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!

A Lesson in Synchroniicity...

In 2010, I lost my job due to downsizing and budget cuts. For the most part, ever since, I have struggled and had to watch every penny, and where it goes. It's become one of those full time, mandatory things that need to be done,  with little room for error. 

Life for me,  seems to be a series of ups and downs and in between, and I feel like I am in one of those in between places, yet, hopeful, that I am finally back on my way upwards. 

2010 was also the year that I discovered what a passion I have for beads and bead weaving. This discovery has put me on a path that has led me to this place, thus far. 

A few weeks back, I joined a Face Book group called "The Artist's Way." The main focus of the group is to read a book called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron; 1 chapter per week for a 12 week period.  In chapter three, there are a few  paragraphs allotted to Synchronicity and one of them reads; 

" In outsized lifes, such moments stand out in bas-relief, large as Mount Rushmore: Lewis and Clark headed west. Isak Dinesen took off for Africa. We all have our Africas, those dark and romantic notions that call to our deepest selves. When we answer that call, when we commit to it, we set in motion the principle that C. G. Jung dubbed synchronicity, loosely defined as a fortuitous inter meshing of events. Back in the sixties we called in Serendipity. Whatever you choose to call it, once you begin your creative recovery you may be startled to find it cropping up everywhere."

This past Saturday my darling daughter, who's about to have her 33rd birthday was here for a visit. She had some errands that needed running and we planned on taking my car and spending the entire day together. Problem was, my car needed gas and my girls (cats) needed a bag of dry food that costs $19.99 a whack! :) Gas in the car or food for the girls? Not a good choice to make and I didn't know how I was going to work that out, as I only had a 20 dollar bill. Fortunately, for me, I didn't have to.  "Synchronicity" worked it out for me!

As we were pulling out of the driveway to head to town, my daughter asked me which errand I wanted to run first. I responded with, "I need to go get gas in the car first."  She looked over at me, and said, "Just for today will you promise not to argue with me?" When do I ever argue with her...lol? Ok, perhaps more than I would like to admit, at least, to her! I said, " I can't promise that..." and with that response I was met with the eyes! The eyes that say, " Really Mom?" I gave her the eyes back that said, "Ok, what is this really ALL about?"  She replied, I want to fill your gas tank, run our errands and then take you out for a really nice dinner." She knows me very well and knew I would kick up a big fuss about taking her help, and I have to admit it was very difficult for me to accept her gracious offer because I know she is dealing with her own financial demons. In fact, one of the hardest things I have ever done. But in the end, when all was said and done, I acquiesced! I was thinking like 20 bucks,  but she insisted on filling my tank. I have a 15 gallon tank in my car and gas is over 4 bucks a gallon-- You do the math! I can't even remember the last time I had a full tank of gas. What I know for sure is that I was struggling with how I was going to manage to do both things.. gas in the car and food for the girls. I never expected to receive what I was given. Thanks to the gift of love and generosity from my beloved daughter(angel), I wasn't forced to make that choice. Was this a lesson in synchronicity for me? I definitely think it was, and I have to say, due to this incident, my scope of vision has increased immensely.

To ALL of you self-doubters out there who doubt the power of synchronicity..... Doubt no more! I no longer do! I leave you with this final thought:

"Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."

                                                 OVID

Until next time.... Bead true to yourself!