The New Artisan Component Marketplace

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  You know all those wonderful heads and pendants (like this oak leaf from Marla's Mud) I'm always showing you?  (Yes, I may have a slight bead buying problem, but that's a discussion for another time.)  There's a new online marketplace just for artisan made pieces - Artisan Component Marketplace.  You won't find any factory produced knock offs there because each shop is juried before being allowed to sell on the site.  That means each and every one of the pieces you find listed there will be hand made by the artist.  

You will find ceramic and porcelain, handpainted wood and lampwork as well as mixed media and metal.  There are seed bead components made of tiny glass beads woven together in intricate patterns, pendants made from polymer clay and clasps made from wood.  There are all sorts of little treasures from some of my favorite artists, so when I had an offer to do a guest blog post for them, I jumped at the chance.  

You're going to have to go there to see what I wrote, but I will give you a hint:  it involves Marla's ceramic leaf pendant and a little free macrame tutorial.  Have fun!  Oh, and I made up a fancy new, handy-dandy bar for the bottom of my guest post - what do you think?

How to Get From Apples to Giraffes in 7 Easy Steps

Even people close to me are confused as to just how my thought process works.  We can be having a conversation about low blood sugar and I'll interrupt with a comment on the cutest aviator glasses for Carter (true story).  I know there's a method to my madness, but it isn't always apparent to others.  So today I'm going to let you inside my mind for one brief, horrifying minute:  Here's how you (okay, how I) get from apples to giraffes in 7 easy steps.

It all starts when I'm putting together more kits for my Leaves Micro Macrame Bracelet Tutorial in this sage green colorway.  It's the strangest combination, really, and it technically shouldn't work.  The cord is more of a turquoise kind of color with a lot of blue in it, while the beads have a definite yellow tinge.  Shouldn't work at all, but it does:

Then I start wondering what that cord and bead combination would look like in the Hydrangea pattern, so I have to stop everything and make one up.

Which leads to trying the beads with a different color of cord.

And then I wonder what would happen if I use some unexpected cord color.

And before you know it, I'm mixing all the cord colors.

Then I notice that the darker color makes little divisions of the flowers and the bracelet looks totally different.  The flowers look more distinct and the diamond connectors almost disappear.  And I wonder what would happen if I rearrange the cord colors.

And then I notice all the texture in those bracelets and I wonder what would happen if I focus more on the knotting, but keep using the same cord colors and beads.

Then I look up and it's three days later and we're out of milk.  Oh, and somewhere in there I made up kits for the first three colorways and there are some earrings in these colors around here somewhere that I need to put on earwires and photograph.

And that, my friends, is how you get from apples to giraffes in my world.  

Fall Daisies

Daisies have always been one of my favorite flowers - soft and pretty without being overly showy.  When I saw this pendant by Heather Powers of Humblebeads, I was definitely smitten.  Not only is it a daisy, but it's done in my favorite colors of teal and olive green with a dash of mustard yellow.  I've been on a kick lately with knotting half knot sinnets in several colors of cord to make a braid that looks a lot like kumihimo, so I pulled cord to match the pendant.

I knotted it together into a spiraling micro macrame cord.

Then I decided it needed a little something special, so I knotted a matching bail to suspend the pendant.

I was having such a good time playing with these colors that I made a couple pair of earrings, too!

Aren't these great colors for autumn?

Shop Update - Micro Macrame Kits

It's no secret that putting together kits isn't my favorite job (unless they're fun kits), but I recently had some (reluctant) help, so I've been on a kit-making binge.  There are 41 micro macrame kits in my Etsy shop right now, including owl kits in no less than five different colors!

I restocked some old favorites, too, including Hydrangea kits in French Lilac, the colorway shown in the Hydrangea Bracelet tutorial:

There are kits for the Leaves Bracelet tutorial in several popular colors including the Sage one shown in the tut as well as the colorful black version with bead and cord like this:

It's never too early to start on holiday presents, you know (yep, I did it - I went there).  In case you need just a little more enticement, Donna over at CraftArtEdu.com is having a FLASH sale through Wednesday, October 1.  Use code "flash25" to save 25% on any one class (details here).  I have some pretty cool kits to go with the Micro Macrame Wrap Bracelet class there, including some Halloween ones!

