blog hop – beadrecipes

Bead Soup Swap & Create 2021

April 11, 2021April 11, 2021 Melissa

After a long hiatus, Lori Anderson has brought back her iconic Bead Soup Swap Party, now called the Bead Soup Swap and Create. In this event, jewellery makers are paired up and send each other a bead soup which must contain at least a pendant, a clasp and a mixture of accent beads – the bead soup!

Signups were in January, and I was paired with Israeli beader Yocheved Chana. Sadly my beads have not yet made their way to Yocheved, although I am told by the post office that they are close!

Yocheved does steampunk-style jewellery and she sent me a mixed bag of beads and bits, literally!!! Random brass elements, some stones and evil eye beads, and all sorts of other bits and pieces.

A literal bead soup! So many different things in here — brass components including some steampunk bits and bobs, sew-on Swarovski crystals, evil eye beads, a few gemstones, glass beads, plastic beads, and more!

I was immediately drawn to the brass elephant head with its lovely patina as a potential pendant. I punched a couple of holes in the top to give it some stability when strung and added in a couple of the green stones and some long corrugated brass beads from the bead soup. From my stash I added some recycled glass Krobo beads from Kenya (given to me many years ago by a family friend) and some brass elements I had picked up somewhere along the way, as well as a little bit of chain. I couldn’t find a clasp in the soup I was sent so I made it long enough to pop over the head.

Another piece in the soup that caught my eye was a lovely faceted chunk, which I am calling citrine. I added a Green Girl Studios pewter wolf pendant and strung them on a simple leather thing with a knotted cord clasp.

Thanks to the pandemic my studio space has been taken over by my husband who is working from home, and my ability to get in there and make is severely limited, so these two pieces are it for now. Thanks for the inspiration Yocheved, and I really really hope your soup arrives soon (I will update her links once I have them)! And many thanks Lori for organising the swap and getting me inspired enough to make something for the first time in over a year!

Other participants (more than 50!) in the Bead Soup Swap and Create have posted their creations in blogs, on Facebook and Instagram and even on Pinterest. You can visit them all here:

Kelly Hosford Patterson

Terry Jeanette Carter

Valerie Norton

Blog Hops and Challenges

Petals

July 30, 2019 Melissa

It’s reveal day for this month’s Art Elements Challenge and the theme for July is flowers. I have plenty of floral beads in my stash, but with not much time to make, I thought I would use a couple of pairs of ceramic charms from Natalie Fletcher-Jones. She has been making some fun new styles featuring petals, which she sells through Facebook at a few different groups.

For each pair, I have kept things simple, letting the charms be the hero of the design. The first pair drove me crazy trying to wrap the little teardrop beads, until I realised I had some fine jumprings that I could thread through the holes. Phew!

And for the second pair, I went even more minimalist, just dangling the charms from a coordinating bead. Easy-peasy but quite sweet.

Please forgive the somewhat dark photos, there wasn’t much light left by the time I took these pictures!

This challenge is a blog hop with plenty of other designers joining in. Please visit them if you can!

Here is a list of the Visiting Artists:
Alysen
Cat
Divya
Evie and Beth
Jill
Hope
Kathy
Linda
Louise
Martha
Melissa
Michelle
Rozantia
Sarah
Sarajo
Tammy

And the Art Elements Blog Contributors:
Caroline
Cathy
Claire
Jenny
Laney
Lesley
Marsha
Susan

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Hoot Hoot

March 1, 2019 Melissa

It’s reveal day for the Art Elements February challenge and this month’s theme, chosen by Cathy Spivey Mendola, is Birds of Prey. My bird of prey of choice is the owl, although my owl is definitely on the cute side rather than the formidable side!

I picked out a small owl pendant by Erin Prais-Hintz from my stash, and knotted it up with a selection of Czech glass beads on orange waxed linen, finishing it off with a little brass chain around the back of the neck. It’s a simple piece, but with the blue and orange colour scheme quite striking. The back of the owl is stamped “hoot hoot”, hence the name of the piece.

