14-18.11.12 Stone slice Earrings based on Diane Fitzgerald brick stitch drops

Following a beautiful shirt I purchased recently, the ethnic motives very much inspired me. I knew I had to bead some jewelry to fit the shirt. The paisley drops seemed to be one of the many good options. The fact I already made one a few years ago, encouraged me to choose this option among all other possibilities. It's been years I haven't beadwoven with brick stitch! During beadwork, I gradually chose which color will follow next row, with no planning ahead. Happy with the result and process which has a bit of freeform relaxing beading. Will try to post the shirt picture one day.

14-16.11.12 Purple Victoria's Earrings #3 for mom

Following the pair I made for Miranda, mom was in love. So here is the present I made her for Hanuka.

4.11.12 Twinlill Earrings by Ewa Gyongy

Beautiful design, generously shared by Ewa, in this link.

20-31.10.12 Victoria's Earrings #2 for Miranda

After last trial, this time the pair is symmetric. The central crystal is shaped asymmetrically as opposed to the last pair I made.

Front side of earrings

Back side of Earrings

1st pair at the left and 2nd at the right

22-23.10.12 Trefoils Earrings by Melinda Barta

I love the simple design of these modules which can yet make such elegant and  impressive jewelry.

16.10.12 Teardrop Earrings #2 for Pierrette

Following the last pair I made, those ones were beadwoven with Delica 10/0 and PF golden Toho 11/0 round beads, with 10 rows in total.

3-13.10.12 Teardrop Earrings by Diane Fitzgerald

Beadwoven with square silver-lined Matsuno 11/0 seed beads, based on the Teardrop project, from Diane Fitzgerald's latest book "Shaped beadwork", on p.27.

There are a few errors in the book instructions, corrected in the following corrigendum. I still had to alter a bit to adapt to the beads (which are not cylinder ones) and the preferred final earring's size.

4-13.10.12 "Harmonious array" Earrings to fit mom's necklace

Mom asked for a pair of earrings to fit the necklace I offered her last year. It is nice to have the opportunity to bead her something that I know she will like and wear.

23.6-14.9.12 Solomon Knot Earrings for Li-or Birthday

It's been long that I admire Maggie Meister's Solomon's Knot Bracelet. In her last book, Classical Elegance, she offers the instructions for the Solomon's Knot Pendant, on pp. 72-76.

Li-Or has already enjoyed paging Maggie's book. I asked her what she would like me to bead for her birthday present I wanted to give her and she said she would love the Solomon knot.

Obviously, I had in mind earrings and started beading following the pendant instructions.

While arrived to the first oval half, I just gave up. Too much time, too big, not able to accomplish timely. 

So I tried to make an oval with a different beading technique and it was still too big for an earring, especially that Li-or head is relatively small. So I moved on and draw on a paper the size that seems to me the most to fit and followed it to make the following earrings.
The project was on hold till came the Jewish new year and I was again motivated to accomplish this pair. I started all over again and ended up with this design after about 5 beading hrs. I may interpret it wrongly but when I gave it to Li-Or, I was a bit disappointed since it didn't seem to be an exciting present for her :-( Oh well...

12.6-19.8.12 Vine / Bacchus Earrings by Maggie Meister

It took two months to bring myself complete these Vine earrings, but this is finally done.

The instructions can be found in Maggie Meister's Classical Elegance, pp.24-29.

The leaf design is wonderful!

I made a slight modification in the last part of the leaf instructions and had to unpick the 2nd grape to make one that will look similar enough to the 1st one. The grape freeform part wasn't so fun for me.

The colors I chose were a compromise since I didn't have in my stash reddish drop beads nor gold Delicas. Maybe this is why it took me so long to finish. Not my favorite combo.

17-19.8.12 Open Teardrop Earrings based on Diane Fitzgerald's design

Happy New Year!
שנת תשע"ג טובה ומתוקה

To fit a new blue dress with white dots, Omer helped me choose an earring design that would fit to. He had in mind triangles. We looked together in Diane Fitzgerald's Shaped Beadwork book. From the several options that could be relevant, we decided on the open teardrop rhombus (דלתון).

After an earring was done, I discovered the 11/0 Delica blue tone I had chosen was more going to the purple instead of to the grey. That is why I added grey embellishment hoping that it would give from some distance a more grayish-blue tone.

This is a very odd combination, I know. I hope it works  though.

