Back on the Blog

Good Morning, It's been quite a while since I have blogged, but I have decided to try and post once a month or so. Not sure whether any of the previous followers will still be interested, but time will tell. 2014 has been a very eventful year. During the Year I was involved with three new The Bead Show events, two in Sydney and one in Melbourne. Volunteer work for the Melbourne Bead Expo also continued, with many Facebook updates promoting the Bead Expo in November. There didn't seem to be time to Blog as well. My class at the Melbourne Bead Expo, Arrowhead Bracelet, was well attended and more than half of the students completed their bracelet in class. This is one of the sample pieces:

This year promises to be equally exciting, with a class at the BSV Members' Retreat in mid January, plus more The Bead Show involvement and the Melbourne Bead Expo in November to look forward to. Caged Pearls bracelet is the project for the retreat.

Add to that four gorgeous grandsons to dote on and you will understand why I don't blog quite so much anymore.

Wooden Boat Festival

The Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart has grown to be a huge and interesting gathering for all devotees of wooden boats and the care and use of the same. It is remarkable to see the variety of boats built from wood all in the same place. From small dinghies and sculls to 100 ft launches and yachts, they were all there for us to contemplate and admire. We spent two days on the waterfront checking out all of the exhibits and admiring the finish on so many of the boats. Having a wooden boat of our own, we were able to appreciate the amount of work required to keep a wooden boat looking so good. Two weeks before coming to Tasmania, we had been sanding down the hull of our own boat and antifouling. It is amazing how much bigger a boat looks out of the water when you are sanding it to when it is floating. It is a very big job and seems endless as once the hull is done, then you need to start on the deck, or the cabin. Wooden boats are a far cry from my usual beading pursuits, but still involve painstaking care for detail and helping my DH to antifoul has been a regular part of life for quite a few years. I am so glad ours is a relatively small boat and not one of the huge boats we saw in Hobart. I certainly wouldn't want to be trying to do all the maintainance work on one of them with just the two of us.

Melbourne Bead Expo

November is over and I still haven't posted anything about the Melbourne Bead Expo which took place over the second weekend in November. It was the usual fantastic weekend of beads, beads and more beads. Set up on Thursday was interesting. It was my responsibility this year to display all of the entries (nearly 60)in the BSV Showcase contest. I'm not sure why someone didn't tell me about the need for wearing knee protectors! Crawling around on the floor running the power cables from stand to stand was not my favourite activity. Thanks to Kerrie, we managed to get the set up organised and then I spent some time working out which pieces went together and which didn't. Meanwhile, others were setting up the "Inspired by" pieces and the "Want it, Take it" section. We also had a Featured Artist this year, the amazing Regina Krawets from New South Wales.

This is one of her wonderful necklaces, "Rafu-Sen". After seeing all of the items in her display cabinet, it was obvious why she had been chosen as Featured Artist! The Bead Challenge, set up at the opposite end of the foyer from the Showcase, was another highlight of the Bead Expo. Another 60-odd pieces, all using the same package of beads and all different! It was quite astonishing to see the variety of techniques and designs which were entered. The winning entries (including one from Regina K.) can be seen here: Bead Challenge Winners and the link to pictures of all entries is here. Make sure you check them all out.

Somehow I got carried away with the Beading Daily and Beadwork magazine Beaded Bead competition, and managed to finish ten beads - two of each style from the last five issues of Beadwork. Then the beads wanted to be strung and so became a necklace called "Purple Hues". Each bead is totally different from the others. They have been worked in different colours, using different sizes, but keeping the same tones. I am quite please with the way it turned out.

Voting is taking place over the next few days at the Beaded Bead Contest page but you need to belong to the Beading Daily community in order to vote. Interesting to see that there are at least two other Australian entries out of the 40 in total. Good luck everyone!

Retro Daisies by Janice Chatham

Today is the big reveal for Project 6 at Beading Babes, Bringing Beaders Together. There were three other projects, but I have only completed the Retro Daisies.

Started the Josephine's Collar, but got very bogged down and it is now in my UFOs tray for the time being. You can find photos of all of the Beading Babes gorgeous projects at Beading Babes Project 6 album.

What a week for etsy sales! I think it must be the best week yet, with five sales since last Wednesday. Not sure just what has caused the interest, but it is very pleasing, with some of my favourite designs heading off to the USA. Just when I think I need to redo the whole shop, this happens and I get a fresh burst of enthusiasm. Snake is off to New York, whilst Froggy has his sights set on Oregon.

It was greatly needed as a mystery bout of what I think was migraine but without the thudding head, reduced my beading capabilities severely over the weekend. With nausea and increased sensitivity to light I couldn't read, compute or bead and spent the whole day snoozing - something unheard of usually. Today I tried to make the Gwen Fisher Cluster Beaded bead from BeadWork magazine in different colours - I had made it once already. The brain freeze was still in operation though and whilst I could understand the basic shape, the lacy overlay just wasn't working out. After a quick nanna nap, I returned to the bead mat to a light bulb moment when I realised what I had done wrong. Out with the scissors and lets start again! This time I hope for a better result.

Gorgeous Rondelles

I found some more gorgeous coloured rondelles at Kays Artycles recently. They are just perfect for the Byzantine Bracelet project which I will be teaching at the Melbourne Bead Expo in November.

There are so many different options for this bracelet. I blogged about some of them earlier, but here is another one using a different type of bead: