Sue Beads

Another month has passed us by, and another challenge will be in the books.  Appropriately, the theme for the Art Elements challenge this month is Ornaments. I had a lot of fun with this one - I had more than a few days I wasn't working this month so making ornaments filled some of my time.

The first ones I want to show you are stitched by me - they were made with some little heart ceramic tiles my daughter found on a job site.  I love finding little treasures on job sites, so I decided these needed to be bezeled and hung on the tree!

I also had these snowflake forms hanging around for years, so I decided to make some with these blown hollow glass beads and czech fire polished beads, along with some seed beads.  They turned out pretty good - I may have gotten a little carried away.  I still have a little pile of hollow beads to make more ornaments with!




I had made some ornaments a few years ago with vintage chandelier parts - they never sold, so I took them apart and made new ones…

We've moved to a once monthly challenge, which falls in the middle of the month, and the Component of the Month is at the end of the month - this gives us more time to be creative! Works for me, because I was very much inspired by the August theme of Faces.  Here's what I made!

This first one is called Mother Earth and features a face bead by Dana Swisher - I have a cat face cabochon from her too, but now I'll need to become a collector and get more!  I so enjoyed making this! Hope it shows!


This next piece features a bone face cabochon, dichro dots by Cindy Bos, and it's called The Four Cardinal Directions. I wanted it to have a buddhist, namaste feel.  I feel it!

I already have another one in the works, an Inuit inspired piece.  I'll show it when I'm done! Thanks for stopping by!

Not sure what you would call this week for the weekly challenge, but I chose this time, and picked "cat" as the prompt.


Ever since I visited Japan over 10 years ago, I have been fascinated with their culture, in particular the juxtaposition of old world tradition vs. kawaii (cute). I saw businessmen with Hello Kitty cell phone charms and it intrigued me! So, I puchased this 2-drop peyote stitch pattern to make this cuff - unfortunately, I didn't purchase enough pink beads, so I have to wait to finish it until my Fusion Beads order gets here!

Stars is the theme of the week - I just happen to have some stars!  I made these little mini cabochons a while ago for a component of the month - I really like them!!!!  The top star is from glass that looks like agate, and the bottom two are turquoise glass that fumes metallic!

Better late than never, right? I have such a hard time keeping up with EVERYTHING - however, I learned this cool collage technique on my Potomac retreat - more about that later when I steal everyone's photos - and made this.  The subject is JOY!

Not a great photo, but you get the idea!

I had to miss last week, Spirals, because I just didn't have enough time.  But since I was chosen to pick the theme for this week, I made it!  The theme for this week was monochrome.  I had to check with art friends to make sure that just didn't mean black and white.  It doesn't! So my offering is this monochrome berry 2-drop peyote bracelet!


Tune in next week, for a new theme!

This week's internal challenge over at Art Elements was beetle.  I had just the thing I wanted to try.  My kids brought me back this scarab bead from the British Museum, I am assuming it's supposed to be faience (I know not real, that would have cost a fortune!!!!).

I have wanted to replicate it for a while, and this was the perfect chance, as I was making headpins for a facebook trunk show!

Here are my beads - the first one is the museum scarab, mine are the second two.  I used opaque turquoise blue glass, and two colors of transparent enamel powder to mimic the faience look.  I think the second color looks the best.
Thanks for stopping by, and look for my post next week!

Our second weekly Art Elements challenge was Serenity.  I find my serenity at the beach - anywhere!

I created these two things:

This photo collage shows photos I've taken in St. Maarten, the Cayman Islands, Hilton Head Island, Clearwater Beach, Florida, and Oban, Scotland.  As you can see, I LOVE the beach!

These earrings were made with my own beachy lampwork headpins and roman glass heishe beads!


Visit next week for the week 3 installment!