the neck, I purposely made it smaller than I could wear. I used only the best quality materials I could find. I made sure, absolutely sure that every thread end would never work its way out and hang out of the piece. You see, I fall in love with every piece I make and these colors are amongst my favorite, and I knew from the word "go" I was in danger of this necklace going into my jewelry stash if I was not careful. Despite all my best efforts, this piece is, was and will always be mine.

The night I finished it, I thought it would not fit me. I tried it on anyways, and lo and behold, it fit me as if I had measured it that way. I had not taken into account the curvy strap pieces and how they would work with the fit, I merely measured the inside circumference  at the tops of the curves . That was at 14 inches. The center of the strap was exactly my size. At this point I think of it as a happy coincidence, but at the time I was crushed, because on an average sized neck, it was just too loose. I still at this point wanted to sell it. The plan was to get photos, post the reveal here on the blog, then put the necklace up for sale. While I was waiting, I handled the necklace a lot. one day I smacked it on a table as I set it down and it scratched the large center stone. That was it, that was the nail in the coffin. I was not going to sell this piece.

I have bemoaned my poor photography skills and equipment enough here for anyone who reads this blog to want to grab me by the shoulders and shake me while screaming "I get it! You are NOT a photographer! You have no equipment!" . I know, I know, I am sorry, I feel like this is something I need to improve. With Francesca, no cloudy, bad lighting photography was going to do. I have a friend of a friend, Dee's friend actually, let's call her Golly, who is an amazing photographer, especially when you give her an interesting object. If I were to ever enter a competition that was photo based, I would want Golly taking my pictures for me. She has this eye for everyday objects that sees past the mundane, and right to the heart of her subject, and puts it right in front of your face. It is like she is saying "Here! This is what I see!". I felt like Golly was the only one that could capture this piece perfectly, and I still do. The thing is, we are all a bunch of busy ladies, and coordinating all of our schedules has been problematic to say the least. When you try and work in a 4th person to model the necklace, well, it just did not happen. I was waiting for perfection after all.

So this past weekend, My friend from work (We will call her Von) and her daughter (henceforth referred to as Kanga) came over for a visit. I spent a day with them last week at their home and taught them the basics of wire wrapping, and Kanga really seemed to like it. This weekend when they visited I taught Von how to make peyote bezels, but of course, it was show and tell time first. When I pulled out the necklace, I looked at Kanga, and thought "Man, she would make a great necklace model.". Bam! out on the porch we went, and I took some pictures. And I love them. I really, really do. It is funny how sometimes when you strive for perfection you can almost miss opportunities. I am thankful that Kanga and Von allowed for these pictures to be taken. They may not be as good as what Golly can do, but I am very happy to be able to show the necklace off finally. At least I had the perfect model.


For every long winded story, there has to be lessons learned from it, or it is just a narcissistic person blowing hot air. This is my take away from this necklace, and this post:

• Even the best laid plans get subverted. I had my heart set on selling this piece. I am glad I did not, because in retrospect, I was meant to keep it. If not for the amount of things that blocked me from actually putting it up for sale, I risked losing something that ended up being extremely important to me. I would have been heartsick had I successfully sold this necklace, because it feels like I need to keep it, if not for all the things it taught me, but for who it reminds me of every time I pick it up, wear it, or even think about it. I have it, and I will keep it safe for her.
• Perfection is what you make of it. Sometimes waiting for perfect becomes a waste of time. If waiting for perfection reaches that stage, how is it perfect anymore? There is no way I am going to become a near professional photographer overnight, and the stars very rarely align. I have to learn to take advantage of great and not to pass great over in hopes of achieving the perfect circumstances. Even I do not have the energy for that, and I am a perfectionist when it comes to beading. 

This post has been long, and it has taken a lot out of me to write it. Thank you for reading, if you have made it this far. One last picture for you:

Happy beading!

Silver Linings

I am a terrible blogger, but I brought you something cool. Friends??

:D

Hokay, So.

