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The Other Bead Challenge... Done! |
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Written by Dara Spiotto
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Monday, 12 November 2007 |
A Rainy Day Garden
Yes, the OTHER bead challenge. The one I’m working on that’s hosted by a local California bead store. Remember, I spoke about it in My Beading Agenda. Ah, yes. Now we’re all caught up.
I have to admit I thought this would be all random and unplanned and spontaneous. But I kept catching myself thinking and planning while I tried to fall asleep. Abandoning all ideas from the night previous, I would jump in and pell-mell flowers all over. In the end, I guess I’m just an organizer. I wanted the flowers to be all catawampus, but there they were. All neatly sewed on. Sheesh. I’m going to have to do something freeform to break the spell.
 Frothy Flower Frenzy
Sooooo… Last time I wrote about this piece it had a beaded bag body and fringe, and then a row of netted fringe. After that I beaded a fence in an assortment of browns, wanting it to look like an old farm fence. The lazy, hazy days of summer kind of fence. And I left an opening for the door, which I have plans for. Next, I began cramming flowers and leaves and vines around the bottom of the bag, in an overlapping-crust kind of way. I love cottage gardens and how they grow big and free and reach out all over. In California, the landscape is, well, obviously desert. So all foliage here is done in organized, planned out gardens. Even beside the freeway. Even in between businesses. Yards around homes are carefully planned out with complex irrigation systems to make sure it all drinks enough water. So, being from Maine, I love the wild crazy sides of the country roads where the foliage creeps right up to the asphalt. I love the trees that grow huge and tangle their limbs together like embracing arms. I adore fiddlehead ferns and goldenrod and lupine. “WHAT??” says all my California readers. In California every bush and tree gets cut back. They don’t like “mess” here, so falling leaves are discouraged. :-) Everything is manicured so it looks nice and stays put. Some trees and bushes may get to keep their natural shape, but they’re under controlled management all the same. Californians might struggle if they lived in Maine. The snow is a piece of cake compared to the foliage that could wrap around you and carry you away! Hooray!
So I’m going for the cottage look. I picked out flowers in Czech glass, vintage sequins and lucite and made some seed bead vines in size 11.0 and 14.0 with the flowers chunked in all around. Going for depth, layering seemed to work well. I had made some spiraling wire components for a previous project (A Stephanie Sersich Spiny Knotty Bracelet!) and had a few left over, so I put those in as well. I continued around the bag until I had made a complete circle. As I worked I kept having flashbacks in time to when I worked on a Beadin’ Path Round Robin project called The Coral Reef originally begun by Sheila Shafer, and then beaded on by many others, and then Sheila did the finishing work on it. I made lots of chunky, 3 dimensional sea reef stuff on it, my favorite being the purple tube coral. Very  fun, and all of it was layered and stacked to give it depth. If you want to see this Round Robin piece, to go Design Studio on the site and click on Round Robin #1. It's worth a gander… very inspiring!
I wanted the gate to be a working door, so I made a separate piece in Delica’s and then attached it with a seed bead hinge. If I were going to complain about beading, then this gate would be it. BORING. It seemed to take forever beading a square-ish shape in brown beads using double thread to give it some stiffness. The flower embellishing was fun, though. I cut a small rectangle of ultra suede in light purple and used a sharpie marker to put my signature and the date on it. Then I attached it to the inside of the gate door at the bottom. A round bead for the doorknob is attached to the door front, and then on the fence there’s a small seed bead loop.
A Little Purring Secret
What to put inside the door? You can’t have a door that opens and then have only more flowers inside! Fairy? Bugs? I searched the web for a cute cat pattern that was small, and then finally found one in the book Another Beaded Obsessions by Cheryl Assemi, Bobbi Assemi, Cathy Thompson, Connie Bell and Carole Sweet. It’s the one on page 15 called  Purrr…fect, and I modified it a bit by making it only a bust portrait instead of a reclining cat, and then altering the colors to oranges instead of gray and black. This kitty is lurking inside the flower garden and when you open the gate, pop! There he is. Some flowers embellish inside the gate around the cat, and also on the outside of the gate door. Otherwise, it looked like a big square brown thing, and didn’t blend in well with the bag. A few vines, leaves and buds did the trick.
