The Jade Inspiration Challenge

Now appearing on the Beadfx website are the latest challenge results from The Dixon Chick and myself. I call mine "Jade Mystery" because when she gave me the beads, Dwyn told me that the jade dangles were vintage and had been taken from a piece that I had never seen. Since I'll never know what the original looked like, the history of these beads will always be a mystery to me.

Here's what we both started out with: a large brass piece (or "gi-normous" as Dwyn describes it), some jade coloured glass beads that already had wires loops on them (very convenient), gold/brass starfish, circles and leaf charms, and some 4mm gold round beads.

Once again, we both made something completely different. Once again, I used wire crochet in my creation and Stephanie did nothing of the sort. Too funny!

Stephanie's creation is called "Convertable Jade" because her piece can either be worn as a necklace or a belt - very cool, very unique! (many thanks to Dwyn for the photos of the finished pieces)

Did I mention that I also made matching earrings? (but of course I did!!)

P.S. I'm beginning to think Dwyn has a thing for the colour green. This is the second time she has given us green beads to work with and - spoiler alert - next month's challenge has them too!!!

The 10 Minute Necklace

The other day, I finally figured out what to wear to work (it's hard these days, because it's single digit temperatures overnight, which means it's chilly in the morning, and then warms up to about 18 during the day, which means my office is like a refrigerator in the morning because the airconditioning is blowing full steam and like an oven in the afternoon because the A/C seems to have turned off just as the sun starts shining directly in my windows to warm the place up) but didn't like my choices of necklaces to wear with what I'd chosen.

I decided to make myself a new necklace but I only had about ten minutes before I had to leave for work (oh, to be a work from home jewellery designer full-time, then I wouldn't need to change out of my pyjamas or rush off in the morning! And in my ultimate, I just won $26 million in the lottery dream, I'd also be living in a much warmer climate). I had bought these daisies at the TBS Bead Fair two weekends ago and decided I would just dangle them from some chain using jump rings. I had 5 daisies in total, so used 2 for earrings and 3 for the necklace - easy and quick!

Carin's Beads

Last summer in France, I shared a room with a lovely woman named Carin who lives in B.C. (we thought it was appropriate that the only 2 Canadians in the group should room together and it turned out to be a good fit). It turns out she makes lampwork beads too, only once I saw the type of things she has made, I had to admit to myself that I am still operating on a learner's permit when it comes to bead making - I bow to her greatness.

Check out this marble bead bracelet that she made - I love the bigness of the beads and the decorating on them is so beautiful:

Carin told me that if I gave her one of the old fashioned skeleton keys that I had bought at the vide grenier, she would put a bead on it, so I did and last week, a package arrived with these two treasures inside:

I find the spiked heart to be especially punk in style. I am wondering if I can find some chain that looks a bit like barbed wire to hang it from, it kind of cries out for something like that, don't you think?

Thank you, Carin!!

Antique Market Finds

As promised, here are a few photos of some of the treasures I bought at the outdoor antique market on Saturday. I was tempted by the oh so tacky tiger/jaguar/leopard but managed to restrain myself.

I did find this lovely bracelet, which I shall attempt to copy at some point in the future but in the meantime, will enjoy wearing on my wrist, telling myself the beads are no doubt vintage and very rare:

It jingles very nicely on my wrist as I twist it about, it's colourful enough to go with absolutely everything and the strands are stretchy so it's easy to slip off and on.

I also bought a whole bunch of buttons and I was quite excited about the price. Each card in the photo was $1, which in one case was 3 lovely jet buttons and in another case was fifteen equally impressive metal buttons. This, to me, was quite a find, given that you usually pay at least $1.00 per for vintage buttons at a bead show. I probably should have bought all of them and then resold them at the upcoming TBS Garage Sale to fund my trip to Milwaukee and/or pay off my vet bill. Oh well, you know what they say - hindsight is 20/20.

