clair074

I’m finally working on a new project this week, and I’m starting to steer towards my old creative groove again. I sat down over the weekend to catch up on my YouTube subscriptions and finally finish up the threads on the collar I’ve been working on. Apart from a little custom work, I hadn’t made any progress at all for most of February. Once I got that out of the way, I picked out some beads for

I haven’t yet been able to shake my very serious case of beader’s block, so I’ve been searching for ways to spark some new inspirations. I started by looking through my bead stash and taking out some tried and true favorites, to see if they could draw out some creativity. Of course I went directly to my collection of trade beads, and took out my lovely African Christmas beads. No matter what,

Just before my creative spark got doused and I had to take a little bead break, I put together some new seed bead and accent trios. I wanted to play a bit with some of the red seed beads in my stash that have for some reason completely stalled. I picked up several different red hanks awhile back because I felt that my selection was lacking. For some reason, now that I have them, I never seem to

It’s kind of amazing what you can recreate with just a little fringe in the right colors. The idea for this super-easy cherry fringe design popped into my head when I was creating earring projects for Ancient Worlds Modern Beads, and it was just too fun not to make. These cherry bomb earrings look great in opaque or transparent colors, but I do recommend going with a bright green to avoid any

I’ve been in a complete creative funk all week, and the new collar project is mostly to blame. I started getting more than a little tired of working on it several days ago. Not only had it become rather boring, but I was running out of ‘good’ beads to use; searching through the mix to find seed beads of the right size was tedious. I’d been avoiding the project all together for a few days when it

It’s truly wonderful what can happen when beads speak, and artists listen. Today my guest is Diana Coe of Beadwork & Coe. This UK-based artists creates a gorgeous variety of jewelry designs using beadwork and bead embroidery to showcase a wonderful palette of colors and pretty motifs. Inspirational Beading: When did you first get started with beading? Diana: I started beading in 2007 after my