A Bead A Day:
Lisa shares her selection of summery pink beads and crystals. The “Watermelon Crawl” bead mix is sure to conjure up visions of a family picnic on a warm summer day!

About.com Jewelry Making
Take these quick polls about wearing and making jewelry. Which are your favorite pieces?

Art Bead Scene
The Trendy Bead shows off wood filigree pendants.

Barbe Saint John
Read Barbe’s interview on the Objects and Elements blog

Carmi’s Art/Life World
Carmi hand felts a pretty bead from wool roving.

Cindy Gimbrone aka The Lampwork Diva
A trip to glass city doesn’t go as well as planned. Yet Cindy finds inspiration and few new tools!

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Melanie mixes up gunmetal chains and components with brass to make a necklace with one of her Toolbox Treasure pendants

Humblebeads
Heather sketches out some new designs using this summer’s hottest color.

Jean Campbell Ink: Eureka!
Beading in the fresh air clears the mind, bringing fresh creativity

Lorelei’s Blog: Inside the Studio
Searching for some new inspiration? Lorelei’s got just the place for you to find it!
Snap out of it, Jean! There’s beading to be done!
Jean reviews Wirework, a new book by the famous Dale “Cougar” Armstrong

Strands of Beads
Melissa shows off her new lunar phases and compass rose designs

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
While traveling in Florida, Andrew shares a new variation on a favorite skull bracelet.

Custom Cool Jewelry
by Melinda Barta

Melinda Barta came up with a brilliant idea for this fun book. Instead of spreading her many talents out too thinly, she concentrated on just three areas: pendants, charms, and clasps.

It’s often hard to find exactly that perfect piece to customize your jewelry, and if you can make your own pendants, charms, and clasps, you can add them to readily available lain beads to create a masterpiece that is distinctively yours. Melinda includes over 275 quick and easy ideas for mixed media components as well as 7 full stringing projects. Once you start making these components, you’ll never run out of ideas about what to do with them!

Custom Cool Jewelry teaches you how to create personalized, affordable, and unique alternatives to store-bought beading components using a wide range of jewelry and basic crafting materials including embossing powder, collage papers, wire, fibers, glass etching cream, patinas, found objects, fabric, memorabilia and more.

Check out The Bookshop for lots more links to books about jewelry-making in addition to this fine guide!

Carmi’s Art/Life World:
A vintage comic book becomes the inspiration for a necklace.

Barbe Saint John
Barbe reviews Ancient Modern Polymer Clay book

About.com Jewelry Making
Summer time is affecting Tammy’s jewelry designs. How about yours? Check out her summer jewelry plans so far.

Art Bead Scene
Kandinsky inspires this month’s challenge. The ABS editors suggest a selection of their handmade art beads for a Kandinsky inspired jewelry piece.

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
A new shipment of copper blanks has Melanie plotting for some metal playtime!

Snap out of it,Jean! There’s beading to be done!
Pink, gold,and cream! Jean creates a lovely necklace and earring set featuring a beautiful Russian hand painted focal from Artbeads.com

Strands of Beads
Melissa shows off her work in progress - an eerie lock and key design

Belle Armoire Jewelry is published by Stampington as a quarterly magazine. The deadline for submissions for the next issue is July 15, 2009. From the website: If you’d like to share your inspiration and detailed how-to instruction for creating beautiful jewelry with readers, we want to hear from you. Belle Armoire Jewelry covers a broad range of mediums, from art clay to polymer clay to found object to fiber to wire to beads and much, much more. Whether you are a creator of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches, pendants, rings or other jewelry, we welcome you to submit your artwork for consideration of publication.

Please read submission guidelines before sending your submissions to: Stampington & Company · C/O: Belle Armoire · 22992 Mill Creek, Suite B · Laguna Hills, CA 92653

Betsy Baker, owner of Stonehouse Studio, creates lovely classic jewelry from polymer clay.   The combination of polymer with beautiful metal frames and findings makes gives it timeless style.  Betsy writes:

I love the contrast between metal and polymer clay.  Metal is bullied and cajoled into doing what you want by hammering, sawing and torching.  Polymer, on the other hand, is the most cooperative, versatile and forgiving of mediums.  As is so often true of opposites, the two work beautifully together.

My work is inspired by nature, which may seem strange since my primary medium is a synthetic plastic.  But the chameleon-like qualities of polymer clay allow for innumerable ways of bringing an artistic vision to life.  My polymer work encompasses a variety of surface techniques, including alcohol inks, acrylic paints and image transfers altered with colored pencils.  The end result is jewelry that is organic, simple and very wearable.

