I was fortunate enough to have Elise Swope, who grows orchids in her Hawaiian home, as a roomie last year at Gathering, so when I heard about her ‘creativity play group’ I signed up, even though anything that smacks of finding Your Inner Child normally sends me running in the opposite direction.
But she gave us concrete exercises, like my art teachers used to do. The first of these was to make 100 beads in any style we liked, so long as they were composed of only two colors. We could, if we chose, work in one color, which in fact I did for a couple of the beads.
(Hm, come to think of it, if one wanted to cheat, using amber-purple and butterscotch would be a great way to do it—both are silver laden, and thus have the potential to strike through the whole rainbow...perhaps for my next project.)[1] Some people have already finished. I made a bunch, but they ended up in ‘bead-clean limbo’ till at last I had a dental appointment. I removed beads from mandrels all the way there, on the way back, even during (my spouse and I usually schedule our appointments back to back; for one thing, now that we've moved, it's an hour drive each way).
starting at the back left: thin-stringer curliQ; openwork ‘lace’ badly made ‘lace’; plain hollow; 4th row: gravity swirls, some on equatorially applied stringer; 3rd row: Japanese inspired negative-space dot on dot; 2nd row: multi-layer dots; front row: dots
Now that I've cleaned them and gotten a good look, I've started on the series again. Here are my four favorites:
Only the open-work bead shows much in the way of original design. The two left beads, curliQ & swirl, are two techniques I do frequently. Precision dot-work appeals, but I do it poorly.
All of the beads are hollow, unless they're ‘lacework’, using Effetre 020 grass green and opaque 204 white. (I would've preferred using white and clear, but the white is very difficult to see against the clear in the flame; I thought it would be too slow.)
- 100 beads exercise, file 2
- 100 beads exercise, open/negative space variations
- March creativity exercise, file 1
- March creativity exercise, file 2
originally created 24mar05, updated 02may05, 26apr14
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
