Confessions of a Crystal Hoarder Blog

The two questions people typically ask me when they see my beadwork are: “how long did that take you?” and “where do you come up with this stuff?”

They can be equally hard to answer. Let me tackle time first…since one of my goals is to gain beading devotees, I don’t want to scare them, or set unrealistic expectations. Inspiration can be even more nebulous. Often, it’s a scrap of a memory or a technique that I want to play with, that leads me to a design. I don’t actually read the instructions that come in beading books and magazines (with the exception of Carol Cypher’s Mastering Beadwork when I get stuck ). I really just stare at the photos until I figure out the thread path or construction, or until I figure out a way I want to do it instead. I’m left-handed, so I often work things in reverse from instructions anyway.

So for February’s Treasure Box, I dug back through my mind (and binders) to try to catch some of those elusive images that inspired me, and used the this month’s goodies to execute the vision.

I dismantled the Scudi coin bracelet that arrived this month to use for links. If you don’t want to dismantle yours, oryou want to be extra destructive, there are more available on the site (#21325). My sky blue moonglow cabs were the right size for the links, and their glowing nature reminded me of Caribbean travel brochures. I also had some light turquoise glass bead chain in my stockpile, so they were perfectly suited to the palette in my head. I created a Y necklace that’s light enough to wear in my native Florida.

Those links also came in handy for a quick bracelet design. When I see something in a magazine that catches my attention, I tear out the page and add it to my binder of randomness. Projects that I rip from magazines go into binders by technique. I tore out a photo a few years back of a necklace Keira Knightly wore to some awards show or another. I may not have sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds like Harry Winston, but I do have a collection of miracle bead cabochons in bright colors. I had to include a photo taken with flash…just so you could see them glow!

The embossing on the brass hearts from the box reminded me of one of my Trapper Keepers from elementary school, but I decided to color them in the spirit of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine graphics and animation. I used Sharpie on these, punched holes and sealed them with Glossy Accents.

When playing around with the silver spacers and Czech glass bicones, they reminded me of this woven bangle from Beadwork Magazine. Theirs is woven as components, and is quite intricate. For mine, I simply strung 5 of each bead on my fireline, and ran the line back through the whole thing a few times and tied. There’s a black Czech glass 10mm between each component to keep them steady. At first I was going to use black disc beads between them, but they did not snug up the holes in my bicone and spacer doughnuts.

This necklace was inspired by an advertisement attached to a copy of Bead and Button magazine for one of their other publications. As you can see, it was a perfect, if literal translation for the use of chain from our boxes. I wanted to fashion a really spring-y necklace, so instead of making a pendent sort of configuration, I used coral and turquoise colored drucks to reinforce the chains curve around the neck. I also wasn’t crazy about the wobbly bits, so I chose not to add the danglies on my version.

Design ideas can come from anywhere. Sometimes my precedents are mixtures of snippets, or even incorrect recollections of projects, and I’m just fine with that. Sometimes I can just look at the beads and know where I want to go, and I’m fine with that