The woman that sold me these buttons had dozens of these cards, all of which she made, decorated and attached the buttons to herself. Seems like a lot of work for $1.00 to me but it must be a labour of love and they certainly look lovely. She also sells vintage ktichen utensils and linens, while her husband has a whole bunch of vintage tools and keys and hardware stuff in the other half of their booth. I discussed different hammer heads with him on Saturday.

I picked up a couple more insulators, a pretty turquoise one and a neat white/clear one that looks a little bit like a top hat (2nd from the left and far right in the photo):

My funnest purchase was this salt and pepper set. Have you ever seen such a glamourous pair of fish? I certainly have not. Quite a deal for only $5!!

Happy Mother's Day

To all the mothers out there and especially to my own dear Mom, I wish you all a very happy Mother's Day. I hope you are spending the day with people you love. I will be.

Outdoor Market Season

Spring has finally sprung here in southern Ontario and that means the start of the outdoor antique market season.

Getting to the first Flamboro show at the Brampton Fairgrounds was a bit of an adventure this morning. As I was driving, the sky was turning blacker and blacker and suddenly it started to pour. I could hardly see anything in front of me - just followed the lights of the truck ahead of me and hoped for the best. Then something bounced loudly off my roof, followed by another loud metallic ping and I realized it was hailing. For tiny little bits of ice, they sure make a heck of a noise when you're sitting inside a tin can!! It was so bad, traffic was pretty much standing still, although there was still the odd foolish driver here and there who didn't see the need to put their headlights on (what is wrong with these people??). I made my way to the side of the road and waited it out.

After only a few minutes (that seemed much longer), the skies cleared and I continued on my way. Met my friend Barb in the parking lot after a couple of cell phone calls to coordinate positions and we then prepared to shop. She had very cleverly brought along a couple of fabulous raincoats for each of us, complete with reflective strips, courtesy of a paramedic relative. Of course, several people seemed to think we were the parking lot staff as we walked around but that was okay. We probably could have auctioned off the coats for a pretty penny during the heaviest downpours!

The number of vendors seemed much smaller this time around, perhaps it was the weather, maybe due to the economy. There were two buildings full of the smaller bits and pieces and several stalls outside with larger furniture and whatnots. Everything outside was covered with a thin layer of water although most of the items seemed to have withstood the early morning deluge. Then it started raining again just before midday and that carried on rather torrentially for quite a while. Luckily, we had checked out the outdoor stalls before the rain started. Barb and I ate our hotdog lunch in the car, put our raincoats back on during a break in the rain and headed in to scour the insider vendors' tables.

I'll share my purchases with you in Monday's post. In the meantime, here are a few photos of my day:

The World on a String

This past Wednesday was the May meeting of the Toronto Bead Society. It was our annual general meeting to elect the Steering Committee but there wasn't anything to vote on because all the positions were filled by acclimation (i.e. only one person volunteered to do the job so they were picked!). In some cases, two or three people offered to share the position, which probably makes sense as far as time commitments go. I'm sure everyone will do a great job.

Since that that part of the meeting didn't take too long to sort out, we were then treated to a showing of part of a DVD (which was actually one of a series of 5 in total) called "The World on a String". It's a "documentary series produced by veteran film maker Diana Friedberg" showing the history of the world as it pertains to beading. Not surprisingly, she travelled to over 30 countries to film the series.

The DVD we watched was called "A Passion for Beads" and the two or three segments that I saw were quite fascinating. One woman was teaching African people to make beads out of recycled glass, including eyeglass lenses, while another woman described her passion for vintage Swarovski crystals and displayed the dresses she makes entirely out of crystals, feathers and ribbons but absolutely no fabric. Unfortunately, I can't find anything about her designs on the Internet (all I remember is her last name was Be!!) which is a shame because these outfits have to be seen to be believed, they are exquisitely beautiful. One skirt was made entirely out of peacock feathers! The dresses take hours and hours of time to make and they often created right on the models for a perfect fit. Incredible.

Here's the link to the website for the DVDs: http://www.worldonastringmovie.com/index.html

I'm definitely going to check them out.