The Beady Life

I must sit down and schedule out the next few weeks, it's the only thing that keeps me on track.  Otherwise I can tend to float through the days not accomplishing what needs to be accomplished.  First up is reviewing all of the technical edits for Beads in Motion.  There will undoubtedly be some illustration changes so we'll so how much of my learning curve I retained!

On the beady front I finished a third color way for Spirit Flight my Southern Bead Retreat piece.

Originally Spirit flight was designed with a felted ball, but since exact sizing was imperative and I had created the ball myself in a non standard size, the impracticality of kitting over 50 of these became pretty apparent to me.  The calipers revealed a need for a 1 1/4  inch ball which happens to be a standard wooden ball size.  It sounds heavy but it's not at all, wooden balls are surprising light.  So although I don't need to roll over 50 evenly sized felt balls I do need to gesso and paint over 50 wooden balls. This one is done with a new line of metallic paints from Christi Friesen named Swellegant.http://store.cforiginals.net/swmecoco.html  It has a beautiful richness to it.  This is the brass metal coating.  There is also a line of colored dyes and patinas that can be applied, but for this one I like it as is.

I am also working out some clasp decisions on my Beading by the Bay piece.  For those of you waiting, the goal is August 1st so share with you next  years projects by Sabine Lippert, Huib Petersen and myself!

and....each day I wait for the UPS lady to see if she's brought my copy of 500 Beaded Jewelry.  The reviews are starting to come in and they are all glowing.  How could it not be a gorgeous book, 500 examples of contemporary Beaded Jewelry? And as I looked for a review to link I noticed that Jean Yates called out my Party Girl necklace, how exciting is that?   I think how far the art has advanced over the 20 years I've been doing it and I can't wait to see so many different pieces created with beads.  I'll be sure to share the minute I get it, well when I get done drinking in the pages.