My Treasury on Etsy Front Page !

It's the first time that my treasury makes it to the front page of Etsy, and it feels so good! :)
I like making those treasuries when I have the time for it – it's quite fun. I created this on a very "cloudy" day, when pessimism almost took over me and I thought that playing with those beautiful cheerful colors would be of a help. Eventually it did and I'm so excited about it! :)

Second Finished Embroidered Piece

This is my new embroidered finished piece.
I keep practicing, keeping in mind what Ritual have told me regarding my first finished piece – she said that the nature of bead embroidery is not perfection, but acceptance… Thanks for that comment, Ritual, you are right and it's a lot more fun working while keeping in mind what you said… I haven't yet got to the point where I am not thinking of it at all, but it's a sort of easing… I'm still practicing and learning…

I have also got another thing for practicing bead embroidery. It's a guiding book that I have received from a very dear friend. The book is "Beading in the Native American Tradition" by David Dean. There are very easy to follow instructions, full of beautiful and inspiring photos, and what makes this book special in my eyes, are the philosophical Native American sayings that are "interwoven" in the explanations and instructions. Highly recommended book! Thank you again, dear friend, also for this one! :)

Three More Awards!

I have received my 3rd and 4th Arte Y Pico Awards and the Home Sweet Blogger Award. That makes a total of 6! awards that I have recieved in the past six monthes. What an honor!

Thank you so much Caroline Parsons for giving me this one. Caroline is an artist who paints most beautiful and vivid paintings. Her blog is one of the most popular blogs in the Art category – you just have to check it out!

So this one I pass on to these 5 bloggers:

1. Water Rosez
2. Njema Creative
3. Salamnder House
4. Yellow Flower
5. Mdm-Beadalot

And thank you too, Kay of Key's K9s for honoring me with two more awards – the Arte Y Pico and the Sweet Home Blog. Kay creates very special beautiful felted dolls – check her blog to see what they are! ;)

The Arte Y Pico award I pass on to these 5 bloggers:

1. Boutique Flair
2. Euphoria Moon Designs
3. My Fair Lady vt4
4. Beads Head
5. Glitter Glow Beading
-----------------------------------------------------------
The rules for passing the award on are (you can copy&paste):
1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter of language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award-winning has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the ward itself.
4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico"blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5) Show these rules.

And the Sweet Home Blogger goes to these 5:


1. Enchanted Beads
2. Blossom Beads
3. Handmade by Erika
4. A Little Something by Dawn
5. Sweet Freedom Designs
-----------------------------------
Pass this Award to 5 other bloggers.

Thank you both again!

Strung and Beadwoven Necklace

Making this necklace reminded me of my first jewelry pieces that I used to make.
Before I started to learn to bead weave and got hooked on it, I used to play and string different kinds of beads to make necklaces and bracelets. I also remember that I used to make a lot of earrings, combined with wire working, but now I don't make them anymore. Bead weaving is much more fun for me! It is like painting or sculpting, two things that I also like to do, but with beads. So, in this necklace I combined my old and currant passions – stringing and bead weaving.
I used Tiger Eye round beads, gold resin beads and a beautiful Volcano cherry quartz (manmade) focal bead – all strung between 2 Herringbone ropes, made with Miyuki triangle beads.
I also used beautiful natural stones, that I am not quite sure of their kind. I immediately fell in love with those beads when I saw them in the store in the Gemstones section, and decided to buy them even though no one at the store could tell me what they are.
I asked one of my beadweaving students who used to work in the jewelry industry to try and identify the stones, and she said they are Amethyst. I think she is right, because in one of the photos, where the light goes through the beads, you can see the purple Amethyst color. If you have a guess of what they are, I would love to know what you think.
But no matter what they are, don't you love the rough cut, the little cracks and the deep color they have?

New 3D Rectangle Pendant (Aiko vs. Delica)

I'm hooked on the three dimensional geometric shapes lately. This is my new design of 3D rectangle and beaded bail. I used Delica (red) and Aiko (all the other colors) beads.

Until not long ago I have used regular seed beads for this kind of works, but then I started to work with Japanese Miyuki Delica beads. The result is much better, because these beads are more uniformed and allow you to make clean lines. You can see the big difference of the two kinds used to make these 3D stars.

BUT then, thanks to a very dear friend, I discovered another kind of uniformed beads. She has sent me some of her favorite Japanese Toho's Aiko beads as a gift (and some more exciting things :)) to try them out.
What can I say? She is right - the Aikos are even better than the Delicas! They are much uniformed and have a larger hole, which makes it easy to pass the needle several times, without worrying about breaking the tiny beads.
Thank you so much my dear friend, I really enjoyed using the beads ! And I hope you like what I made with them! :)

Etsy Bead Weaver's June Challeng – Anything Goes

This is the first time I enter the Team Challenge. The theme for June was "Anything Goes". There are 37 entries for this challenge and they are all so beautiful! I am amazed to see how much talent there is in this group! The voting starts on June 7 and lasts until the 14th. So you might want to visit the Etsy Bead Weavers blog and look closely at all those wonderful creations. You can also vote for your favorite. I can already tell you it will be hard to pick just one as a favorite !.

As I said, this is the first time I enter the challenge. The necklace I made is the 3D Gold Trapezes Necklace. I came up with this design by accident, or shall I say by mistake. I started to bead a 3D square for another design that I had in mind, but I mistakenly didn't string the right number of beads required for a square and ended up with a trapeze. I decided to go along with that and made four more of them. Each one of the trapezes took me about an hour to finish, and another hour to put them all together to make a necklace. It was quite fun to make! :)

Three-Dimensional Star Pendants

Inspired by Yoshi Marubashi beautiful bead woven toggles.
Before I finished the first one, my daughter already decided that it's going to be hers :). I gladly gave them to her, and made the beaded bail wide enough so she can change the cords to hang them from easily.
She's happy – I'm happy! :D