Florence Turnour's Blog

Also at Ruby Tuesday Bead Company, I bought a brass pendant that the shop owner embossed and embellished. I used Cynthia Rutledge's pattern from the February/March 2011 issue of Beadwork Magazine to make this pendant.

I visited my local beadstore, Ruby Tuesdays in Long Beach, and bought (among other things [grin]) a strand of purple petals. They are not the shape required by Cindy Holsclaw's Sakura Charm pattern , but I thought I'd give it a try. It took me a few attempts to decide that the petals were not going to fit with the pattern as written, and then I got lucky, and tried just changing all of the size 15/0's to 11/0's. It worked like a charm! I love my little pendant. Thanks, Cindy!

This peyote tube uses the same pattern as the first one except that I used different sizes of crystals. These top drilled bicones have always looked interesting to me, but I've not found a good use for them. Here, they make the tube quite stiff, so there was no need for extra reinforcement. Gwen used these beads in her version of Cindy's Sakura Charm . They look fantastic. For sale in Gwen's Etsy shop: http://www.gwenbeads.etsy.com I'm definitely going to have to give that a try. Time to order bicones; Fire Mountain Gems seems to have them on sale!

Here is my fourth or maybe my fifth attempt to make something using peyote stitch. It is stable, not to squishy and easy to make. I made fairly fancy ends (you can't see them from this angle) in an attempt to make it sturdy, and in the process figured out a better way to make it stable without the end structure. So on my next go, I'm going to forgo the end structure, and hope for a fuss-free non-squishy tube. In the meantime, I get to wear this one!

I made this movie by drawing on my iPad using a software called Doceri (Visit Doceri.com ). Doceri lets you play back your drawings one stroke at a time, or a few at a time, so it is easy to make animation like this. My kids like to watch their drawings draw themselves.

Benjamin has been asking me if he could sew with beads for a long time now, so one day, when he was home sick from school, I let him have a go. He did great. He seems to be a natural, actually. He picked up the small beads with his needle, and counted them twice to double check. I held the thing down while he stitched back through, but otherwise he did the whole thing by himself. Ta da! Here it is, the pretty little flower.

This is me, beading, back in 1973. And I'm still beading!

I'm beading again (la la la). I thought I'd share this pendant in turquoise and brown. The lighter roundels are probably chrisocola. I'm wearing it today!

Here's another picture of my new design. In the process of making this, I had a few (dozen) other ideas that I'd like to try, and I'm moving on.

Have you been following along as I log my progress toward a new design using herringbone with two different sizes of seed beads? I just finished my sixth piece in this effort. Here are the first four: http://florenceturnour.blogspot.com/2010/09/start-of-new-idea.html http://florenceturnour.blogspot.com/2010/10/start-of-new-idea-2.html http://florenceturnour.blogspot.com/2010/10/start-of-new-idea-3.html http://florenceturnour.blogspot.com/2010/10/start-of-new-idea-4.html http://florenceturnour.blogspot.com/2010/10/start-of-new-idea-5.html And (drumroll...) here's number 6. I'm liking how this one came out! Hey, Gwen ?!