Human Beadings

Handmade Beauty for a Cause this Season of Giving

2011-12-12T13:19:00.004-05:00

We all need help sometimes. A group of wonderful people who are jewelry (and other) artists have gathered to help a family in need whom we know could use some grace in the wake of great sadness and disruption of life.

Check out the blog post at Art Bead Scene:
http://artbeadscene.blogspot.com/2011/12/aritists-helping-artists-auction.html

That auction flurry is over today, but at my Etsy Shop (alienbeadins.etsy.com) I will be continuing to donate all proceeds through Christmas to this cause. If you would like to share in the goodness and receive a piece of art jewelry, please convo me with an offer (lower that listed price will be considered) or simply purchase the item. If you would like more details, get in touch with me by leaving a comment here or at the Alienbeadings.etsy.com shop by clicking the "contact" button.

Warm blessings to you for listening and acting from your heart.

Renaissance & the Tabla Rasa

2011-10-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, well, maybe let's be a little less lofty and call it "Renewal."

My official jewelry making enterprise is now well over 5 years old,and I've faced some of the realities of the world of business vs. the fantasy of making things. And survived; my love for making things and working with the people who wear them, intact.

Here are a couple things I discovered:

1. Selling greater quantities of jewelry to a retail shop for next to no profit isn't worth it. The audience may have increased but the ability to meet your customers and please them is gone. So is the incentive.

2. When it comes to shopping, we will never be able to compete with the Cheap and the Imported (henceforth known as CH&I) - and we shouldn't try. What we make is one of a kind, made here locally by individuals that our customers can meet and talk with. There is no substitute for something personal, original and handmade. Not to mention unique.

3. The above realizations notwithstanding, that is the only bad news I have after my slightly-less-than-a-decade as a real business.

4. And the good news is partly to be found in a four-letter word: ETSY. More on that later. I'll be writing on that tabla rasa.

Allegory of Romance

2009-10-03T22:42:00.014-04:00

When things turn monotone, the one constant thing is the trust I can put in my deepest closest relationship- that one with my Muse. The muse continues to ask, many times a day “How are you? What’s going on with you? When are you going to be yourself again?”

That may seem like an annoyance, but how many of you have a muse at all, or one who notices your state of being? It’s actually a luxury. I hadn’t noticed I wasn’t myself until the Muse announced it. Of course, existentially, I can’t be anyone but myself, but I think the problem is I don’t seem like my old self. That can happen when one is sick for a while- pretty sick- and in enough discomfort to think about mortality. I think about such things when I’m unwell because, mainly, doing so reminds me of my strength and my determination to thrive. In my head ( or somewhere close by) a voice says ‘This is nothing: you can get through this!’ To which another voice adds: ‘Soon you’ll be back to doing things you love, with vigor!’

It’s nice to have a psychic choral section for encouragement. When I was making and unmaking this necklace several times, I needed it. Originally a Valentine’s Day whimsy, it started with a very old soft-metal pin in the shape of an arrow. Seemed like a perfect symbol to pair with Hearts for St. Valentine tribute. But the arrow, being ancient and slightly fragile is very malleable. When hung, it never seemed to hang symmetrically. If I had never been fascinated with arrows (and their weaponry association), when I was little I was consumed with love for the painter Paul Klee. And Paul Klee loved arrows. Here is a diversionary series of images to prove that:

For Klee, in the middle of WWII and Swiss, arrows represented direction, (which is hwy they almost always point to the right- the direction of reading) force, connection.

Isn’t that the essence of love? Klee’s Painting Hot Pursuit describes the connection of personal intention leading to something permanent:

So that’s where my uncontrolled subconscious thought was roaming when I saw this antique pin. After that, it became a game to combine components into a message necklace.

So let me give you a key to the necklace:

Arrow = the direction of hope points toward the wearer’s heart

Granite = solidity is the core of love

Crystal spinning inside a shell ring = volatility is the essence of romance

Oval filigree beads = love is intricate

Vintage chandelier crystal = purity gives way to all the spectrum

Blown glass heart and old etched glass heart = two hearts become one purpose

A Question of Balance

2009-05-02T10:58:00.007-04:00

In my life, I’ve always been cobbling something together- making do out of found pieces, instead of having something new and made to fit.

But the world of beads is a world where I rule. I command the vast armies of beads, tell them where to go- pick them up when they overflow. So small and beautiful, beads let us have the feeling of control. Place them, move them. What they make is a work of art.

