31.10.09 Celebrating 3 years of Beading with a Kizhi Pendant Reproduction!!!

28-31.10.09
The story starts when I wanted to update myself, getting some news from my dear friends' blog, Svetlana Eltsova. However, there were no new posts on her blog. Since this blog is a sea of fascinating data and pictures, I said to myself "why not visit some older posts that I didn't have the time to read in the past?" and so I did. When my eyes encounter the post called "Inspiration from the Past (Antique earrings)"about popular earrings wore by women in Russia, in the 18th -19th centuries, I was HOOKED! I started looking over all the links and searching for more data about it over the net. Unfortunately, I don't know Russian, but I still managed to find few interesting pictures and links thanks to Svetlana. I decided I was going to reproduce those Earrings you can see in the following pictures:

taken from here.taken from here.

I throw myself into this project and finally found again a strong passion to solve how I can make these earring only from seed beads but as close as the original ones (the original ones are made with Fliz findings, pearls, diamonds and horse hairs!). This passion closes a circle when 3 years ago, quiet at the beginning of my beadwork steps, I discovered the amazing Hojas Necklace from the Saraguro which made me so excited about it.
In this project I used toho thread with 15/0 Japanese sb, 11/0 Czech Jablonex sb and some pearls I bought for my wedding jewels last year.
I am quiet satisfied with the result which took tones of hrs (I think about 20 with all the trial and errors, but I didn't count).
When it was done, I discovered it would be too big for an earring and it took so much time that my lazy voice lead me to decide it would be just a pendant. So for the moment, this is a pendant :-) I may change my mind though ;-) since I can tell you Varda's daughter put it near her ear few days ago and it looked fantastic on her, very bridal too. Let me know what do you think.

Dear Svetlana, THANK YOU for giving me inspiration from your work and fascinating posts! KIITOS!

29.10.09 Crochet & Wire Ring Workshop with Ronit-Tal

About 2.5 years ago, I attended my first workshop in my Israeli Beading commune. The workshop was about doing a cabochon with crochet and wire. It was said that a basic skill in crochet was required and for some reason I thought that for me it wouldn't be such a big deal. That happened to be a very wrong thinking and the workshop ended up as very frustrating to me because I finished it with nothing. Only at the very end of it, a very nice woman, pilpelet64, teached me kindly how to make a chain and this was the sole lesson I learnt from that workshop. In fact, I didn't know crochet at that time and as you can imagine, crochet with wire is even more chalenging...
Recently, a workshop on crochet with wire was published in my commune and I thought that could be a good occasion to try again. Unfortunately, when I wanted to subscribe, the workshop was already full, but I was lucky enough to get a place because of some cancellations.

Ronit-Tal invited us very kindly, she teached us an interesting technique of embellishing with the beads only at the end of the work, as if sewing them with an extra thread of wire. Otherwise you make a chain that encircles your finger, several rows of DC and hide the thread by coiling it between the first chain row, pulling and trimming. Last step is squashing the work. You can work flat and then connect it or work circular (the best size of crochet hook is 1mm or 1.5mm).
Finally, the atmosphere was great. I really enjoyed the company, food and also the crocheting with wire. As I told Ronit-Tal, this workshop was indeed a corrective experience to me.

n.b.
Today we had the first real Rain of this year, 1 hour of deluge and then sun all day :-) That was really "cool" ;-)

26.10.09 A Pink Golden Oak leaf earring with a Joann Baumann's Ndbele earring

Aposteriori, it's not a good combination, they don't fit together, you are more then welcome to tell me what do you think can fit to each one. I am a bit lazy to make another oak leaf earring, it took few hrs and I am not used to freeform peyote, so it was a bit scaring :-) but I may arrive to such a conclusion one day, that this would be the best choice?! Unless I decide to tranform into a brooch and than no more dilemmas ;-)

The instructions for the Golden Oak designed by Jean Campbell can be found in the last Beadwork Magazine, August/September 2009, pp 38-41. I used 11/0 seed beads instead of 15/0 and even then I had to use a 15 needle in some places.

The second earring is inspired based on the picture of one of Joann Baumann's 2002 Ndbele earrings, that appears in my Beadwork bible, "The art of Beadwork" by Valerie Hector, p.102.