Happy knotting!!

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Ahoy, me Hearties!  Tomorrow be International Talk Like a Pirate Day and what with knottin' bein' all tied t' sailin' (didja see what I done thar?) what better way t' pay me respects but t' create a piece o' micro macrame!  Boy, writin' like tha' is harder than ye'd think!  

I asked Anastasija o' Dreams and Elements t' make some pieces t' use in me micro macrame bracelets and shiver me timbers!  Beauty!  Me packages arrived from some other artists that day, too. Check t' motherload:

And out of all that booty, which treasure did I choose first?

They're just so ever-lovin' adorable!!  And what with the pirate day thing coming up and all, it seemed like fate.  I did make a very similar bracelet with one of her owl focals instead,  if ye ain't be likin' the skulls.  

Wanna try your hand at knottin' one yeself?  These bands are variations of me Micro Macrame Bracelet Watch class at CraftArtEdu.com.  Fair winds, mateys!

Sea Shell Design Challenge Reveal

My generous friend, Rita of Toltec Jewels put out a challenge in one of the beading groups to which I belong:  create a piece using a ceramic scallop shell pendant by Firefly Design Studio.  Michelle (the creative genius behind Firefly Design) is also a member of the same group, so this was a particularly fun challenge for me.  Rita even supplied the shells for participants (thanks again, Rita!!).

It's no surprise to anyone who has followed me for five minutes or more that I love ocean themes.  Anything beachy and I'm there.  And to top it all off, the shell I received was in some of my favorite colors (fate or Rita's hand?):

I pulled some glass seed beads and s-lon cord I thought might work with the sagey green and soft blue in the pendant and then played up the background color of the clay as well, adding some gold and bronze.  

I started knotting around a center ring and let the cord fan out from that like ripples in the water.  I didn't have any pattern in mind when I started, I just let the micro macrame wander and flow around the beads.

The necklace ended up with a unique keyhole shape which gives a hint of the exotic and the lavish beads and scalloped knots gives it an over-the-top, excess feel, like a mermaid dripping in jewels.  

The sea shell pendant is actually drilled at the wider end, but I wanted to suspend it the other way around, so I added a bail to the narrower end of the shell.  That left me with a hole at the bottom to attach a ring full of beachy charms - a shell, some starfish beads and even a Vintaj seahorse.

So?  Can you picture this on your friendly neighborhood mermaid?

An Experiment

Well, that could have gone better.  This mess of sickly colored cord is not what I was hoping for.  Let me fill you in:  I got a wild hair last week and wanted to make a micro macrame bracelet with the look of soft, worn denim.  I wanted cord in a really faded blue color and I really was hoping for a bit of mottling in the color instead of even color on the cord.  I took some bits of cord (both c-lon and s-lon nylon bead cord) and stuck them in some diluted bleach for a while and got this:

There was one major flaw in that first experiment, though, as I had forgotten to keep a control group.  I figured I would remember exactly what shades I'd started with, silly me, and ended up clueless. I do know the one that looks sort of mustard yellow was a green color to start with, but I'm not sure which green.  *sigh*  So I started over, and this time I took a photo with the original colors.  There is again a mix of c-lon and s-lon cord, all in the .5mm size.

I left the cord to soak in some bleach, diluted a bit, but still pretty strong (and no, Clorox isn't paying me anything for showing this photo of their product).

I came back to check after half an hour and found that the lighter blue cord I'd hoped would look like worn denim had turned into this:

After only 30 minutes!!  You can still see traces of the original blue, but most of the color is completely gone.  I continued checking on the remaining cords at hourly intervals.  After almost six hours, I took them all out and rinsed them well.  This is what I got:

The colors didn't change after drying, either, so here's what I discovered: The light blue cord bleached out in a heartbeat into a totally undesirable shade of yuk.  The mint green cord also bleached some and ended up a ugly shade of mucus green.  The four remaining cords, bright blue, orange, teal and purple, didn't change at all.  Even after six hours of soaking in bleach, there was no change in color!  

I'd say even though I didn't achieve my intended goal, this experiment was a partial success since I still learned something valuable.  It looks to me like there's a 67% chance your micro macrame bracelet won't change color even if you get bleach on it.  And that, as we say in Nebraska, is the rest of the story.