Krissy Fernandez, of Junk & PO, shared her wonderful cupcake series with us!  She calls them the “No Fat, No Sugar, No Calorie Cupcakes (…. Without all the artificial stuff.)”  Isn’t that great!  I can imagine simply hanging one of these off of a plain cord necklace.

Here’s more from Krissy:

These are the perfect cupcakes for all you health nuts! And if you’re not a health nut (like me), even better — these cupcakes are sure to satisfy any sweet tooth! Each cupcake necklace is one of a kind, and I’m not just talking about its handmade nature. You will never see one with the exact same variation of colors, accents, and quirky style. For that reason, these cupcakes are numbered, and each number is pretty much its own bar code. They also come with a special photo ID card indicating what number it is in the collection.

=The Art of Cupcaking=

I really enjoy making these polymer cuties because each one I complete is totally different from the next – kind of like meeting a new person every hour (and yes, that’s how long it takes me to make one cupcake). Some cupcakes are outrageously wild, while others are sophisticated and chic. When I sell these at craft shows, I actually get to meet the people that these cupcakes are destined to be with. You can definitely see someone’s character shine through just by seeing what cupcake they purchase - because all my cupcakes have a distinct exclusiveness to it just as each person would have too!

=The Artist=

My dad once told me that it’s okay to color outside of the lines, heck, on the walls if I wanted to, and I haven’t stopped exploring my creativity since — thus, the reason why I just can’t seem to settle on one medium or style. It’s just too much fun trying to absorb anything and everything I can about what inspires and fascinates me. I also get “un-fascinated” pretty fast so my mind is constantly racing for new things to keep me from losing it. Screw compromising a vision to have a defined style - Art isn’t just a marketable business. I’m in it for the growth of my own soul. However, I’d love for you to be a part of it.

Source of inspiration: cute & creepy things, the awkward & obscure, hip hop, lowbrow art movement, and life.

Location: Now resides in San Diego, CA after moving from Guam four years ago

A hand-me-down sweater … a raggedy old skirt from the thrift store … a plain T-shirt … Using just a few tools coupled with your creativity, all of these items can be transformed into fantastic works of wearable art! The publisher of Belle Armoire and Somerset Studio invites you to submit your own altered and embellished clothing and accessories to be considered for the second volume of this exciting publication. Chapters will include Skirts & Dresses, Pants & Overalls, Jackets & Vests, Shirts & Tops, Children’s Wear, Sassy Shoes, and Accessories.

Deadline for artwork to be received: June 15, 2009. Please read submission guidelines before sending your submissions to: Stampington & Company · C/O: Altered Couture · 22992 Mill Creek, Suite B · Laguna Hills, CA 92653

Make Art Monday!

I made this necklace, All the Keys to Emerald City, quite a number of years ago, back when I was more interested in treasure necklaces than in embroidery.  I still like to make treasure necklaces from time to time, but frankly, I’ve used up a lot of my favorite treasures already!

Guess I’ll just have to go on some more vacations and do a little collecting 

Tomorrow for Technique Tuesday, I’ll give you a step by step run down on how this was made.

Make Art Monday!

I’ve been experimenting with some elevated beadwork, a very different style to what I normally do. I learned this particular style of raising the work from Nancy Eha, and it’s opened up some new avenues of exploration for me. Here’s a detail:

It’s not too appropriate for most clothing, since the “petals” are only hooked down in three spots…it would be too easy to snag them on something and rip the whole thing out! But it’s a fun application for quilting

As usual, I am stuck with no name for this piece.  I’m not entirely happy with the results either.  I thought that I wanted some of the petals to hang over the edge of the quilt (you can see them on the left), but now I don’t really like the way it looks.  I’m trying to decide whether or not to add another strip around the quilt edge…what do you think?

There are some extra process shots here if you’d like to see more!

About.com Jewelry Making:
Hook up with a cute little fiber flower charm and necklace project! Combine your crochet and jewelry making skills.

Art Bead Scene
Hello Spring! Goodbye self-control!

Art Jewelry magazine
It’s video madness at Art Jewelry and Addie gives you a peek behind-the-scenes.

Barbe Saint John - New Jewelry from Forgotten Artifacts
Cindy’s Beads & Barbe’s Creativity add up to some great necklaces!

Carmi’s Art
Carmi sews crocheted flowered into a soft new collar.

Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
A special event inspired a special neclace, which now appears in a special issue of a bead magazine!

Jewelry & Beading
Combine wirework with seed beads for a one-of-a-kind necklace!

Snap out of it, Jean! There’s beading to be done!
Like Art Nouveau? See this lovely book by Judith Durant and Jean Campbell who explore great works from that period in jewelry projects!

Strands of Beads
Melissa shows off a few beautiful fossilized coral beads.

The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton
Andrew shares the new additions to his bead stash.