25.10.09 Interconnected loops of the "Ring Around the Rosie", designed by Jill Wiseman

About a year ago, I saw somewhere on the net this gorgeous Jill Wiseman's earrings that I find so charming in their simplicity.
I saved the image in my "interesting folder" to bead one day...
It came up that I found myself in this folder again today and I could see those striking earrings there. I decided to try them out.
I asked Omer what color does he advise me to make them so that it can suit one of my wardrobe clothes. He suggested Lilac purple and I was convinced I should try something else than turquoise, though this turquoise was just hypnotizing...
Apparently my fingers or brain didn't resist the temptation and I ended up with almost the same earrings. A bit disappointing from my side...
I sew the loops one to another so that each earring will stand flat. This way, it looks to me nicer.

The earrings took me maximum 3 hrs in total and can be considered as a fun and relatively quick project [and quick=great! ;-)]

Thank you Wisewoman :-)

This Wax Vine or Hoya cornosa (בת שבע) has nothing to do with the earrings, but I am so excited that it flowers for the first time with us, that I really wanted to share it. I still want to have one day the Hoya with the round inflorescence, like a ball, nevertheless, it's great to have this Hoya flowering, because it's been years with nothing... If you like this plant, you may enjoy the following link and especially this one.

15-17.10.09 Merchav Yotzer מרחב יוצר 2009

Omer and I spent a wonderful weekend in Beit Oren, at the Merchav Yotzer 2009 (= Creative open space) workshops. On Thursday afternoon I attended Yaara Man workshop, drawing and painting Mandala on a ceramic square, with ceramic paint, while Omer went chasing for his Wasp and Coleoptera :-)
I enjoyed it very much, finding the middle of the axes, the center, drawing the lines with a ruler and a pair of compasses, first with pencil and then erasing all the extra lines. I also used some carob and oak leaves to help me design the pattern. When the ceramic square was baked in the special oven, we got completely different colours (much darker), so you can see below the "before" and after".

On Friday, we took both an environmental sculpture workshop with the talented artist Amir Baumfeld. We could choose if to work on wood, stone or making ceramic mosaics.
Getting inspiration from nature, some walking around, watching, finding objects of inspiration we then came back to write down our ideas, sketch it and sculpt it from clay.
Amir then instructed each one of us how to work on the medium we chose.

I chose to make a Praying Mantis on the Wood, together with two other girls that chose as subject a wild woman and an acorn with oak leaves. We worked on a piece of cypress, with sculpting tools and wood hammers to create a totem that remained unfinished the day after because of lack of time. Definition and engraving is a constant process while working on wood. For me the work was a bit aggressive and requires some force. At first, I didn't enjoy working the wood, but towards the end of the workshop, the day after, I could find more interest in it, though I don't plan to have it as a new hobby :-)
Why did I chose a Praying Mantis? The evening before, I went to bring some water from the car in the camping area and while walking back, there was something walking on my feet, that I discovered to be a big green praying Mantis. By the way, we were surrounded by jackals and wild pigs that we could hear very well and some of us even see.
On the same evening, Omer saw a big spider on its web and those two animals became our inspiration for our work.

So this is Omer's spider

and this is the engraving in stone that he chose to create:

then filled with cement and rests of ceramics from Imi Feller's work.

I really like the spider engraving in the stone and I can tell you it is a tough work!

On Friday afternoon, we saw a very interesting demonstration of a Raku burning process with Anat Evyatar.
In the evening we had a common meal together, accompanied with songs and interesting lectures. One was about how to increase and find your creativity with Ilan Niv. The second one was given by Amir Baumfeld about his creations and impressive Totems and wood furnitures, based on wood connectors only.

On Saturday afternoon was the crowning glory workshop for me. Yonit Crystal instructed us to make a small basket. Varda and her husband joined us in the afternoon and both attended the workshop with me. We had great fun and I realized a small dream I had quiet a while, weaving this basket.

I asked the permission to finish my basket at home, though many people found the basket as it as beautiful. I still haven't decided what to do about it, but now I am sure I want to keep learning about basket weaving which was tremendously fun to me. By the way, the baskets we wove are done with the base of palm fronds and reeds.

We ended this creative and interesting weekend in nature with a big smile and good feelings, interesting new people we met, new initial skills and new ideas for the future...