Second Chance Drawing!

Hi Guys,
Well, sadly, I never heard from Bonnie Childers, to claim the prize she won  for the giveaway, so its time to do a second chance drawing!  Good luck to everyone!

And the new winner is:

KAREN NIEMI

Congratulations, Karen!!

Karen you have 48 hours to contact me at:

LadyAbeada@aol.com

and send me your mailing/contact information!

....And the WINNER IS??

Hi everyone! First I want to thank each and everyone of you for participating in this giveaway by following my blog and commenting on the post! As far as I am concerned each of you is a winner and I truly wish I had a book and a pair of scissors to give to each of you! OK... now to announcing the winner of the Kelly Wiese Book, A Beaded Romance and the Cabella braid scissors.

The winner is:

Bonnie Schilder !!

:)

 Congratulations Bonnie!! You have 48 hours to email your mailing address to me at:

LadyAbeada@aol.com

If after 48 hours I have not heard from you, I will pick another winner!

Again, Thank you to everyone for participating in this giveaway! I hope to do more in the future! Stay tuned!! 

A Few of My Favorite Things and a Special Giveaway~Twyla

Favorite Thing # 1:

As some of you who know me are aware, at times I like to dabble with a little mixed media in my  jewelry making. One of my favorite things to do is to combine bead work with filigree or metal stampings, so I thought I would share with you my #1 favorite  place on the internet to purchase filigree and stampings from. Whenever I am looking for a unique but affordable piece of filigree... this is my go to site!! Vintage Jewelry Supplies The site is owned by Susan Street and as I said, has one of the best selections of filigree and stampings to be found on the web.... AND the prices are incredibly affordable!! Not only do they carry filigree and stampings....you can also find beads, cabs, settings, findings and even chain. 

Susan has kindly agreed to give our maven readers a free gift with their first order. Immediately after you place your first order send an email to the attention of their shipping department (Susan@VintageJewelrySupplies.com) mention the Maven blog post and she will send you a free gift of a bead size guide along with your first order!!

 

Favorite # 2.... Drum roll please......

Cablella's Braid scissors!!

These little gems are the bomb! How many pairs of scissors have you ruined cutting fireline? I was on my third pair when these were made known to me by a good friend. They are about four inches long, very lightweight and are specifically made to cut fireline and the braided fishing lines! They are stainless steel and have tiny serrated blades and talk about affordable.... only $3.99 for these scissors at Cabella stores everywhere! It is so nice to cut the fireline and have it be a nice even smooth cut--no more mashing or fraying for me!  Find them online here: Cabella's Braid Scissors

 

 

Favorite thing # 3:

I am sure all of us would love to be able to afford a pair of the wonderful Craftoptic lenses, right? I know I would.... unfortunately, I am not at that place yet.... so for me the next best thing is my magnifying readers. I love them.... You can find them at Fred Meyers, Walgreens or Walmart for about $7-8 dollars, among other places  and they come in varying strengths. I like them because they give me the flexibility of being able to look over the top of them to see normally or to look through them and see things up close and personal. No more neck and back strain for me, thank you very much! :)

 

Favorite Thing #4:

Last but not least.....

I mentioned in my bio that Kelly Wiese is one of my favorite Bead work Designers so I thought it would be a fitting culmination to the "Few of my Favs blog post"  to do a Special Giveaway of her newest and latest book: A Beaded Romance, plus I am throwing in a pair of the Cabella Braid Scissors!! What do you have to do to have a chance at winning this prize? Simple.... Go to my personal blog: Lady Abeada, follow my  blog and leave a comment on my blog telling me why you would like to win the book and the scissors. If you are already a follower of Lady Abeada.... just leave a comment for me. The winner will be chosen by random draw and announced on my blog October 17th, 2013. Good Luck to All!!

Do you have some favorite things you would like to share with everyone??Please share them with us in the comment section  below! :) Til next time--Bead True to Yourself!

