Shout Out: Bevin Designs

Do you know anyone who has a big event coming up---a wedding? anniversary party? prom? My friend, Colleen, designs the most elegant jewelry and she's just started up her own web shop. Her work is impeccable and I'd like to see her be successful so please pass her website on to anyone you think might be interested.

Thanks! And Portland peeps can probably save on shipping since she's right here in town.

Combining Fabric with Beading

Margapinta appears to be sewing fabric "pillow" beads and incorporating them into her jewelry. I like it when artists take two different media and combine them. I wish I could read Portuguese.

Super Secret Christmas Project #3

Well, this one wasn't as Super Secret. Most of my friends know that I occasionally whip out a few pieces of beaded jewelry. This year Stacey and I decided to make a couple of pieces for our hard-working educational assistants and co-workers. (Oh, if you don't know who Stacey is, she is my long-suffering sidekick, fellow learning specialist, neighbor and friend. During the school year we work within feet of each other and end up hanging out on evenings and weekends too.) Surprisingly, we found some pretty good looking beads at Michaels and supplimented that from my stash of beads and stones here at home.

Here's a bracelet we made with beads from Michael's. It's nice and flat so it doesn't get in you're way when you're typing or writing. Perfect for the school psychologist.



Another bracelet made with some beads from my glass artist friend, Jenny, who lives in Indiana. She used to give me all of her "wonky" beads--the rough drafts, the ones she thought should be thrown out. Now when Jenny sends me beads they are perfectly round and so beautiful that I just let them sit on my desk so I can admire their smooth, cool beauty. Anyways, back to the bracelet. This eclectic mix was just right for the speech pathologist.




Then these clear and amber beads from Michael's were perfect for earrings. We cranked out quite a few pairs of these so if you are one of the recipients I hope you are not disappointed to learn your earrings are not one-of-a-kind. I hope I remembered to keep a pair of these for myself instead of giving them all away since I like clean, simple designs.

Another Christmas Project

Here's a piece of jewelry I made for my mother-in-law for Christmas. I have given jewelry to my sisters-in-law several times but never knew if my mother-in-law (what an awkward phrase!) would want a necklace. Having grown up in conservative Mennonite circles, she's not accustomed to wearing "fancy" stuff. But, when I saw the nice chunk of olive jade I knew it was calling her name and needed to be fashioned into a necklace. She claims to love it. Of course, she lives halfway across the continent so if she doesn't love it, I'll never know :)

Making jewelry is oddly satisfying. I love running my fingers through the cool beads of stone and gem and pearls. My right brain loves the creative process of picking the colors and shapes that please my eye. My left brain enjoys sorting them into the order and sequence in which I string them. There's a certain mathematical precision that I find restful. Once, I think shortly after I read the DaVinci Code, I even based a necklace design on the Fibonacci Numbers. I am such a geek!

Soldered Glass Charms

One of my pre-Chrismas projects was experimenting with making charms out of glass slides, copper tape and solder. I kept seeing cool charms at the crafty stores that I haunt when I am on a creative whim. Most of the work other people are doing is very Victorian or "heritage" as they like to call it. I think this is due to the fact that old images are usually copyright free and can be used and sold with no problems. However, I am not really enamored by the look. I figured that I could come up with more creative original images on my own. I made a series of little houses using an old dictionary, some funky paper scraps, and soldering tools that I bought on-line from Scrap-a-Latte (who can resist a store with Latte in their name?). On the back side I put quotes that I love about the importance of Home. Some of them I soldered all around the edges and also soldered a ring to the top to run a ribbon through. This makes a pretty sturdy charm but my soldering technique is rudimentary at best and some of them turned out blobby and pointy. On a few I didn't even bother with soldering--just used copper tape and a little E600 glue. We'll see how those hold up with use. I was pleased with how the last couple that I made turned out, so I might make a few more before I clean up all the scraps of paper and shift to...sewing? I need curtains and want to make a cloth book for my neice.