I'm so excited that Therese asked 6 of us to join her in the She Made : She Made Challenge this month. Usually this is a one-on-one between Therese and Christine. But Therese generously invited a few of us to join, and sent out a focal to work with.
I loved this piece from the moment I saw it; created by Susan Clayton, a sculptor in Tallapoosa GA. Susan says about her work "each little soulful character has an important story to tell, and I hope other people can look at them and find some connection." Therese was at an arts festival in Tuscaloosa when she came across Susan's booth, and walked away with a handful of these beautiful face focals.
I knew I was going to bezel it, but I let this one develop as I beaded along. Once I had the bezel done I knew she was going to be a pin! I had to build up the back of it just a bit because it was rounded and I wanted to be able to attached a suede backing. And then a pin to the suede. She really came alive to me once I gave her some dark beautiful locks. She feels like an 'old soul' to me, with much knowledge to share.
Thank you Therese for asking me to join this month! I loved this project. Here are the links to all the others joining the challenge: Therese, Christine, Tanya, Hope, Shirley and Bobbie
We are posting on our second installment of Alicia's The Creative Continuum of Seven Artists (CC7A), and this time we are working with an item sent out from Christine.
She sent me a beaded cage around a rock that she picked up at the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Mineral County, Colorado. I love the various rocks Christine shares. The textures of her rocks always seem to fill my head with patterns and ideas. She has such an eye for their shapes, sizes and surfaces... and this one has a sort of moonscape to it, or the look of a well worn surface. As I rolled the focal around in my hand I got an old world feel, like something that has been around for the ages. Such rocky awesomeness... I can see why she collects them!
I'm not sure why, but I knew the second I saw it what I was going to do with this focal. Once I got started with this piece, it came together quickly. The hatching pattern in the chenille, the opaque white of the beads with bits of gold, and the brassiness to the metals just made me think of Elizabethan style. Who knows why my mind wanders as it does .... but it was easy to find a picture to show you what was flying around in my head. Note the puffy sleeves, the hatching on the arms and the coloring of the outfit. Perhaps not the perfect match, but close enough! And to stick with Christine's theme of 'round and round' the choker is designed to give the focal a twist or two so the stringing will gently create a twisted pattern. Hazzah!
Now to see what the rest of the seven artist's created please visit:
Alicia (our host), Christine, Emma, Monique, Sally and Therese.
Karen from Baublicious is hosting one of her freeform peyote challenges. I would never have known about this form of bead weaving without Karen's blog, and I most certainly would not have tried it without the amazing encouragement she offers.
I have come to really enjoy freeform beading. In fact, getting comfortable with freeform has done two surprising (at least to me) things for my bead weaving. First it got me to relax and not be so afraid of making every stitch absolutely perfect. This fear can sometimes paralyze you to a point where you spend more time ripping things out, or simply giving up instead of pushing through and practicing the stitch. The second thing it has taught me is to think more creatively about designing a piece. I was constantly looking for a specific pattern, and trying to 'color within the lines.' But I find that the more comfortable I have become with freeform, the more comfortable I am with branching out to try new stitches and designs. So for this, I thank you Karen!
Now, on to the current challenge at hand, which is to use red in one of our pieces. Karen says that it can be anything from a wash of red to a single drop. And, of course, the piece needs to include freeform peyote, but we can also include a mix of bead stitches or techniques.
I really wanted to use a beaded bezel as the focal to a bracelet and then freeform the band. I had this large evil eye bead in my stash that a friend gifted me. It's one of several that she brought back from Turkey for me. I do really love the meaning of these. She will tell you that it is a way to ward off evil, and deflect it back at the person who might wish you harm. When you walk into her house you'll see them hanging from the door handles, in the window ... she even put a few into the mortar of the tiles in her kitchen. The most common place to put them in Turkey is right over the door so that it will deflect evil from entering the house.
