Favorite Colors - Desert Sky

One of my favorite color combos of the many bracelets I've made from my original pattern "Ahead of the Curve" which was published in Step by Step Beads Magazine in 2009 is this combination I call Desert Sky. I am always partial to turquoisey-aqua-blue beads and this combination used a matte bronze 8/0 hex and a bronze 8/0 metallic bronze hex from Beadin' Path.

It's amazing how bead sizes differ, even with beads marked 8/0s. But the graduating sizes is what really makes my pattern work - the changing bead sizes and thread tension make the curves curve....

I also used this bronze hex bead in another color combo I called Amber Sky. It's in there between the 11/0 amber round and the bronze twist hex. Someone purchased this one so it's gone, but I'm trying to be fanatical about taking photos of every piece finished.

New Fish

Spending most of my time working on my hand-made pages for our gallery's new cookbook, so my beading is slower right now.

But I have managed to finish two more fish while watching "The Pillars of the Earth" with Dale. Introducing Toni the Tiger Fish....

And her cousin, Rooster. Not sure what kind of fish Rooster is, but he sports a fancy raku tail I found at Shepherdess Beads in San Diego on our vacation in July.

BTW, our gallery (Eclectics Gallery in Kansas City) occasionally publishes a hand-made, limited edition cookbook that is a piece of art. The unveiling will be sometime this month....we only make 40 copies and all recipes pages are hand-made by gallery member artists. They are unique and amazing and also have good recipes! Curious??? You should be. The cost is $65 - a real bargain considering the hundreds of hours we are spending. My studio is a blizzard of papers, inks, glue, ribbons, and other mysterious elements that you'll see on my pages. Stay tuned....

Braided Peyote Bracelet

The recent August/September issue of Beadwork Magazine included another of my peyote beadweaving projects....called Braided Bands.

This design grew out of a curiosity question: what happens if I stitch narrow peyote strips and braid them? It didn't work -  the bands slipped around too much - so I added small tubes of Delicas to hold the "braids" together. The article is called "Braided Bands."

What is very cool is that a reader already has not only made my bracelet, but come up with her own variation. Vicki-Anne Carter from Australia sent me a photo of her creation (and gave me permission to post).

The pattern is simple, basic even count peyote stitching but the trick comes in keeping track of several narrow pieces. Vicki-anne added two more strips and created a very cool bracelet. By the way, Vicki-anne does a lot of beading. Check out her Fickr pics - do a member search for Vickiannec.

One of the things I like about this pattern is that if you use 3 bead colors, weaving in stripes, the two outside colors swap places from one end to the other.

Now I'm working on my sculptural peyote fishies, taking a short break from bracelets. The fish actually take more time and use a lot more beads than the bracelets.