The second earring I made contained two mistakes. One of them was that I considered all the points as an hexagon increase pattern instead of 3 hexagon points and 1 triangle one. Finally, I liked the curvature it formed and left the 1st earring to make a third one like the second one. Working on the teardrop brought me a therapeutic sense of feeling :-)

14-17.8.12 Zoe Earrings by Maggie Meister

I have recently encountered a Beadshop seller in my city wearing beautiful and very delicate earrings. I patiently waited her to be available for answering my question and asked "what are the earrings?" (probably badly asked...) "what do you mean" she said surprised. "Is this your design?" I asked hesitating. "Yes, it is". So, I added "They are beautiful and very delicate".  I went out the store and was a bit thoughtful. Coming back home I had a flash and immediately opened the last book by Maggie Meister. Zoe earrings. "Proper design of  the beadshop seller". She made a slight variation and took herself generously all the credit that comes to Maggie. 

It made me quiet cross for her dishonesty!

The earrings were so beautiful, I decided to make a pair as well.

The instructions appears in Maggie Meister's Classical Elegance, under the Zoe Earrings project, pp. 59-61.

Though they seem to differ in 4 ways from the picture shown in the book:

1 - the 15/0 beads fringe number, 

2 - apparently 15/0 Delica beads are used for the smaller square in the pictured earrings, whereas round ones are used in the written instructions, 

3 - decorations next to the join area between the squares, 

4 - the earwires hanging loop

The materials I used are: Japanese 15/0 and 11/0 seed beads, 4 mm Czech multicut beads and 5/16 mm Czech Daggers.

In the pair I made, there is a slight modification to Row 7 when embellishing the large square, which seems to be mistakenly omitted from the instructions (pick up 2 beads instead of one and then pick up 4 beads. In Row 8 insert one bead between the pair of beads from Row 7 etc...).

Hanging on a tree

Reminding me of Muslim Tiles

On the way taking pictures, look what I found:

Reflection on Amber

8.8.12 Presents for the Kindergarten teachers

Eshchar has just finished his first kindergarten year. In the 2nd part of the year he moved to the young toddlers class with 2 kindergarten teachers and an assistant. He has been often sick this year, mainly viruses and standard childhood diseases. It wasn't obvious, but seems to be quiet common at this age and hopefully strengthened his immunity system.

The teachers were very caring. I really felt self-assured he is being kept in good hands.

To thank them for all their love and caring to the children, among them to Eshchar, I made them some small beadwoven presents.

There was a party about a week ago in which Eshchar received plenty of gifts. One of them was a spiral notebook with his creations, drawings, stickers and scribblings. I was overwhelmed to see the investment in each of the presents and in this notebook. The teachers made it very personal, cropped  the childs' pictures of the appropiate creation period and sticked them beside.

For Avezo, full of optimism and good energies, patience and trust in Eshchar, I beaded a pair of Gwen Fisher - DNA Earrings. She loves turquoise and bottle green, so this is the combo I chose, though I should have taken turquoise bugle beads for the background. Avezo, immediately loved it and wore them :-) 

It made me especially happy to score for her taste. 

Gwen Fisher DNA earrings for Avezo

Batya is a great cooker and I learnt from her a rescuing recipee for the period Eshchar was approximately between 5 to 8 months. It is a baby soup, based on chicken breast and root vegetables. It was the only crushed salty food he would devor. I thought that small and delicate earrings would fit her, so I prepared her a version on a pair of Mosaico Earrings designed by Meggie Meister.

Meggie Meister Mosaico Earrings version for Batya

Finally, for one of the assistants, full of joy of life, I prepared a Preciosa TWIN - Rivoli Pendant, designed and kindly shared by SashaSi. This was an opportunity to use for the first time the Twin beads with double holes. Since 2006, I don't remember to have beaded another pendant. On the way, the Rivoli broke after falling on the floor, but luckily it was still in a stage I could replace it with a new one. Hope she will love it.

SashaSi TWIN-Rivoli Pendant for Diana

19-20.6.12 Victoria's Earrings

I have recently bought a peach dress that reminds me of the 20ies (but since I am not a fashion expert, don't take me to the word).

I first thought this dress is really not me. The last thing I need now is a "good girl" dress look.

However, the shop seller really loved it on me and there was some charm in it, so I made an exception and took her. It was the first time I buy myself a garment in peach.

Now, I had to fit the dress an appropriate jewel because it was really missing.

Omer helped me to choose a fitting design and the lot felt on the beautiful fan-like Victoria earrings, originally designed by Marcia DeCoster (I, II). I really like her color combination with the metallic orange seed beads and the Fuchsia Swarovski. However, I also felt in love with the version that did Patrick Duggan and that was the one I wanted to wear.