A work that can be worn, taken with me. I am my own museum.

In this simple necklace, I felt control palpably. It wasn’t just controlling the palette- ivory and earth color. It was finding a way to mount the Indian coin with its graphic round perfection over the smooth elongated rectangular fossil coral pendant. And I found matte moukaite rounds of the same diameter as the agate, to contrast with their high polish.

Moukaite is a wonderful stone – ranging from deep purple-red brown to creamy white, with shades of pink and amber in between. The 2 large matte burgundy rounds echo the dark coin, in both shape and color. The smaller matte rounds of moukaite blend in with the polished agate, noticed only when you look closely, and catch the hints of pink and rose.

You have to sift through a lot of beads, and pass up a lot of near-perfect choices to come up with what happened here. Looking at the necklace you can read the thoughts I was having about sameness and difference and how to tease the line between them.

So I felt perfectly in control, and in the end was pleased with all the decisions I’d taken in making the necklace. We both know that was an illusion: that the beads were in control…rolling out at the right time, letting their individual peculiarities become their perfection, and agreeing to stand in line forever, balanced between plan and accident, intention and adventure.

Psychic Moments with Earth

2009-03-08T17:22:00.004-04:00

Beaders have prescience about small things: how many beads it will take to fit around a wrist, which color of gold will look best with some particular stone, when to stop planning and start working. I was reminded of this when we were in the office of an important man who invited my Muse and me to see a new gift he'd purchased for his son. It was on the floor, carefully packaged in many layers, behind his desk. Would I come and pick it up so it could be unwrapped and admired? And it was heavy, precious, said the important man.

"Oh, I said, walking around behind the desk toward where the treasure was mummified in bubblewrap and corrugated paper. "It's a dinosaur egg." Much to everyone's surprise, it was. The magical ancient ovoid was still indiscernible in its enraveled state, so there was no way my basic 5 senses had clued me on that. It just seemed that, on the short walk behind the desk, a dinosaur egg revealed itself dancing in mid air...couldn't have been anything else.

So this necklace came together in that way, visionary dancing in air, making itself asymmetrically and without question. The yellow turquoise barrels themselves seem like dinosaur eggs, and the green turquoise square is a corner of earth whose crevices and faults hide marvelous secrets. But my favorite: the vaseline opalized glass octagon that sits in front: light filtering through it with great mystery.

Spice Mouse

2008-12-29T12:40:00.004-05:00

A perfect winter piece, with the weight to lay gracefully over a warm winter sweater. Blue coral, little spaceships and silver leaves sit between red sandcast beach glass that looks like spicy gumdrops. and to remind us to be kind to all creatures, an inquisitive mouse from Green Girl Studios nestles between two smaller spun beads. It is the beauty of compassion for the small that will be yours when you wear this.

The Mentor's Key

2008-11-15T10:21:00.005-05:00

The story of this necklace reads like a fairy tale: first, the mentor gives the traveler three keys. And then I guess the traveler goes on to find out what the keys unlock and gets into all sorts of untoward adventures. I think a monster or two will be behind one of those locked doors. Then the heroine conquers the monsters and brings them, along with the treasures she’s gathered along the way, to her Ancestral home with newfound appreciation.

Well, my Mentor DID give me three keys, because I’d mentioned I could see a necklace with a key as the center piece. Then the great voyage began- a search through the treasure chests (actually they’re little bags and wooden boxes) of beads and trinkets to find companions that would ride along with the enchanted key.

The central shield , for protection, is an ancient-looking probably very old brass button with a lot of character and an irregular surface. Perfect for holding the keys and the necklace together. Reminds me of a Celtic knotted embellishment or an Etruscan shield.

There are carved serpentine barrel beads above the centerpiece followed by gorgeous thumbprint Kazuri beads. They’re a soft earthy color somewhere between fern and moss, and when you touch them, could can feel the ancient way they were made: using the thumb to indent soft clay and form a whorl-like shape. It gives you a moment of tactile communion with the person who created them.

The key, which plays the part of lock-et (visual and verbal pun) is symbolically chained to yellow turquoise and shell leaves, two Vaseline matte Czech glass seashells and a double-sided natural brass seahorse.
There are some sweet miniature vintage filigree buttons dangling there in front and a larger flower pattern vintage button used for closure.

The necklace is filled with other treasures, some collected from 30 years ago: a brass –inlaid rectangular tube bead, a paisley carved wooden round and an old nuthusk bead. Nestling in peace with the exotics are several American-made artisan beads: a Keith O’Connor fancy patterned ceramic tube and a mustardy borosilicate dichroic heart. The plain and the fancy, the earthly and the ethereal romp together in harmony for you.