And at the very last minute while I was putting things away, I found a pair of earring charms from Humblebeads in her faux tin style, with owls (I had been looking for them but they were in a place I didn’t expect to find them!). I love making earrings, they come together so quickly.

Thanks for the theme Cathy, owls are a favourite around here, and even the cute ones are predators. This is a blog hop, so please have a look to see what others have been inspired by the theme to make:

Guests:

Melissa <– YOU ARE HERE

Team Members:

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges, Books

Diana’s moon earrings

January 31, 2019 Melissa

It is such a long time since I last blogged, I think I posted just once last year. I’m hoping to get more into it this year, but we’ll see if that happens. There are a number of regular challenges I hope to take part in.

Anyway, I digress. This pair of earrings is doing double duty, as a piece for Art Elements’ monthly challenge, which for January is Moon, and also for Allegory Gallery’s Inspired by Reading Book Club, for which the book of the month is Deborah Harkness‘s book A Discovery of Witches, one of my favourite reads of the last few years.

A Discovery of Witches is the first book in the All Soul Trilogy, a series about a witch and a vampire, two of three “creature” races that live amongst us. Diana, a historian and reluctant witch who refuses to knowingly use her magical powers, inadvertently calls up a long-lost alchemical manuscript from the depths of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, which promises answers to the origins of the supernatural races, witches, vampires and daemons. Scared by it, she sends it back and it disappears again, but not before it has been noticed. Pursued by other creatures who want the book, she runs straight into the arms of Matthew, a 1500 year old vampire and the two fall in love, which is, of course, forbidden between the races. The series is about their hunt for the manuscript, and for its meaning for creatures. It has also recently been made into a TV series.

So how does this relate to the moon? At one point in the book, Diana calls on her namesake, the goddess Diana, who makes an appearance in later volumes as well. Diana is the Roman Goddess of the Hunt and is also strongly associated with the moon.

The moon gave me a way to do both challenges at once. These earrings have a beautiful pair of enamelled charms from Anne Gardanne, featuring a silvery crescent moon on a deep blue background. I’ve paired them with a couple of silver owl beads, that just seemed to want to go with the moons. I’m quite pleased with them, they are simple but rather pretty (and I’ve just realised that one of the owls is upside down — oopsy! Good thing these are for me!).

I made another moon necklace last year that I was rather pleased with, that I don’t think I have posted on this blog, It features a Gaea Cannaday resin and copper pendant showcasing one of her gorgeous moon paintings. And even though it wasn’t made specifically for this challenge, I think it’s quite fitting that I show it off here.

If you’d like to see what other people made for the Inspired by Reading challenge, check out the Facebook group. And to see the other Art Elements Moon creations, please check out the blogs of the other participants below:

Art Elements Crew:

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Tide pool earrings

May 31, 2018 Melissa

Gosh it’s so long since I last posted, I can’t even remember! Work, kids, not enough time to create, let alone come up with a blog post. Anyway. Here I am, and maybe I’ll manage to post a bit more often over the next few months.

Today’s post was inspired by a blog challenge set up by the lovely folks at Art Elements, who have decided to hold a monthly themed creative challenge. This month’s theme: tide pools.

As I was thinking about tide pools, I thought about some that I am very familiar with, at Wye River on the coast of Victoria. Wye River is a small village, hamlet even, at the point where the Wye River (which is really a stream) hits the Southern Ocean. It’s a lovely spot, and my parents had a little holiday house there until about two years ago when it was destroyed in a rather nasty bushfire on Christmas Day. Thankfully no one was hurt, but subsequent delays in rebuilding mean that I haven’t been down there since not long after the fire went through.

One of the things I most liked to do when staying in Wye River was going for a long wander along the beach. At the far end, the sand gives way to a rocky tide pool-y stretch of coastline, and I took great pleasure in meandering along, peering into each pool, pointing out the anemones and tiny crabs to the kids.

The surf can be pretty strong along that part of the coast and the tide pools are rugged, with anemones and limpets attached firmly to the rocks, so the rushing waters don’t sweep them away, and hardy seaweeds in the deeper pools. There are tiny pools found in the fissures of the rocks, too, usually harbouring a few anemones.

