Garden Party!

Hello everyone!

I've been pretty quiet on the blogging front lately but, as usual, there has been a lot of unseen activity going on. Some time last year the editors of the German beading magazine Perlen Poesie asked if I would be interested in having a project and an artist profile article in their magazine and as I have followed and enjoyed this magazine since its inception in 2009, I was quick to say 'yes please!' I already had some experience of working with the people at PP as my 'English Rose' necklace project was published in issue 8, I taught my 'Popper Flowers' project at the first Bead Art Fair in Hamburg (organised by Perlen Poesie) in 2011 and I was also one of the judges for their 2013 IBA contest so I knew that working with Perlen Poesie was likely to be a smooth and enjoyable process and I wasn't disappointed. I'm very fond of maximising opportunities and so I decided to involve Preciosa Ornela in this project too and I chose to use pastel coloured Preciosa Traditional Czech Beads to create a lush flowery necklace which I thought would be suitable for the summer issue of an international Bead Art Magazine. You can see the result, 'Garden Party', in the picture below.

The instructions for the necklace are on page 92 of the magazine but as it's made up of individual flowers and leaves it would be very easy to adapt it to a bracelet or even a pendant or earrings if flowery collars aren't your thing. If you would like a copy of Perlen Poesie magazine you can order it direct from their website (in German or English), or if you are in the US you can purchase the English language version from here or ask if your local bead store carries it or can obtain it for you. If you are in the UK, then The Bead Shop (Nottingham) Ltd stocks the English language version. You can also find an 11 page profile article about me and my work which starts on page 10 of this issue and I have to say that I am VERY pleased with the way this turned out. Freddie and Andrea Ott flew to the UK to interview me as they wanted to see me in my 'natural habitat' and as you can see from the photo below, that is just what they got! The picture below shows me in my favourite beading spot, chatting to Andrea and working on my trusty beading tray that Mum painted for me and lined with a piece of her old velvet curtain. You may notice that the tray is now held together with yellow sticky tape but I will always treasure it and I'm quite happy that my 'warts and all' tray now appears in an exclusive magazine - how fortunate that the sticky tape matches the daffodils on the window sill!

The duo spent a couple of hours at our house with Andrea asking me lots of questions and recording my answers while Freddie took numerous pictures of both me and my work. Then we all headed off to one of my favourite places, the village of Edwinstowe to meet Robin Hood and Maid Marian before having a lovely fish and chip lunch and a leisurely stroll around Sherwood Forest. Next it was back home to decide which pieces of my work they would take to Germany with them for more detailed photography work - I have rather a lot of beadwork so Andrea found it hard to decide which pieces to take and Freddie's case left here bulging at the seams! It might seem a bit unusual for the editors of a magazine to go to these lengths but this is where that level of dedication and enthusiasm pays off because although they already knew about me, this time they got to know the real me, enabling them to write an accurate article. Once back in Germany, Freddie and Andrea took some staged shots of my work and of course I can't give too much away but I would like to show you this one - the way they have Podger, Flash and Crusty set up in a garden of tasty looking flowers with absolutely no input from me lets me know that I made an excellent choice in working with Perlen Poesie magazine again.

So after months of behind the scenes work the magazine is now out and you can buy it, you can read the article (as well as several others such as an interesting article on the history of simulated pearls) and you can make the 'Garden Party' necklace along with lots of other beautiful beadwork projects. For me, this is not the end of my work with Perlen Poesie as I will be at the 2015 Beaders Best Bead Art Fair in Hamburg and I will be giving more details about that in a future blog post. In the meantime, if you are in the area and you would like to see 'Garden Party' in the flesh, she is currently on display at The Bead Shop (Nottingham) Ltd so feel free to drop in and have a look and perhaps buy yourself some beads while you are there.

See you next time!

Kerrie ♥

Ripple Crown Pins!

Hello everyone!