Triskaidekeuphoria

2008-10-09T13:08:00.003-04:00

"Tris-kai-dek-euphoria"
A made-up combination word meaning happiness of thirteen: Thirteen strands of very individual beads, in grayish blues and pinks, all based on the amazing fossil jasper disc of rose, smoke and sky remnants of ancient tidepools.

This is where we repeat the dance of those stones and bones in a delicate way.
Memorabilia from earth to you.

Chance Meeting at a Summer Soiree

2008-08-12T18:13:00.005-04:00

Beads of many shapes and sizes get together and have a party.

Beads, like people, act differently when they aren’t accompanied by others who look just like them.

They burst out of their ordinary personas. They mingle. They make connections you’d never think would work so beautifully.

Fiesta!

2008-07-27T19:21:00.001-04:00

This neckpiece looks like a party to me- not one of those sanguine, sit on the terrace watching the boys play croquet parties—this is a rip-roaring, bring sparklers and spike the punch fiesta. Some very fancy lampworked beads are mixing with down to earth wooden beads, irregular spool-shaped beads and art glass. You’d never think they’d get along. But it’s the colors of a warm summer evening’s sunset that make them happy to sit side-by-side: that orange-y coral and rich plum magenta that gives way after a long evening to Maxfield Parrish blue- deep and on the edge of purple.

Spirit of the Village

2008-07-22T19:22:00.001-04:00

This is a neckpiece for the most powerful person in an ancient village. It brings it’s wearer strength in many settings: there is a fish that symbolizes speed and agility, a fire agate Full Moon bead that symbolizes the fullness of wisdom. These float from an intricately inlaid shell bead shaped like the replica of a small shrine. Two brass boat-shaped beads symbolize a robust body and a vigorous mind to carry one through the difficult waters of life. Above them, encircling the neck, are the ethereal arms of iridescent tube beads, rays of a warming sun.

Remembrace Mermaid

2008-07-17T10:38:00.014-04:00

Like a neckpiece of seafoam, these translucent briolette glisten in the wearer’s peripheral vision. The crystal hangs above the mermaid and rings like a tiny bell.

Is the Sea green - or is it blue? All things beautiful have many colors.

Those who know the secrets of Green Girl know the message inscribed on the back, but it's worth repeatingL "We do not remember days; we remember moments."

The Grass is Greener...Right Here

2008-07-09T16:39:00.007-04:00

Okay, I’m supposed to be doing something else. But I’m thinking of beads…confession! As my mind wanders from work, I think of what a great life I have, and how lovely the view is from here. Just take these amazing gold and green tiger beads from Milan. They were costly- too expensive for a necklace to sell, really, but just right for one to give to a dear friend. The kind who deserves the best and rarest things you can find. It was my Muse who found the first green and gold luxe beauty, in a bead shop we don’t often get to. [The best thing about that bead shop is the great Café on the way home from there: you can drool over your new beads with a latte to disguise the real reason.] Okay- so Muse made me purchase ONE green glass bead- for a hefty $7.00. I thought it was too much to spend, but the Muse chooses, and that’s it!

It only took a glance on the way home to know we'd never be able to live (or finish a necklace) without more of those magical Italian tiger-stripe beads. If you hold a bead up to the light, you can see the world reflected in brilliant emerald. It the glossiest, greenest glass imaginable. So the necklace has to be simple. Let the beads shine on their own, and let the wearer delight in those little worlds of perfection.

Collar of the Shaman

2008-07-03T12:43:00.005-04:00

I see some powerful ancient seer wearing this- the pebble-shaped beads painted with the elements of the universe- sky, sea, soil, soul.

UPDATE FEBRUARY 2009: This piece was stolen from a shop in Avon, CT. It is one of a kind. If you see some one wearing it, you will know that it was not gotten honorably and that it's power to bring good fortune will have been voided by the disgrace of its possessor. The only decent thing to do is to give it away to someone and hope that the generosity of that act will redeem your taking it.

The [Blue] Sky's the Limit!

2008-06-06T09:49:00.005-04:00

You know what it feels like to wake up in the morning, see that deep cloudless blue sky and feel like the possibilities are endless? That your head is clear and your ideas are ready to take off into that ocean of air? This is that wonderful, empowered feeling in a necklace.