Wye River Rocks

I’d love to have had the time to make a little tide pool of my own, using resin and shells collected from the beaches down there, but I need to learn the best way of doing that first I think! So instead I dug through my beads to find something that inspired me: a pair of enamelled charms from Anne Gardanne. A couple of tossed and tumbled Czech glass rondelles and voila! Tide pool earrings!

I’ve got some enamelled shells from Anne as well, so they may become necklaces in the near future.

This is a blog hop, so visit some of the other blogs to see what they were inspired to create!

AE Team Members:

Guests

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Art Elements Christmas Ornament Blog Hop

December 22, 2017 Melissa

Oh, I very nearly didn’t make it to this hop today, I always seem to bite off a lot more than I can chew at this crazy time of the year! But having missed the ArtBeadScene Ornament hop, I knew I had to do something for this one, organised by Art Elements.

Anyway, grand plans out of the window, I decided to go simple. I have these fabulous mini embroidery hoops that can be used in a few different ways, and I thought they’d make fine little decorations for the tree. These ones are the “big” ones, at 55mm/2.2 inches diameter. I pulled out my stash of Christmas fabric, my scissors and my hot glue gun and put them to work. One of these days I plan to teach myself how to do paper piecing to make tiny patchwork pictures, but in the meantime I think these are really quite sweet.

Here they are on my handmade ornaments Christmas tree. My big tree has so much on it, the special ones get a bit lost, so I have a little tree just for my handmade ornaments! Some made by me, some by others.

Anyway, this is a blog hop, so go and have a looky-loo at what others have made! And whether you celebrate Christmas, or not, have a lovely holiday and see you in 2018 (eek!).

Guest Designers

Art Elements Team

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Shiny Baubles: the Tacky Holiday Earrings Blog Hop

December 21, 2017 Melissa

I was Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago, when I came across a box of miniature baubles for $5 at a favourite shop of mine (and my girls), Typo. My first thought was to use them as decorations for my daughter when she did her hair as a Christmas tree for Crazy Hair Day at school this week:

But then a Facebook friend of mine, Diana Ptaszynski, announced the first Tacky Holiday Earrings blog hop, to let us all showcase our shiny, glittery, tacky creations. And with teacher presents looming (it’s the last week of school for the year here in Australia), it was the perfect opportunity to make some glittery statement earrings.

Two of the teachers on our present list have a penchant for big, shiny, earrings — perfect! So I put together a couple of pairs of earrings featuring three baubles dangling from a chain of jump rings. Being plastic, they are so light to wear, the size doesn’t matter! I hope they love them!

I also created a bunch of single bauble earrings, for those who might want to be a little less flamboyant.

Sorry Diana, no ugly Christmas sweater here, it’s too hot in Australia right now for sweaters! But maybe some of the other participants in the hop have indulged you!

Diana Ptaszynski

Michelle Ann McCarthy

Heather Powers

Loralee Kolton

Sue Kennedy

Melissa Trudinger <– YOU ARE HERE

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Deeper Water: Music to my eyes blog hop

October 8, 2017 Melissa

The Music to my Eyes blog hop (organised by Kelly Rodgers, a member of the Bead Snobs group that I belong to on Facebook) asked us to make something inspired by a favourite song or piece of music. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have just one favourite song, but quite a few! But I kept circling back to this song, which is definitely up there in my top list of songs!

Deeper Water is a song by Australia’s iconic musician Paul Kelly. As much a poet as a songwriter, his lyrics are evocative and quintessentially Australian. I’ve seen him live a dozen or so times, every time a treat. And this is just one of the songs he’s written that sings to me. When I got married, almost 17 years ago now, our ceremony was on the beach. As I walked down through the reception marquee on my way to join the groom and the wedding guests, the DJ started playing this song and I completely lost it, to the consternation of my bridesmaids. It’s one of those songs that always sends a frisson of emotion across my skin, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I went looking at YouTube for a good version of the song, and found this live recording from about five years ago:

See what I mean?