I notice it's been nearly two months since my last blog post and I am wondering where that time went. I guess it went in a frantic whirl of meeting various deadlines for magazine and book projects (all to be published later this year or early next), followed by visiting family for a couple of weeks and then coming home to find my trusty 8 year old PC had virtually died. My computer is sort of limping along at the moment but this is the last blog post I will ever write using it. I am very attached to this desktop as I bought it in 2007, just before I turned my beading hobby into a business, so every pattern I have ever created, every diagram I have ever drawn and every blog post I have written have all been done on this computer. After doing a lot of research, I have decided to jump ship this time and I have invested in a shiny new iMac which is sitting waiting patiently in its box, ready to take over from Old Faithful.

So because of technological interruptions I am a bit late in letting you know that the latest issue of Digital Beading Magazine is out now, packed with 178 pages of projects and inspiration. Although I don't have a project in this one, there are a couple of adverts in there that use my work - the newest one being the Ripple Crown Pins that I showed you in my last blog post. I can also tell you that the instructions for these little pins will be available from the Preciosa Ornela website in the coming months.

I am actually very sad to announce that issue 15 is the last ever issue of Digital Beading Magazine as Kelly (the editor) is moving on to an exciting new chapter in her life. I have been on the design team of DBM since the first issue back in December 2012 with 14 projects and an artist's profile published during that time. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Kelly and I would like to publicly thank her for all the support and opportunities she gave me (one of my favourite is pictured below) and I wish her and her family all the very best for the future. I hope you have enjoyed reading DBM as much as I enjoyed designing for it and don't forget that you can still purchase the current issue and back issues via this page of the website.

That's all for this time but I do have some exciting news bubbling under the surface, so I will be back with details of that within the next few weeks.

See you next time!

Kerrie ♥

Ripples!

Hello everyone!

A few days ago Preciosa Ornela released their brand new Ripple™ bead onto the market and I'm happy to say that I had the good fortune to be involved in making some sample pieces using this interesting new bead, so let me tell you a bit about them. The Ripple is a circular pressed glass bead with a 12 mm diameter and it has a wavy curve to it - hence the name. It comes in a wide range of the most beautiful vacuum coated colours in both shiny and matte finishes and I have to say that although not necessarily ideal for the usual beadweaving stitches, I fell in love with this new bead. Because these beads have a much larger surface than most beads I usually work with, you really get the full impact of the colour and what with the pleasant S-shaped curve of the side view, it's hard not to be drawn to them. Like many larger pressed beads, they really want to take centre stage, but they do mix well with a few seed beads - here is what I did with my Ripple beads:

It's difficult for me to stay away from a seed bead, and so for my 'Ripples on the Surface' bracelet I firstly made a narrow strip of herringbone using bright silver seed beads and then I decorated it with glittering Ripples in glorious California Green. For the finishing touch and to bring out the other colours in the Ripples, I tied it with a length of pink ribbon.

For the next experiment I chose California Silver and California Graphite Ripples (in both shiny and matte) and using more silver seed beads I made lots and lots of little stems and loops for them. Then I threaded them all on to a sterling silver screw end bangle so that they were very tightly packed. This encouraged the Ripples to bunch up and show off their lovely surfaces which you can see in 'Clustered Ripples' shown above.

Still liking the options that little seed bead loops gave me, I went on to make more using California Silver Ripples and black seed beads. These Ripples are silver on one side and gold on the other and so I made sure I threaded them all the same way round to create 'Reversible Ripples' which (as the name suggests) can be worn with the silver facing the front or the gold.

I really like the side view of the Ripple beads and so I wanted to find a way to display that lovely curve as well as the finish on the flat side. After a bit of experimentation I found a way to stabilise a circle of Ripples and then nestled them in to a bed of seed beads to make a sparkly little crown shaped brooch. I enjoyed making these so much that I actually made a set of three 'Ripple Crown Pins' using California Blue, California Graphite and California Night Ripple beads.

As time was running out but there were still Ripples to use and colours to show, I finished off with a simple strung bracelet which I've named 'Ripples and Pearls'. I chose the matte version of the California Green Ripple bead which has a lovely pink and gold finish to it and I mixed them with some creamy 4 mm glass pearls to make a slinky 3-strand bracelet using a fabulous silver clasp from A Grain Of Sand.

So there you have the results of my Ripple experiments, but there are many more ways to use these delightful new beads and if you take a look at Preciosa's Flickr album you can see some really wonderful work by the other designers.

See you next time!

Kerrie ♥