I used my red in the focal, and a few more smaller accent beads .... then the rest is black for a little drama in the bracelet. I used predominately freeform peyote, but you'll see a little stringing in there and even a little bit of ladder around the closure. Isn't that closure cool? I picked this one up from Melinda Orr (her shop is Orrtec on Etsy). It is a magnetic belt buckle! I had a lot of fun with this challenge, and can't wait to see what everyone else created: Baublicious, Beadsong Jewelry, Saturday Sequins, Antiquity Travelers (that's me), All in Beads, A little of this a little of that
I found many meanings for the song with a wide range of interpretations from people. But most believe the song is about needing to move on because staying where you are is holding you back. The opening line "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?" was what Kathy (Allan Collins' girlfriend) said during a fight. He wrote it down and it ended up in this classic song. So its origins are literally about leaving someone, but its meaning seems to have grown into so much more. I love the symbol, and couldn't help but pick up a few charms and pendant to design with the iconic free bird.
The song originally started as an instrumental piece written by guitarist Collins. He had been playing around with the melody for about 2 years before Ronnie Van Zant wrote the lyrics to the song. Zant told Skynard that he thought it had too many chords to write lyrics for, but one night he asked Collins to play the melody again and after about 20 minutes the lyrics were flowing "If I leave here tomorrow ..."
The ballad was actually shorter at first (a mere 7 1/2 minutes) without any of the guitar solos at the end. And when they went to record it (1972) the band's record company didn't want to put the song on the album because they thought it was too long and that no radio station would play it. Boy were they wrong. The song is so well known, that even when Skynayrd stopped singing the words to the song in 1977 (after Zant died in a plane crash) the crowd would just sign out the lyrics anyway.
Now the song is a bit of an urban legend for concert goers to shout out "Free Bird" when they just want to hear the song because they don't like the music the band is playing. Every now and then the band will actually play the song. The lyrics are amazing, as is the the classic guitar riff. (From a 1976 concert)
If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? For I must be traveling on now, 'cause there's too many places I've got to see. But, if I stayed here with you, girl, things just couldn't be the same. 'Cause I'm as free as a bird now, and this bird you can not change. Though this feeling I can't change, but please don't take it so badly. 'Cause the Lord knows I'm to blame. And this bird you cannot change. Lord knows, I can't change.
Won't you fly high free bird?
A little while back I was shopping with a friend of mine, Melinda Orr, at Bead Fest. She picked up these great shell spikes and then later did some patina on them. I thought they were absolutely fabulous and wanted to give them a try.
I bought a few myself last Fall. But I admit to having put them in a few projects, and then pulling them out. Only to be exasperated by trying to get them to work. They are not as easy as they look! I had them in a necklace but they are so light weight that they didn't have enough 'heft' to 'fringe' with. I know that sounds strange, but true. I was going for a boho, native look. But it was a 'no go' situation.
I decided they might work as earrings as they have nice length without the weight. Voila! The black beads are actually wood, so the whole thing is extraordinarily light, but have the look of stone. And because they are light they seem to swing and chime just a bit ... and if you like that sound (like a summer's day) it is kinda nice. I had them on yesterday in my studio and it was a great way to transport me out of the doldrums of winter.
You never know where my mind will wander when left to ... well, wander. I was in a mood to create some cat earrings. And I decided to make 2 pair; one with a tortie look, the other a bit more glam. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I'm not totally sure what I want to create (just yet) I drag out all sorts of beads, findings, wire, string ... and play. Pairing things this way, and that way until something sticks.
I'm not sure how I got to a place where I used hemp twine for these tortie earrings, but the black just sort of spoke to me, and once I finished I thought they almost had an Egyptian look to them. The mix of black, gold and warm brown I guess took me there. I decided to make a second pair of cats, but this time all white with a tiny labradorite round at the top. I'm not showing it here, but there is also a bit of a curl to the tail in back. These two cats remind me of another pair of cats I know named Isabella and Angel. You can see the real ones over on the Beaded Tail blog.
I decided to see what role cats played in Ancient Egypt, and found that they were first domesticated from wildcats 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. That is thousands of years before the rise of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. Cats were praised for controlling the local vermin, you know like cobras snaking around outside. Egyptians loved their cats and took them to the afterlife; having them mummified along with them. There were deities of cats, one of the well known one called Bastet was known as the keeper of hearth and home, the protector of women's secrets, guardian against evil spirits and disease. Cats were sacred, and protected. The penalty for killing a cat in Ancient Egypt was death, and in households where a cat died people shaved their eyebrows as a sign of deep mourning which lasted until their eyebrows had grown back. What an interesting and strange thing to do?!