So I tried to decipher the earrings based on the picture and it went on better than I thought, until I came to made the 2nd earring.

I don't know what was wrong with me while beading the 2nd earring, but I made so many mistakes and changes comparing to the 1st earring made. I was SO disappointed to have asymmetric earrings, but was SO lazy to make another one, like the 1st one. I consulted with Omer who told me we make mistakes, this is OK and sometimes we should live with this. Trying to correct all the mistakes is not always worth. Maybe yes and maybe no.

This time, I chose to listen to him, even if I feel very bad not having a perfect symmetric pair.

Front of Earrings

Back of Earrings

Back of Earrings

26.5-7.6.12 Coco's 2nd Lace Workhsop (May 2012)

Beadwoven with C-lon thread and Matsuno bronze 11/0 seed beads.

Ouch.... It costed me a full 25 needles package of John James needles size 15!!!

It took me 4 times to success beading the motif without mistake. After so long I haven't been beading, that is still not so logical, but that is a fact.

I am so grateful for Coco for her endless generosity sharing this workshop (part I, II, III) on the Perles & Dent'elles blog.. THANK YOU COCO! It happened that I had finally the time to catch up and go over this blog as well as part of Coco's blog. Such beauties can be found there! I love so much these princesses jewelry.

The lace was planned  to go with a new dress I bought. However, when I tried them together, it doesn't seem to fit, because the beauty of the dress is in its V shape decolletage. It can fit another dress I have, though. 

The Workshop's  participants laces appears here.

The earrings are based on motif #2 with some personal interpretation.

Coco's 2nd Lace Necklace and earrings

20-23.5.12 Reproduction trial of BeadMatrix Automn leaves Earrings

I don't remember how I came across these leaves earrings of Catherine Ross (BeadMatrix), but for sure I found them spectacular. Maybe it was through the Etsy beadweavers challenges.

Anyway, meantime that I am at home and I can rarely find the time to bead (yes, funny how in-obvious it became), I put them in my earrings wishlist to decipher.

They were more challenging than I thought and I still didn't solve how this beautiful creation was exactly beaded.

Here is my version, which is too curly to my opinion, but Omer loves it. There are several places which I didn't find the path to, such as the area next to the earwires. Still, I love the colors very much and just love this design!

Trying to reproduce a pair made me only appreciate more what a bright mind could design and create them.

19.5.12 Reproduction of Tamar (Pavie) Keny Very long Mandala Earrings

It's been some time that I have discovered Tamar's beadwork and Micromacrame jewelry.

Tamar is a friend of a good friend of mine, but I know her only virtually.

I found her tremendously talented and I remain speechless of the color combinations she has in mind!

Too tempted by her designs, I wanted to try her very long Mandala earrings.

I had a new shirt in black and pink dots that I wanted them to fit to.

The color combination I chose are very disappointing to my opinion, since they don't fit my skin color. They are really big as well. However, I like the presence look they give, but as I said, this is not the pair for me :-(
I should try another combo some day.

17.5.12 "Flame tree earrings" published in Kalmbach "Stitch Workshop: Herringbone Stitch, Basic techniques, advanced results"

This will be the third time now that the "Flame tree earrings" are published (1st, 2nd). Here on the cover page of the Kalmbach book I've just received "Stitch Workshop: Herringbone Stitch, Basic techniques, advanced results".

The article appears on pp. 45-47

30.6.11 "Flame tree flowers earrings" published in Kalmbach "Creative Beading Vol. 6"

On the 26.10.2010 I was announced by Kalmbach assistant editor that my Bead&Button article, "Flame tree flowers earrings" has been selected to appear in the upcoming annual project collection book, Creative Beading Vol. 6, due to be published by Kalmbach Books in summer of 2011. 

Today I have just received the copy of this beautiful collection.  

:-) Happy.

The article appears on pp. 69-71

23-24.6.11 Dax Designs' Earrings for Lior 30th Birthday

I once saved an image of a beautiful rose-lavender pair of earrings from Dax designs' Etsy shop. I was absolutely fond of their design, elegance as well as their simplicity, and wished to bead them one day.

I wanted to make a pair of earrings for Lior 30th birthday. Since I already made her a pair in blue and gold, two years ago, I didn't want to use again the same blue colors or tones, even if it fits her so well with her beautiful blue eyes and blond hair. Going through several pictures of earrings I had, I thought this design may fit her best. I hope she will like it too.

Dax has also a blog and a wonderful collection of Endangered peyote bracelets I recommend you to look at.