Letting it Lie

I have talked about the Drawer of Unfinished Projects and what goes into it (you can find my post here). But there are other projects that, when left to lie around, percolate and produce something I really like. This may take weeks, months or sometimes years, but the result is worth waiting for.

This happens, for example, when I work with my stained-glass artist friend Beth on a design that combines both media.  It can take a while for the solution to setting a bezeled crystal in her stained-glass piece to materialize but I have found that it would come if I waited and didn't worry it too much.

I dragged my feet on another collaboration with her because of the subject matter. It was a lovely iris set in an octagon of green glass.  But it had a spider in her web in the center. That was my part of the work and I loathe spiders. It took me a long time to even begin to think about making one, shudder, shudder.

I finally looked at some beaded spiders on the internet (much more congenial than looking at photos of real ones, which I would have had to do peeking through my fingers or taking my glasses off) and beaded one. It made no pretense to being anatomically correct, as the bead artist would, in its making, have thrown up on it.

The spider's web was more fun. Looking at how a spider builds its web was fascinating and there were some nice (no spiders included) tutorials on how to make or draw one. Here’s a quick-and-dirty photo of the piece, with web, sans spider:

 Another piece that I can remember letting lie around involved a gorgeous polymer clay cab I bought from Chris Kapono at Mandarin Moon designs. I wanted to do it justice and intended to make it the center of a piece of bead embroidery. I sketched a few designs and even began stitching the border around the cab but I didn't like it and decided to let it lie. It did so for a good two years, becoming a familiar part of the Bead Room décor.

Then one day the solution popped into my head: this is what you need to do. I drew a sketch and traced it onto the felt and I finished it in days. Here it is:

So, lying around can be a good thing!

Choosing Colors

How often have I held a tube of beads in my hands, of a beautiful or unusual color or finish, and resolve: I am going to make something with you!  And how many times does it not happen?

Sometimes it does work out – where I have a color to start with and I just start matching other tubes with it. Often a color will “pop” against it, or an unexpected pairing will make me go “ooohhh, yeahhh” - which is one of the moments beaders live for.

But generally I find that as much as I want to use this color, these beads, right now, the search frequently winds up in a dead end.  My lesson is: you can’t force a color on yourself. Despite the many challenges bead bloggers make to their readers – make something with orange! Use a color you hate! – it doesn’t work for me.  I want to color outside the lines as much as anyone who has a monster bead stash. Not only aesthetically, but practically I want to use those beads I bought.  But alas, the colors dictate more than I like to admit.

Color tastes change too. When I started out beading I was the Bling Queen. The shinier, the gaudier, the more I liked it. If the beads weren’t silver-lined, I wasn’t interested. I privately referred to this preference as “bordello chic,” though I hasten to add that I have never been in such an establishment so please don’t get any ideas!  I expect it came from watching the marvelous Régine in “The Seven Per-Cent Solution” as an impressionable young person.

My color preferences have expanded over the years and embraced a somewhat more muted but I like to think more complex palette. This is the result of the Raku Revolution in bead manufacturing – of creating beads that have that amazing finish.   Like these:

Photo from Baubles and Beads

These days I let the focal beads I’m working with do my blinging for me. That also pares down the palette decisions, an added bonus.

To show you what I mean, here’s a piece of embeadery (my term for bead embroidery – check out my Pinterest board under that title) done around a polymer clay cab by Chris Kapono of Mandarin Moon, whose work is largely responsible for the drool marks on my laptop. I wore this piece to a bead show and one of the exhibitors said it looked like a peacock. Hah! No surprise there. Now of course I can’t see anything but the peacock when I look at it. Ah well.

So yes, I still do bling, but with dignity.