FFF-Friday Fiber Finds (belated)

I forgot to keep up with my new goal of sharing a new Etsy "fiber find" of the week last Friday. I was in Austin, Texas on a recording gig and lost track, but never fear, I'll get caught up today with a wonderful selection of beadweaving from my dear friends of the Etsy Beadweavers Street Team.

Ambrosian Beads on Etsy

I finally took the plunge and opened a second Etsy shop to focus on my beadweaving and bead kits: Ambrosian Beads. Eventually I hope to have my main site point to the Etsy shop.

Recently I made a friend who owned a needlework shop but had to close it suddenly and was left with tons of packages of Delica beads. I offered to list some bead sets in the new shop and am having a great time playing with all the colors, combining them and coming up with descriptive titles.

Beadweaving Tutorial-Spiral Rope Stitch

UPDATE !!! Filmloop has been replaced by something I can't figure out, so please stand by until I get a Fickr slideshow ready. Stay tuned !!! In the meantime, here are some excellent tutorials to help:
Spiral Rope Chain
How to Make a Beaded Spiral Rope Chain
Beltana's Beads -- Spiral Rope Chain

Here is my next tutorial for another favorite, Spiral Rope Stitch that is very easy to learn. There are also many possibilites for variation so once you learn the basic stitch, you can take it from there !

New Bead Kit Listed

After an enormous amount of time photographing each step, editing the photos and writing the text, I am finally finished with my third bead kit pattern: Three Original Earring Designs I've already taught the class once in the fall and these designs are a great way to learn three different beadweaving stitches. The Long Drop style earrings teach chevron chain stitch, the Snowflake design teaches herringbone stitch, and the Spiral Rope Loop earrings teach the (of course !) immensely fun and easy spiral rope stitch. All three pairs can be finished in an afternoon.

The Goddess Series

I just finished three pieces for my "Goddess Series" part of the featured artist show entitled "Myth and Magic" at the Artists' Undertaking Gallery in Occoquan, VA. The other featured artist is printmaker, Patricia Smith.

The first image is of a necklace I named "Aphrodite" depicting a female figure rising from the sea. She is done in herringbone stitch with surface embellishment of beads for the seaweed and hair.

The second is a necklace "Athena" and depicts lightning and rain. This necklace is done in ladder stitch and peyote.

The third necklace is "Persephone" for the goddess of springtime and is done in herringbone stitch.

Beadwork Cards

Just listed on Etsy is a set of four cards featuring images from the beaded pieces I made for the Artists' Undertaking Gallery show on travel Most of our artists sell cards with their artwork images and I wanted to get in on the card sales. Check them out:Beadwork Card Set

They're Heeeere !!!

No, not what you're thinking, it's my new BEADWEAVING KITS !!! After over a year in the making, I finally have some completed kits, fully furnished with everything you need to learn new stitches and create some of my signature designs. My beading website has the three current designs with color choices available: Bead Kits

The biggest hurdle was the instructions. I'm not good at drawing, so I enlisted the help of a friend, but ended up going with photographs which is soooo time-consuming, but I think they turned out OK. At least, you can tell where the next bead goes.

I taught my first "class" (I only had one student) on Sunday at http://loftgallery.org and it went very well. The student was very quick to learn and completed the entire project (matching bracelet and earring set) in exactly the alloted time. My next two classes are: October 21 from 2-5 pm (three earring designs) and October 28 from 1- 4 pm (glass gem ring).