Winter Enchantment- Art Beads blog - Genea Beads

Hello friends!

Well I don't know if you are getting spring where you are, but it sure still feels like winter here in Kansas City, Missouri!

It's been nice that it's been cold since it took me until now to get my Art Beads blog completed. I was swamped with the Bead Soup Party and I am definitely not a "multi-tasker". I always HATE that corporate term. Multi-tasking just means doing a million things at once crappy instead of one thing at a time well done. So now that my soup design was complete it was time to work on my Winter Enchantment blog WELL :D  

Mom ended up coming over to bead with me :) Since she already had her beads picked out for her fringe bracelet it was easier for her to travel here. One never knows what one will need for a mixed-media asymmetrical bracelet, you know!

Here was mom's bead mat with all of her fringe beads layed out. See all of the Genea Beads :)

Here is a pic of mom beading :) I really love beading with my momma. I hope you get to enjoy creating jewelry with someone you love. It is really nice to create with another person!

 Yikes! Is this what your bead table looks like when you are creating? Every time I think of how messy my desk gets when I create, I ALWAYS think of Creation is Messy(they make awesome glass rods). I always think it's just the perfect name because, well creation IS messy!

Here was the first design. I liked it, but the hollow on the right was uncomfortable. It just didn't sit right. I was bummed because I really wanted to use the Hill Tribe silver simple flower bead caps. The caps were actually a bit more rounded, but they stuck out on the sides of my hollow bead. I thought "Hmmm... I wonder if I just put them on my bench block and give them a few taps to make them a little flatter..." Guess what? It worked! See how they fit nice a snug on the bead? Cool little trick you can use if you ever run into that problem. If it's not working out, hit it with a HAMMER! Lol, if only that trick worked for everything :/ Oh well ;)

 

Ah there we go! I took out the hollow bead and stuck in a lovely Hill Tribe lentil that was an orphan in my bead box. Lentils are always such comfortable beads to wear and it fit in just fantastically!  Now for the supplies I ordered. I got: 2mm seamless sterling silver rounds, 2x2 silver crimp tubes,  Hill Tribe silver flower stamped round bead frame, and silver plated round links on round cable chain.

Don't you just LOVE the pieces I got from Art Beads?!  I LOVE the round stamped Hill Tribe bead frame! Of course you knew I would like it because it provides "negative space" which I find terribly visually appealing, oh and it's HILL TRIBE! ;) I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the loopy cable chain! When I saw that Art Beads was carrying it I immediately remembered seeing Lorelei use this very same chain in some of her pieces. I remembered loving not only her jewelry, but oh that chain! It really has a wonderful "soft" feel to it. The loops have this amazing movement to them that is just really incredible :)

Do you like what I did with the square bead frame? I wanted to use it in a different way so I used jump rings to hold the sides and strung a headpin through the bead holes to hold the inside lampwork bead and drop a Hill Tribe dangle from the bottom :D I love doing clever unexpected things with jewelry parts ;) 

Oh and here is the back side. The soldered charm I made is of course, two sided.  So something else you definitely can't tell from the picture is that all of teh little round lampwork spacer beads are actually this really dark blue glitter. It appears black, but its a really sweet odd lot glass(figures, right? Me using odd lot glass ;) called Dark Blue Aventurine by Bullseye.

Well I hope you enjoyed my design process and my product review! Why not hop on over to Art Beads and nab up some of these fabulous products?

Much love,

Genea

**Disclaimer I have received these products free of charge by Artbeads.com. I am honestly reviewing the products and have not been paid for my endorsement as it pertains to the products received.**