Bag of Beads Reveal - Part 3

Alternate Title: A Few Masterpieces and One Epic Fail.

As promised, here are pictures of some of my favourite creations from the 2010 Bag of Beads project. There are hopefully more to come but I wanted to get permission from the individual artists first and that it taking longer than I had hoped. But never mind, these ones will make a great start!

First up, we have a mobile made by Jo-Ann Wolverton. I thought it was extremely clever of her to make a stand out of copper piping, to go with the little piece of copper piping that came in the kit. I was also interested to hear that she discovered online that it takes mathematical formulas to get a mobile to balance properly and she went to the trouble to do the math to make this one hang just right - very impressive!

Next is a chunky charm bracelet made by Caroline Andrews which shows off her metalworking skills (http://www.sunlinemetalz.com/). I really like the resin charms that Caroline made, and we all had a good laugh when she described how she was able to use the paper and some of the more challenging beads in the kit by putting them into a resin piece. She also advised that this project required her to learn how to use a pipe cutter, a jeweller's saw and a drill. I'm sure she'll find those tools very useful in the future!

This fun piece is made by Sharon Cozens, who tells me it is based on Jeanette Shanigan's "Beaded Doll Pin" design. One thing that Sharon said at the meeting when describing her piece has really stayed with me. She talked about how as beaders, sometimes we try to force the beads when we have a certain design or idea in mind but what we really need to do is listen to the beads and let them do what they want. In the end, the design tends to benefit from that flexibility, the willingness to go with the flow. So true!

Finally, we have what The Dixon Chick called "Epic Fail". She told us that she called it that because the ideas she had for the materials provided didn't work out. I myself do not think this was a total fail. Firstly, I admire Stephanie because I know she is not fond of seed beads and yet signed up for the Bag of Beads Challenge anyway, knowing that at least 80% of it would be made up of the little critters. She should be applauded just for taking part, as there are many TBS members who do not and there are many who buy a kit but don't bring a finished piece to the March meeting to share with the group, so Stephanie should get kudos for that as well. Also, you will notice that her piece is a beautiful painted base on top of which she attached the paper and then attempted to glue the seed beads on in a mosaic pattern. It's an admirable idea, it is just unfortunate that the paper in question was rather odd in that it didn't take to glue very well (it worked okay for me but my sister pointed out that that was probably because I glued it to other paper!) Several people who tried to glue it to various other materials also did not have any success. Best of all, I think Stephanie deserves special mention for being brave enough to show us something that she felt was a failure. Most of us would probably have just left the piece at home and come to the meeting with the excuse that "it just didn't work out" or make up a little white lie like "oops! I left it at home by mistake!" (or would that just be me?). It takes courage to share imperfect results, although I like to think it was partly because she also knew it would be safe to do so with the group of beaders that make up the Toronto Bead Society, who are a very kind and understanding bunch who no doubt have been there, done that themselves and who would never condemn her for at least trying.

Kudos to Jo-Ann, Caroline, Sharon and Stephanie for their creations. Stay tuned for more designs from other talented TBS members in upcoming posts.