Take me To Your Beader

2008-05-17T14:17:00.003-04:00

Alien Beadings' First Creation

2008-05-17T13:59:00.005-04:00

I've had it with Humans lately. Greed, war, cruelty, etc. Those aren't behaviors which I think should inform any endeavor. So why should I call my work "Human Beadings"?

If Aliens could bead, I'm sure they'd be fascinated with the good hearts some humans have. And wear them around their necks.

Ice is Nice

2008-04-18T17:59:00.003-04:00

There are a lot of people who love spring, warm weather, bright sun. Not me. I’m more of a snow-loving, grey skies kind of person. This is how I hold onto winter and the crystalline cold, with color-changing silvery cubes that go from purple-y pink to ice cube blue in different light.

December Messenger

2008-01-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

I’ve had the dichroic pendant that forms the centerpiece of this necklace for a long time. Dichroic is one of the only manmade substances that does magic color-shifting tricks that are reserved for the special creatures of the natural world. Only the rarest butterfly wings, dragonflies, and peacock feathers can change their appearance in the shimmering dance of sunlight. So it was fitting that I waited a while to collect the perfect companions for the pressed glass and dichroic flake pendant: lovely gold Venetian foil patties, little Venetian grape-beads, etched mulberry rectangles, and some special lavender Czech faceted beads. A lovely entourage to carry my “Happy Winter” message to it’s new owner!

Heart of Winter

2008-01-01T13:43:00.004-05:00

The last days of December, after Christmas, are the heart of winter. After the Winter Solstice, these are the epagomenal* days- the days that fall in a secret space of the year- between the old lunar calendar and the new solar calendar. They are magic, these days which we spend with family and loved ones, remembering the old year and celebrating our hope for the year to come. The berry reds and brilliant sterling are the contrast of the warmth of our feelings in the icy weather.

*"The Epagomenal Days are the Days Upon the Year which were highly celebrated by the Ancient Egyptians. It was the transitional days between the old year and the upcoming New Year. It was during this time that great change occurred, and it was not unusual for lives to become somewhat chaotic during this period." [from Per-ankh.org]

Healing Holly Berries

2007-12-18T19:58:00.002-05:00

As I was devising this necklace, all I could think of was whether it would please the wearer. Holly and Ivy colors of the season in which we warm ourselves with our friendship and the strength of colors in the cold snowy months.

But today, on presenting it, I realized something more important: that jewelry is not merely for adornment. It’s original purpose was talismanic: to protect the wearer and bring her strength of spirit. To heal those who look to her. When you assemble the polished bits of earth that make these beads, you imbue them with patience and care that transfers to the wearer.

The Amazing Color-Changing Beads

2007-11-28T19:40:00.002-05:00

There are some amazing berries outside the wonderful café where we go- I’ve never seen berries change colors as they mature the way these did. In a few weeks in late October, they traversed the spectrum from green to purple to red.

Just like those berries, the little flower beads in this necklace are “color change” beads: in daylight- they reflect green, and in incandescent light, they reflect red, changing like the ripening berries. And those round green agate beads are the precise bayberry color of the new berries.

Now, my friend made a sad confession: necklaces give her claustrophobia.

How sad- not to be able to bedeck onself. Jewelry is, above all, a proclamation of one’s unique spirit. Inner beauty worn outwardly. I hope for my friend that she will conquer her fear, change like the berries, and take on the color of her own beauty.

Secret Sequence

2007-11-13T23:11:00.003-05:00

Beads teach us things. Patience, for one thing. The pendant in this necklace was once a lovely pin, given to me by The Muse (everyone should have one- but no one has a Muse as fine as mine!) years ago. It stopped being a pin after much fond wear, when it’s pinback fell off. Fortunately, it was not lost; I saved it as a flat object for a long time deciding whether to repair it. I never repaired it, because in time it came to me that it would be happy as a pendant if only I could find the right beads. This all happened years before I was able to bead- I was gathering elements for this piece a long time.

What happened when I finally came to the making of the necklace is it’s own story. Three times I strung the multi-strand necklace, and each time something went awry. It was like a tale from the Brothers Grimm- first the strands tangled so badly I couldn’t find the ends when it came to stringing the clasp. I re-strung it a second time and strands broke at the last moment, after crimping and trimming. On the third attempt, true to legend, I found success.

Is there magic in the third try? Perhaps. Or maybe it is that by the third time you do something, you’ve learned to adjust to the trials you’re about to meet.

