Peapod in Purple

The last commission before Christmas (I hope) was one of my signature peapod pendants. I know a lot of people have come up with similar designs over the years but I have been making them to my own design for at least the last decade. The reason I have made so many of these is that for the last 13 years I've been working in pea genetics and all but one of the pods have gone to ex-colleagues as leaving presents. The only problem has been making sure that the pods are fairly correct botanically, and fit the research... thus this one, for a student working on gene expression in pod tissue, had to be purple, for the mutation she was investigating. The peas and the calyx had to be green however

Luckily I had just the right colours of freshwater pearls and cylinder beads on hand to make 'Becky's Purple Pod'

I've just sent it off to my old project leader so she can pass it on.
I wonder if I'll still be making these now I've left the group...somehow I think I will as they are very satisfying to do!

Back from the beady beyond

Wow it has been a LONG time since my last blog post! I hit a bump in life's road where it all became too much but in the background the beads were waiting.
Since taking redundancy this year I have been able to rediscover the joy of beading and so I have a few pieces to share.
 The Battle of the Beadsmith went ahead as usual with many more participants and a more complicated structure. This time I decided I wanted to make components in bead embroidery, and knowing that I would be short of time decided to make a necklace on a smaller scale than my embroidered bags (I was finishing up many strands of research at work prior to my finishing in July)

I called the piece 'Peach Parfait' and based the palette around the shades in the focal piece of plume agate (one of my favourite minerals) The curved components were inspired by swags in baroque architectural embellishments.

A favourite glass artist of mine is Lyn Owen of Silvermoonlyn and if I am really lucky I can score one of her amazing dichroic glass cabochons when they get listed at midnight UK time (Lyn is based in Australia so the time difference is not my friend). Anyway this was one of my treasured purchases, and is an amazing purple/blue shimmering glass with a lot of silver foil. Quite challenging to match in seed beads but I was happy with the result and found a great summer dress to wear with it. so it was one of my 'most worn' pieces of 2015

Finally, I have become very partial to the ceramic buttons frequently found in museum shops here in the UK. After a lot of hunting around on google images I discovered they are made by a small company based in Cornwall: Stockwell Ceramics. As these buttons are available in various sizes they make great additions to bead embroidery. This 'Arts and Crafts' style daffodil button inspired me to make a scenic barrette (I am still addicted  to making these!) I used a 'painting' method with different blends of size 15 beads for the background, and made the daffodils in peyote/embroidery using size 11s

I am really happy with this and can see me experimenting further in this Impressionist brushstroke style.

I hope to get back on the blog wagon a bit more in the coming months, now my beading has revived and the muse is visiting again.