The strap has a quote in it from Ralph Waldo Emerson, saying, “The Earth laughs in flowers.” I wanted it to be short and sweet since this piece is too heavy to be wearable. I chose Delicas again for this because letters come out really nice and uniform and easy to read. It went together really quickly in peyote, then it's finished with a simple picot lace edge in pastel colors. This helps the words to pop out and be all the more noticeable. Using Swarovski bicones to attach the strap to the edges of the bag, I tried putting a leafy edge around the top rim of the bag, but it was too heavy looking and made the rim droop. I just zipped a row of matte metallic green on there and called it good.
Because this bag is going to be a gift to my friend Irene who owns the shop hosting the bead challenge, I randomly put 3 small vintage Swarovski lady bugs to symbolize her 3 children: Manny, Ronnie and Catherine. Can you find them?
 In looking the bag over, I decided that it still needed something. I began looking for a birdhouse to bead separately and attach. I did a Google search and found one by Judy Wood that I could use. I beaded it in Delicas and then balanced it on top of the post on the back side of the bag. Much better! Hmmmm… I looked it over again. Done.
Here’s a couple of stats for you. I used 46 different colors of Delicas and seed beads in this bag, which includes sizes 11.0, 14.0, 8.0, 6.0, drops, bugels and triangles. I used peyote, brick, netting, couching and 2 drop peyote for the stitches. I think my total time investment was just under 130 hours. I blame that on the fence. :-) Worth all the time I put in. This was a really fun piece to work on.
My Second Entry
Onward into the felting! The flower wall hanging I made a while ago is patiently sitting on my desk all this time, waiting for some attention. The beads I picked out are lucite and the perfect colors! After trying to embellish the front of the wall hanging, I finally decided to just use the beads for the hanging strand. Everything else looked like overkill. I sewed a dowel across the top of the piece using Fireline. This will help it to hang straight. Then I sewed two soldered jump rings on the back corners and then attached Soft Flex with two crimps. This strap isn’t going to come off any time soon. So there!!
The Grand UnVeiling
In Upland we have a street fair. It's in the historical part of the city and there are many shops and restaurants, along with offices, studios and salons. Each Thursday night from May to November they have a street fair from 5 pm to 9 pm, and the streets are blocked to keep out the cars. Vendors set up their booths with items for sale, hand made things, fruits, veggies, gorgeous flowers and plants. There are rides for the kids, vintage cars on display and demonstrations to watch. There’s a gazebo in the middle with a live band playing oldies, swing, country or rock and roll, depending on what day and time you’re there. Something for everyone and it's really fun.
The unveiling of the challenge pieces happened right out side the gazebo. The display looked gorgeous, and there were a lot of entries. Some of the designs were crystal bracelets, some were complicated seed bead bracelets. There was a gorgeous seed beaded snake in purples and greens. Drippy, flowery chain necklaces and a small cluster of wire flowers. There was a fairy with beaded wings that was made using a wooden figure that could be posed, and it was covered with size 14.0 seed beads in a glorious pattern. A stick  pearl fence bracelet made of wire, and an octopus’s garden in a fishbowl, complete with seed bead sand, lucite bead seaweed, glass bead shells and a seed beaded octopus to die for! The entries were wonderful and the attendance was great. The area was crowded the whole time.
The next challenge is going to be Wild About Wire and will begin on January 1st of 2008 and run until May 1st. If you’d like to know how to become involved in this challenge, please e-mail me and I’ll fill you in.
The current Beadin’ Path challenge is currently under way and there over 100 participants who’ve requested the package!!! Can’t wait to see what evolves from this one, too! |
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