So, how to translate this song, this poem, into a piece of jewellery? I had various ideas, and as usual no time to really explore and play with creating. Maybe another day there’ll be another piece inspired by this song. But I remembered I had these enamelled charms by Anne Gardanne and they remind me of the beach, where the water meets the sand. And that in turn makes me think of the beginning of this song, “on a crowded beach …”

I’m a little obsessed with these kind of crusty Czech glass rondelles at the moment, they look like something that has been tumbling in the waves for a while. These particular colours just go so well with the charms. And I’ve been using the bright Vintaj Vogue brass a lot recently too, they seem to work well with the beads. What do you think?

As I mentioned, I made these for a blog hop and there are a few other blogs to visit if you feel so inclined! Thank you Kelly for hosting a fun hop, just wish I had found more time to play! Here are the other participants:

Sherri Hartman Stokey

Vicky Sophon

Kayla Freeman

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Art Elements June Challenge: Insects

June 30, 2017 Melissa

Every three months, the blog Art Elements runs a themed challenge. This time around, the theme is insects, a subject with a lot of inspiration for jewellery designers. Personally I love insects of all sorts, except maybe cockroaches, mosquitoes and the ubiquitous Aussie blowfly! But the sheer diversity of insects is just amazing.

I had all sorts of plans to use up some of my insect-themed beads (yes I might have a few!), but in the end I had to content myself with a pair of earrings, and a very simple necklace, both featuring beads by Natalie Fletcher-Jones (it’s not that I don’t have insect beads by other people, but these are the ones that spoke to me this time around!).

First up is a pair of butterfly earrings, featuring black clay charms with a sweet butterfly decal. I’ve kept them pretty simple, just dangling a single flower below them. Despite being quite large earrings, they are very light.

The necklace showcases one of Natalie’s spike beads, again in black clay, and decorated with a cream glaze and a maroon-hued dragonfly. I added some dangles and strung it from a length of black suede leather thonging.

The challenge has inspired me to look through my stash for some more insect beads, so keep an eye out! I’ve also got a post almost ready to go featuring bees, I’ll probably put it up tomorrow. In the meantime, this is an Art Elements blog hop, so if you have time, visit the following blogs for some more insect inspirations:

Guests

Mona Arnott

Melissa Trudinger <– YOU ARE HERE

Sarajo Wentling

Divya N

Art Elements Team

Beads, Blog Hops and Challenges

Art Bead Scene June Challenge

June 24, 2017 Melissa

It’s been a few months since I managed to make something for the Art Bead Scene monthly challenge. But I did make something this month! Well, a small confession — I actually made this last month, but using the inspiration artwork for June (which I had downloaded earlier in the year thanks to ABS making us a little booklet containing the year’s artwork, month by month).

Profile on Red Meanders, formerly Jeanne d’Arc. Odelin Redon, 1900, Pastel

The artwork is by Odelin Redon, a French artist active in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and it really has the most vibrant and luminous colours, quite at odds with the renaissance feel to the female head featured in the painting. I was really taken by the combination of pinks and blues and greens.

I pulled out one of the folk-inspired birds that Heather “Humblebeads” Powers has been making in recent months, a beautiful deep pink one with blue accents. I made a tassel out of embroidery silks that coordinated with it beautifully, but I needed a large bead to balance it. Serendipitously I received a package of funky knitted beads from KnittenJen’s Beads, and one of them paired beautifully with Heather’s bird. I kept the rest of the necklace simple, just stringing it onto a piece of suede thonging. I have had thoughts about adding some more beads (I do have some similar knitted beads without the seed bead embellishment), although to be honest I would need some larger beads than are common in my stash to give the necklace balance. Maybe if the right beads come along I’ll play with a new design but I’m enjoying wearing it like thisat the moment.

Once I’d made the necklace, I of course needed some earrings to wear with it, so I pulled out a pair of Heather’s charms and some Czech glass beads and whipped up a pair in coordinating colours.

Thank you for the colourful inspiration ABS, I now have a new go-to necklace and I have some more birds and some more knitted beads that may find themselves paired together in something similar in the near future!