National Beading Week & Perlen Poesie

Cosmic spirals

Hello dear friends,

I should take the pen more often, for now I have plenty of exciting news to share with you and for some things, I really am late (and sorry about that). For other things, I had to wait for a green light...

I didn't procrastinate the past months, oh no. I beaded a lot. I studied the behavior of several Cosmic Spirals, using heptagonal Diamond Weave. It seems that it took forever to create the tutorial, but finally it is here! It is some sort of master class, for advanced beaders, and knowledge of Diamond Weave is necessary. If you have never done Diamond Weave before, there are other tutorials in my shop that are less difficult to start with. There also is a free video showing you the basic stitch, available on the FB page of the book, which I made for the second birthday of the book, as well as for International Beading week. I hope that you'll find it inspiring.

International Beading Week, what is that? In July, with National Beading Week (NBW) coming up at the end of the month, we beaders all got excited about the many "bead alongs" organized by talented designers, like the lovely Katie Dean of Beadflower. NBW is a beady celebration taking place the first week of August. It was initiated by the Beadworkers Guild 3 years ago in the UK to bring beading to a broader audience. Lots of free tutorials are offered by designers for this occasion. Among my contacts on FB there were plenty of people not in the UK who also wanted to be part of it, and we thought that it should be International Beading Week. So without further thinking, I created the International Beading Week group on FB for them, to share the fun with the whole world. I also contacted the Beadworkers Guild about it for it is not something separated, it is the same as NBW. Did you know that the Beadworker's Guild is open to members around the world? If you become a member, you will receive their awesome quarterly journal and more. Learn more about it here.

IBW August elements

IBW September elements.

As the Swiss say, the above information comes a bit "like a hailstorm after the grape harvest", but it took much more time and effort to set up the group than I thought it would, and I had many other things to do and write.
However, know that you can become a member of the FB group any time. We are slowly heading towards the 2018 edition of Beading Week by making each month something in the color of the banner. It can be anything. I made peyote hexagons and peyote Yukka flowers. When we'll have all the colors of the banner done, we'll assemble it all and celebrate IBW/NBW 2018. You can participate if you wish. It is fun!

You may also like to read Katie Dean's blog post about IBW/NBW, and visit the dedicated website sponsored by the Beadworkers Guild for more information about the 2017 edition.

Faraday Cuff

And now the news I couldn't tell about earlier: I created a project for the beautiful Magazine Perlen Poesie for the month of September and one for December. Let me present to you the Faraday Cuff, named after Michael Faraday, known as the inventor of electro-plating!! and his famous anti-electromagnetic cage made of metal mesh, that stops radiations / emisions.

It is a bracelet with beautiful Art Deco flair, made with a Diamond Weave octagon-stitch. I hope that you will love making it, especially those of you who have so many bugle beads and who told me that there are not enough patterns using them ;-).

I will list my own tutorial for the Faraday Cuff on my website in November. In my tutorial it is explained in my style, and in the Perlen Poesie issue of September, you will find it with their explanations in their style. Note that is in good company.

Perlen Poesie no. 34

Perlen Poesie is a beautiful beading magazine available in German and in English. The two founders of the magazine, Andrea and Freddie Ott, travel around the world to meet with beady people and discover everything beady to share it with us later in their columns. In this number (#34), the wonderful Nadya Gerber is in the spotlight, and her cover project is awesome. In addition to that, there are many other talented artists who designed beautiful projects for this edition. I really love the name of this magazine, because when you think about it, this is exactly what we make. Poetry. Poetry with beads. We often tell stories with our beadwork, and this as beautifully as possible, exactly like a poet artfully tells stories with beautiful rimes.

Now the most exciting news: Andrea and Freddie came to meet this crazy bird, fish and bead aficionada that I am, in my old flat here in Switzerland... They are totally adorable. We talked and laughed and had coffee and cake and I showed them my creations and how I work. And we talked some more. They took plenty of photos and ... 
... drum roll ...

The lovely Andrea and Freddie Ott sandwiching me :D

in December you will be able to read their article about yours truly!

There are no words to express how much this honors me, but let me try to describe it: being on the cover of this magazine is like having your very own star on Hollywood Boulevard! I have sort of an "I can't believe that it is true" feeling. It's a dream!

About the project in the December issue I cannot reveal more but one thing: what you will learn from the Faraday bracelet will be helpful for the next project. ;-)

Happy beading!!