For me, this was discovering that there is a sequence in which each step must be done. Beading is a linear process. You cannot reach the middle before you secure the beginning. The order in which beads come together is partly design, and partly fortune. You keep repeating it until you get it right.

Tre Corazon

2007-10-02T18:22:00.000-04:00

Beads teach us about life: we think we know what we want. [We don't always.] We think we know what's beautiful. [Not till we see it usually.]
We think we're in control. [We're not...we just have to go with the flow and enjoy the ride.]

Summer's End Wreath

2007-09-30T14:21:00.000-04:00

Seasons come and go. Celebrate them.

Ivy Spiral

2007-09-03T11:02:00.000-04:00

This pendant was picked out a long time ago- almost at the beginning of my bead obsession. But because of its auspicious history, it was going to have to wait a long time till the right beads came along. For one thing- the colors are a bit unusual- a very crisp green and a deep bluish purple- like the colors of ivy with intertwined morning glories. Come to think of it, the climbing tendrils of ivy are certainly the natural inspiration of our love of spirals- a metaphor of delicate strength that grows by inverting and inserting itself into the difficult and rocky places. That’s what this necklace of icy green bracket-shaped table-cuts and intense cobalt coins means: passion and perseverance.

Healing Blue Light

2007-06-24T22:28:00.001-04:00

This Dichroic pendant changes color dependent on the angle of incoming light. It’s predominantly a deep meditative cobalt with metallic highlights, just the right color for eliciting one’s inner gift of healing. It celebrates good health news for the loved one who will wear it.

Unnamed Blessing

2007-05-31T09:32:00.000-04:00

I took a long time off from beading, awaiting a miracle…and one came to me. Someone loved was lost, and greatly feared for. This is the product of the tears and prayers and hope gathered from the wonderful creatures (including a few humans) around me. I had been dreaming, yearning for her safe return, and the power of those feelings took shape in the cascade of bead droplets. Those six pearlescent drop beads are antique Czech wedding beads my muse found for me on the day after Christmas this year. He also gave me the silver prayer ball whose chime tolls softly with the touch of the surrounding diaphanous crystals and labradorite. Labradorite is perfectly symbolic here: a sallow, shadowy grey shifts to gleams of blue iridescent flash- the pure color of joy.

Symbolic Frolic

2007-04-17T00:44:00.000-04:00

Made for the recipient of a playful kiss on a bridge on a day of amazing memories. Cupid and angels dance for her!

Serene Spring

2007-04-17T00:40:00.000-04:00

Many pieces from many places come together in space and time.

Transubstantiation of Amber

2007-04-13T19:50:00.001-04:00

This piece took a while to envision and then materialize. (There were lots of little seed beeads to manage in this one!) On the second or third time it was worn, it had a terrible accident in which it caught on something immovable, which unleashed the energy of a million little E beads and all the dangles, all of them flying away from each other like the Second Big Bang! I gathered up what I could and put the pieces away for a long while. But hope springs eternal, doesn't it? They all came together again in a new life, with a lovely bead toggle, and maybe even better than in their previous incarnation.

Bubbles in the Champagne

2007-04-13T19:30:00.000-04:00

Those gold-drizzled Indian rounds rise randomly through the pink gold seed beads, like bubbles fizzing through a glass of champagne! But all the effervescence leads back to the dichroic pendant, whose colors shimmer and change like peacock feathers in sunlight.

Anniversary on the Bridge Necklace

2007-04-11T00:26:00.000-04:00

This piece commemorates an important date, celebrated on a bridge, with some of the greatest people I know. The Kazuri beads both look and feel like river rocks sleek with spring water.

Sumerian Construction

2007-04-10T17:41:00.000-04:00

The ancient Sumerians wore neckwear like this on their way to pick reeds from the bank of Euphrates. Those were the days! Well, maybe they didn't actually have Venetian foil glass tubes back then, but can't you just see the Queen of Sheba wearing this while nibbling grapes and falafel?

Mastering the Beaded Bead!

2007-04-10T12:01:00.001-04:00

After almost two years, it finally happened! I mastered - or got close to mastering the Beaded Bead! It's a simple version- peyote tube over a pair of small rounds- but the effect really makes this necklace of Kazuri beads something special. Subtle and still full of dreamy color. It was a fitting forum for some matte onyx beads I'd collected decades ago from a jeweler in New Haven, CT, some old wooden beads, tiny Manik Manik rondelles and a lot of other amazing things. It's a first attempt, but you can be sure there will be more to come.