International Beading Week 2021

By golly, what a week, my friends, what a wonderful week this has been! 

Thanks to the ever so dedicated folks of the Beadworkers Guild, we've had the most wonderful online celebration ever with beads. 

It was like a very good cuvée of champagne: great taste, festive bubbles and no headache afterwards.

 Every day a new stitch to talk about and lovely promps and quotes, meetings, a fabulous prize draw and many thing learned. It was fantastic. Even a new international common project has been launched, once more, by Sam Norgard, the "All Colors" project.

It was wonderful to Zoom-meet with people from around the globe. In particular those I've had contact with since so many years. I never dreamt that I'd see them one day in real life. Among these persons were Karen Beningfield from South Africa (beader and designer, member of and graphic illustrator for Contemporary Geometric Beadwork, who also helped me with the edition of the Diamond Weave book), Cate Venn, who is the most inspirational person & part of my "totem", and her husband Christopher Venn, who beads entire dresses in black tiny size 15° seed beads, and Nancy Jenner Kooyers, who is an incredibly talented beader who normally doesn't write patterns, but this year offered a pattern for the most adorable beaded faerie ever. If you haven't seen this tiny fairy yet, come and visit Facebook where they are popping up everywhere and are so cute!

The ambassadors and other designers gave us marvelous designs to play with. You can still download them from the Beadworkers Guild website. The patterns remain there after IBW is over. The collection of goodies is growing each year, and the contributions are amazing.

As every year, I offered a tutorial too. Two, in fact. One for the duration of the week only, to make a Gazebo Cascading tassle, and one for my Year Long Rainbow Project, which is a freeform peyote piece called Rivers of Color. 

The guide can be downloaded for free from my website. I call it a guide, because freeform creations cannot be completely copied. I think, however, that folks will have loads of fun trying this method.

Talking about the year long rainbow challenge: look at the pieces below!!! 

These are the creations of the participants who finished their project this year! I am each year amazed by how much talent there is out there, and by the variety of the pieces too.

Teresa "Keygirl" Shelton created a beautiful geometric bangle made with a clever method of her "cru": "Starts and ends with 3". She also offered her pattern to the BWG to be added to the IBW pattern page.

Diane De Gooyer made a set of bangles to have something to wear every day. Clever!

Diàna Balogh made a bangle with hundreds of little flowers, made with a gazillion little seed beads. We all want to know how she did this. Hopefull she will tell us in an upcoming Journal?

Jessica Hayman created an "eggbox" with intricate celtic knots in the most exquisite camaieu of colors of the rainbow. Mind blown!
And she donated the pattern for 1 knot to the list of IBW goodies!!

Margaret Haigh made her own necklace using the elements from the pattern "Square dance" designed by Heather Kingsley Heath - the pattern is available on the IBW pattern page of the Guild.

Caroline Lloyd created a stylish "French flowers" arrangement. It is incredible how only a few beaded leaves and flowers can become something so complete.

Nancy Deonarine beaded a collection of sparkling peyote pod ornaments - her colors match the IBW logo perfectly.

Teréz Kocsis made lovely little sparkly daisies.

Shelley Gillmann started with the yellow, orange and next colors of the IBW logo and then got so carried away that she didn't make jewelry, but 35 designs for "carrier beads", now offered as one of the IBW freebies for this year. The photo above shows 14 of them.

 Huge compliments to all!

And many thanks to all those who contributed patterns!
The next season is going to be beadybusy!

If you haven't tried yet, come and make a rainbow yourself this year! Each month a little something and at the end of the year you end up having something huge! Like this epic piece by Karan Parker from back in 2018 which I still adore.

Join the Facebook group to post your progress, find tips, or encouragement. 

Happy beading everyone!

Cath

Pick your Path - a secret Beadalong with Cliff Swain-Salomon

The past months have been very busy for me.

 I've been working on several patterns among which my brand new Lady bug, and a tassel (Gazebo, for IBW) and I still am working on on my rainbow project, for International Beading Week. I just wrote a separate article about this. I am a permanent IBW Ambassador after all.

I have also been working since quite a while on a design parallel to the mystery project for the secret beadalong with the wonderful Cliff Swain-Salomon who invited me to join him in this project for the Facebook Group Seed Beads & More.

Pick your path flowers and pods

 We called this project "Pick your Path", because that is exactly what it was all about: making decisions as to what to make with the techniques taught: we made bezels, petals, flowers and pods... 

Pick your path flowers

 

 

Cliff and I published alternately a portion of each step, in writing and in video, so that each participant could try the various possibilities and in the end, choose what they liked most.

 

In fact, we very gently took them down the rabbit hole of designing with beaded elements.

 

Pick your path - various elements and steps

 

I enjoyed seeing what people made. So many different colors and styles! And one big surprise was that no matter what color was chosen, everything that folks made looked lovely. 

 

We mentioned that the pod could be all sorts of things (a pumpkin, a Chinese lantern, a poppy seed pod, a pomegranate). 

Then, folks started to see things that we hadn't mentioned, like an urchin, a cactus... 

Someone even mentioned a thistle, and another a puffer fish! 

 

 We were happy to see that, thanks to our teachings, many felt more confident to create their own flowers and pods, and some even tassels and a potted daffodil flower with stem and leaves and all.

Pick your Path flowers, one with IBW flower petals.

We kept secret until the very end that all the way long, the participants were making...

 

... pencil toppers!

 

How fun is that?

 

I developed a design in parellel, based on my portion of the bead along. It started with a photo of a "Fritilaria Meleagris" posted by Anita Adamson a while ago and of course with a photo of urchins.

 

 

Here I used my own bezel, which is very different from Cliff's. I also included two seed bead brands - and used another bead count. It is also a pencil topper, but it can sure be a flower... 

 

 

 

... or a table decoration, a hair pin adornment, a focal, a brooch, a bottle lid, a doll house poof or a knob cover if you leave out the inside tube... 

 

 

 The way the various colors are placed is the result of many, many explorations.

 

 

You will find the tutorial how to make this urchin here. 

I will be really grateful for your support.

Please note that the urchin is different from the Peyote Cactus (the cactus that gave the name "peyote" to the beading stitch). 

 

Peyote cactus

This cactus includes Cliff's bezel, fine petals and embellishments. The pattern is already half-way done, and, as soon as I can, I will get back to tutifying this fundraiser for RMHC - the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

 

Of course I will let you know when it will be ready, on Facebook and through my newsletter (subscribe to my newsletter to be sure to not miss it).

 

Peyote cactus

 Last but not least, I updated my workshop page with 2 more dates for the Sunshine workshop - there will be more dates, so if these two don't suit you, do not worry. I still need time before I can get "back to work" and take care of this type of things. 

You can contact me to be added to a waiting list. Don't forget to let me know your time zone so that you don't get added to the wrong list.  

 

Sunshine beaded by Eileen Montgomery (Canada)

 

 I look forward to beading together with you again. 

And perhaps we will meet on a special
Zoom drop-in during International Beading Week.

 Be(ad) well, take care

 

Cath