Have you ever hit a point in your life where you think you have met every friend that is going to be in your life in any capacity from this point forwards? I do, like once a year. I will admit, I may be pessimistic about certain things. Anywho, I got a job, a real big girl pants job. The kind of job I never thought I would have. Along with fancy new job, I met not one, but two fancy new friends.  One of them had a habit of wearing a sparkly barrette to work every day, so I made a habit of sitting behind her so I could look at the sparkles and think about beads. On the 3rd day of training, I sat down behind my new friend and was dismayed to find her bereft of sparkly barrette. It spurred some interesting conversation and we quickly realized that she and I are a pair of 12 year old boys at heart.

 She is loud, sweet, strong and caring. I love her energy. While I was in the bead store a few days later it became clear that I was going to have to make her something. I had no idea what her colors were, so I just started grabbing things. I ended up with a strand of weird crackle quartz coin type things for focals, some sky blue rivolis and bicones in 2 different sizes, some turquoise colored 6mm rounds (super shiney) and these amazing gold buttons that look like they are made of fine gold dust, but also had
this really hard to capture greenish
 cast to them.

The bicones also have this tan-green hue from certain angles, and I thought it brought the whole thing together really nicely. The seed beads I got were all matte, except for the silver. The aqua and grey both had this soft AB haze, and there are bronzes and yellows that pick up those subtle shifts in colors.

The realization that the focals I bought were all wrong dawned on me later when I sat down to play with what I had assembled and kept picking up pieces of moonstone I was using for another project and wishing I had just one more.  I kept trying to mentally reconfigure the other project so I could just use one of the stones, but this was proving difficult since I had (and still have) no idea what the other project wants to be. That is when Dee, being the amazing friend she always is, pulls out the matching moonstone that she had bought. I now owe Dee another moonstone, but I was now happy with my materials.

When I started working on the cab I actually glued down the cab. Then I started working out that my intentions were to actually do a bead embroidery piece. I know I love the look of

 bead embroidery, but I had never done it before, aside from a little attempt with a scrap of fabric and some throwaway beads I did not care about, and even that experiment did not get that far.

The whole point of this one is the sparkle. I wanted to pack as much as I could into this one piece without overdoing it. I started with a netted bezel, so I could seat some of the smaller bicones

 into the netting gaps. That worked brilliantly. Next I really wanted to incorporate the gold buttons. The layer surrounding the cabochon, surprisingly, took the longest out of any part of this piece. I don't know if it was the inexperience, or the waffling on placements or a combo of both, but it seemed like I spent days finishing off that star. That is when I started making the dumb mistakes. I cut out the star, and did a finishing edge thinking that was all I wanted to do to it.

 Nope. Not long enough for my barrette, and to be perfectly honest, there was not near enough shine yet, and I hadn't gotten to use a single rivoli at all. Not acceptable. I decided the star looked more like a sun anyways and it needed clouds. If I am going to do bead embroidery, I am going to do some bead embroidery, dang it. Getting the design drawn out was a lot of trial and error since I wanted both sides mirrored. I ended up drawing out the clouds on paper,

downloading a lightbox app on my tablet, and used that to trace the design onto the bead backing. It was a bit sketchy at first but I think it worked out ok.

Working through the first side was interesting. Lots of trial and error. I think I tried to pack too many beads into that side, there was a lot of coercion that went on to get things to lay flat when I was getting to the end. The second side went smoother.
Over all, I am happy with how it turned out. I can tell by looking at the piece which was the first side, and there are a few spots where I just could not get the bead backing covered, so there are small white spots left over. You can totally see them in the picture below around the edges.,  Attaching the barretts was a bit of a brain teaser, but the dual barrettes worked out fine.

I gave her the barrette last week, it was well received. We did have a bit of a hard time working out how to get it into her hair because the barrette bars were a little on the flimsy side, and her hair is gloriously thick. We did get it worked out though. I could not get a good picture of it in her hair, the light is really weird in the room we were in, but the colors looked amazing against her dark hair.

I named this piece "Silver Linings" because those silver linings make everything worth the wait. Lonely? borard? Sure, that sucks, but here are two new special people.  Think things aren't working out and get frustrated with what you are working on? Oh look, it spurs a new design idea that makes the whole thing better. Silver Linings are always there, you just have to find them.

Happy beading!