Welcome to the Art Bead Scene’s ornament blog hop! We were all challenged to pick from our art bead stash and make ornaments. I went with my birdie and house beads to make simple little ornaments:
Both ornaments were fishing expeditions in the bowls of bead soup in my work area. By this point in my beady life, there are plenty of bits of ribbon, wire, stone and everything else to make some cute little things!
Make sure and check out my fellow Blog Hoppers:
Tooaquarius (you’re here)
The Art Bead Scene posted a call out to beady folk everywhere to join the 2011 Ornament Blog Hop and I tossed my name in the hat! There are some amazing pieces being featured in this hop! First up we have my group shot:
Then the rings by themselves – these were older beads I’d had for a bit. They finally got used! Yay! Happy beads. One is just a big gold bow at the top of the ring. The other has sparkly ribbon woven around and around. The last has little wire squiggles and red glass beads tied on.
The final one is my little poinsettia wreath. I made a few small loops of brass wire and then wrapped the last of my poinsettias on (there’s a few in my shop yet but last in my box of play with beads, sigh). I added a few leaves and a ribbon at the top. If I do this one again, I’ll use a much thinner gauge of wire to bind the beads on and add pearls!
Don’t forget to have a look at the other blog hoppers:
This weekend is the Fall Into Christmas Show, the biggest local handmade market, and I spent the week finishing up preparations for that. It seems odd to be cranking out Christmas items when it’s been in the high 20s all week, just like summer, but that’s just what I did.
These are all versions of my tutorial. Some of these use 8 parts. I have some that DIDN’T get finished in time that will be other variants as well. I have an awful lot of ornaments here to use up!
Go with the dovey in simple pearly white or with the gold leafing on the edges? Decisions decisions.
I made a stack of doves in plain white (I hate working in plain white! The clean room needed to do it does not exist in my studio) with lightly textured fronts. On the front textured I painted layers of milky pearly shiny goodness. The back remains plain so you can grab a Sharpie and scribble your own message. Makes a great gift label and ornament.
I had a fun run of ornament making classes with the whole range of clay folks in town. Grade 1 through adults showed up for classes this fall and we made ornaments. These are from my last adult class based on my free tutorial. I will have to update the instructions to include some of the extra ideas that people have come up with since I released it last year.