Tah Dah Duo Drop Earrings by Twyla~

Hi Everyone!
I am excited and happy to share my first free tutorial with all of you. With the holidays just around the corner I have to say, I am a huge fan of a project that will make a wonderful gift and can be completed in an afternoon or an evening. Those things guided me in my inspiration and creation of this tutorial.

If you wish to share this tutorial, please link people to this blog post rather than sharing my tutorial file or redistributing it in any form. Thank you for respecting my rights.

For a downloadable and printable copy please click "here"  I hope you like my tutorial and  enjoy creating this project.

If you wish to make the matching bracelet to these earrings,  you can find the Tah Dah Super Duo Bracelet  tutorial in my Etsy store, Lady Abeada.

Falling Forward....

The end of Summer is only days away and then it will be FALL.... one of my most favorite seasons! The harvest season is winding down and the fresh, mouth-watering apples of "Apple Cider " become prevalent at the fresh produce stands, along with the fall and winter squashes. The days are still nice and on the warm side, and one can go outside to do things without being HOT! Night temps are dropping and the breezes are brisk, but the best part of Fall for me is all of the COLORS!

What a rainbow of colors one sees as the leaves turn and begin to fall from the trees. The vivid greens, yellows, oranges, reds and browns are stunning! On that note I thought it would be fun to share a few fall inspired color pallets with you courtesy of  www.Design-Seeds.com. Right click on the image and select the  "Save Image As" option .  Enjoy!!

The Value of Listening to One's Beads when they Speak!!

 

A small snippet of the completed piece

Until recently, I never really understood what other people meant when they would talk about their beads speaking to them. It was always a mystery to me! Did these people have some kind of special ability to communicate with their beads that I did not? Hmmm.....I could imagine myself laying my beads out on my beading mat and commanding them to speak to me.... NOT! So what did that phrase really mean?

  I only discovered what I think is the true meaning of that phrase when I was trying to put a lacy edging onto a basic right angle weave piece that I have. Boy, did I ever discover it in a painstaking manner!
   
  My goal was to end up with a semi-scalloped, somewhat frilly piece of edging around the entire piece. I began by putting a row of 15's around the edge of the work and then worked a row of peyote off of the first row, again using the 15's.  

  The next row consisted of adding a row of peyote with Delica's. By the time I had completed the delica row around two of the scallops, I knew I wasn't liking how it looked.  But did I stop there? Oh heck, NO! I kept right on going until I had the entire row completed and went even further by beginning to add the last row of peyote with size 11/0 seed beads.

  By that time, I had several hours of work into the project, but what had I been thinking?? Several rows ago the beads spoke out to me... no begged, me to listen to them telling me that this didn't look good and it wasn't going to work design wise. Why I kept going forth and refusing to listen, I truly have no idea. 

  When I arrived at the point of it being glaringly obvious, I was rather perturbed at myself, because I knew I had at least an hour or more of ripping out bead work ahead of me. As much as I wasn't looking forward to that, it proved to be rather cathartic for me as it gave me plenty of time to reflect upon the lesson I just learned and the value of listening to one's beads when they speak. Hopefully, I will  never close my ears to the sing song of my beads ever again.

  Do your beads speak to you and do you listen? I would love to hear about your experiences along these lines.

Unitl next time--
Bead True to Yourself!

It's Official! I am a BEAD MAVEN!!

I am so excited to finally be able to say, " I am a Bead Maven this year!"  I couldn't be more honored and thrilled to be working with such a great group of people from the beading world; Patrick Duggan, Aurelio Castano, Neva Brown, Valorie Clifton and one more special person to be announced tomorrow, and of course Mikki Ferrugiaro!! Wow! Each and everyone a very talented, creative designer in their own right. I hope to learn a great deal from each of them and hope I can teach a few tricks of my own.  I am excited to take this journey and hope you will come along for the ride.

http://www.beadmavens.blogspot.com/2013/08/introducing-twyla-harbick.html

Designing in Pieces!

Have you ever designed a piece of beadwork in stages over time? That's what I did with my latest tutorial;

"Tila Magic"

Of course, from the beginning, it was never my intention to do this.  When I got the idea for this project, all I really knew is that I wanted to design a choker/necklace using tila beads. Coming up with the netted base of the necklace was indeed the easy part of this design. 

  Once I had that completed, I was completely stumped as to what to do next. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to incorporate the tila beads or how to proceed  with building the necklace, so it lay on my bead mat staring blankly at me for literally something like four months.     Ridiculous!! I know, right? But what else can you do when you hit a barrier like that other than rip it out and perhaps begin again.  Well, I chose to let it lie, as ripping out netting is not my idea of having fun anytime soon... lol.  Every time I sat down to bead something else I saw it looking up at me and begging for an answer to the question, "When will you figure me out?"

  Like any problem, that you put on the back burner to be solved later, I knew that while the answer escaped me at the moment, eventually, a solution would present itself to me, and indeed, it did.
  I knew in my mind that whatever I came up with, I wanted it to be fairly simple and basic. Sometimes, simple is best.  The component I designed is just that... simple and basic and easy to put together. The necklace contains five components all total, so quick to bead as well.

 After beading the tila components and attaching them to the base, I felt pretty pleased with how it was all shaping up. But something was still missing for me. It seemed a little on the plain side for my taste and I knew I would have to do some kind of embellishing to truly  be happy with it.

  Overall, I was hoping the piece would have a vintage styling to it, so I came up with the peyote edging and the crystal drops that hang off of the base.  I used a teal colored 15 for the peyote edging and crystals that were a crystal/gold/teal combination, in order to bring out the teal color of the tila beads.

  What's the moral of this story? The next time you have a project that you get stumped on, perhaps you should do what I did and just put in on the back burner for however long and let it simmer awhile until that magic resolution pops up!!

Beads + Polymer Clay = Happy!

I just love it when I can combine my love of bead weaving and polymer clay.  Quite some time ago, I purchased a few 41mm rubberized discs from FMG in a couple of different colors and the other day I was doing some organizing of supplies and happened upon them. I was immediately drawn to the purple ones and as I sat there looking at them, it struck me that they would make a great platform for something made of clay, and I set to work to see what I could come up with.  The first thing I did was bezel the disc with beads! No easy feat let me tell you as the edge of these discs are not very wide at all--maybe a 1/4 inch at most. Double sided tape to the rescue!! Secondly I needed to come up with the "clay" counterpart to this creation. I love dragonflys, so I decided I would give it a whirl and see what I could do. Below are pictures of what I have come up with so far. I think I am on my way to a good start for a great focal for a new mixed media beaded creation! What do you think?

Downward View

Side View

What color are you?

If you could be a color, what color would you be? It seems like an innocuous and straight forward question, doesn't it? For some, perhaps it is-- but not so for me! How could I ever pick only one color? Colors hold a total fascination for me. I am drawn to them like a moth is to a flame. I have several that I totally adore and then when you add in the idea of tones and shades; oh my!! Every time I would get close to making a decision, yet another color would pop into my head and I would think, no, I really like that one more. An impossible task! After a couple of hours of painful deliberation that left me feeling like I wanted to stick my head in an oven and bake it for awhile, I finally narrowed the field down to two favs; Purple and Blue. Then it hit me! PERIWINKLE!! Why choose periwinkle? Well, because everyone knows that periwinkle is merely a combination of both purple and blue, and has many shades of loveliness all its own. Below is an Etsy treasury I put together of Periwinkle Pretties! Enjoy!!

Take a few moments to inhale/exhale and notice the subtle shades and tones of each.  Notice how some are more blue and some are more purple, and some maybe you aren't really sure what color dominates. This is the mysterious aura of Periwinkle. Until next time; Bead True to Yourself!