I busted my butt!

Well, actually, I only bruised it (I think). Don't ask me how, but I managed to fall off of the seat of a rowing machine today and land coccyx-first on the metal track part of the rowing machine. Needless to say, it hurt. A lot. Thank goodness for ice and a trainer who knows when to push me to keep going and when to let me hold a bag of frozen corn to my butt and cry like a little girl.

I usually do great with rowing, too, and I've never had anything like that happen before. As I was lying on the ground gasping for air, I saw a biog blob of string on the track, and it didn't look like anything that would have come off of me, so I suspect that it was something that got caught up in the machine and caused the wheels to slow or skip while my body kept moving.

And that was my day. How was yours?

(PS: Green and teal bracelet is coming along great)

Selling off some beads!

To help further my goals of less clutter and more belly dance workshops, I'm listing beads in my Etsy shop! Two new lots so far, but more coming throughout the week, so keep your eye on the Beads section of my store.

I'll be listing more lampwork and other focals, some Czech glass and whatever other miscellaneous stuff I find that I'm not planning to use any time soon. I might also work on migrating more jewelry over from my old website to the Etsy shop.

Artbeads.com Bead IQ Trivia Sweepstakes!

Artbeads is currently running a fun sweepstakes with an optional Bead IQ Quiz! Until September 16th, you can enter by following this link, taking the quiz if you want, and then entering your information for the prize drawing. One lucky winner will receive a prize package including $150 worth of beads and supplies and a $100 Artbeads.com gift certificate. Pretty sweet!

I got an 8 out of 10 on the quiz. What's your score?

(Yes, I am still an Artbeads.com blog partner, no, I am not getting any sort of kickback for promoting the contest)

Teal isn't green

When people tease me about only wearing green, I remind them of the numerous teal items in my wardrobe, and half the time they say that doesn't count, because teal is blue-green. But my opinion is that teal is its own separate color, with greenish tones, which looks good with some shades of green. But it is not green.

I mention this because I am beading in teal right now. I intended to bead in green, but my green beads were too similar to each other, which means I need to go dig through my stash again for better greens. So I'm working with teal instead. Of course, the teal is going into a reversible bracelet, the other side of which will be green (when I find the right greens), so when all is said and done, I will have a new green bracelet.

But it will also be teal.

Which is not green.

Sparkly and complete

At last, it's done! I finished my 2011 Layne's Legacy -- Beading For A Cure necklace in the nick of time. I put the finishing touches on Sunday night, and it needed to be photographed and postmarked by today. Wow, was that cutting it close!

I decided to finish it out with a spiral rope, broken up by a few simple strung sections to use more of the larger beads (I actually hadn't used any of the pearls yet, after all). And I found the perfect button to use as a clasp, a pretty Czech glass one that almost matches the Crystal Golden Shadow rivolis.

As I neared completion of this necklace, I realized it didn't have a name. The wavy lines of the rivoli section reminded me of all the undulations we've been doing in belly dance class lately, so I felt it needed a dance-inspired name. Undulation doesn't sound very pretty, and naming it after one of my favorite Tribal Fusion dancers wouldn't work, since it is definitely not tribal. So instead I took my inspiration from a book I was reading with lots of vintage belly dance photographs, and named it Salome's Dance. Not that I think the original Salome wore anything like this, and not that I'm certain that she performed something akin to belly dance -- but a lot of early 20th century belly dancers and actresses portrayed Salome draped in gorgeous beads and pearls and chiffon, and this certainly fits that image. So there you have it.

Now to bead something GREEN!

Happy National Dance Day!

It's National Dance Day! The first National Dance Day, even! I won't let the fact that it was apparently started by someone from reality TV detract from my enjoyment of the day. Instead, I'll shade this pretty photo of the Ghazaal Beledi dancers from the Ren Faire doing a beautiful fan veil performance. I was fortunate enough to see them perform live again last weekend, as part of the Tribal Pura performance.

Remember this is a day for all sorts of dance, not just belly dance, so no matter what style you prefer, get up and celebrate! Put on your favorite music and dance through the house, pull out some performance DVDs, or get dressed up and hit the clubs. I for one will be going to a party where there probably won't be any dancing, but that won't stop me from dancing in the seat of the car on the way up!

More Progress

Don't they look so much prettier when they're all together, instead of spread out across my work surface? The two smallest rivolis aren't actually attached to the main piece yet, but they should be sometime tomorrow... then it's time to figure out the neck strap. No rush, it only has to be finished, photographed, packaged up and mailed by MONDAY! Oh yes, I've procrastinated quite a bit this year!

It's not quite as grand as I first envisioned, but I'm still pretty happy with this lovely grouping of rivolis.

Back from an amazing weekend!

I am back from an incredible weekend up in Tempe! On Saturday and Sunday I spent 4 hours a day in class with Fat Chance Belly Dance, the founders of American Tribal Style Belly Dance! It pretty much rocked my world. I learned SO much and spent so much time dancing, with my friends and various people I know from the dance community and people who were new to me, but all of them were great.

There was also a performance on Saturday, with Fat Chance and a lot of great tribal troupes from the Phoenix area. I'm not sure if there was a single group performing where I hadn't either taken a class alongside or from at least one of the dancers, so it was a lot of fun to see them all dressed up and performing, and to cheer them all along.

Now I am back home and my head is swimming with inspiration to dance better, and harder, and more often, and to come up with more costumes and jewelry to go with.

Super sparkly progress shot

Here's a progress picture of my 2011 LL-BFAC project. I took it yesterday, so there's actually been more progress since then. I've finished the fringe on the big center crystal, which is the only one that will get fringe (I guess the little crystal picots could count as fringe, but I don't think of them as such because they don't have movement like long fringe). The next step is connecting them all!

My additions to the kit are the 7 Swarovski rivolis in Crystal Golden Shadow and Ultra Purple AB, as well as the Honey Opal Silver Lined Delicas that I used to bezel the crystals... Not that you can really see those, under the layer of bronze teardrops!

I love this year's kit, as I find the purple and bronze color scheme to be very elegant. All of the finished products that I've seen on-line so far have looked very rich and sumptuous. I hope they raise tons of money in the auctions next year!

BRAS!

Now that I have your attention...

Hello, loyal blog readers! Insert a self-flogging sentence here where I talk about what a horrible blogger I've been and make lousy excuses. Follow that up with a promise to be better.

And now we can move on to bras. I've been wanting to make more belly dance bras. The studio always has cool bras, but they're never my size, and besides, I have needles and thread and coins and beads, I should be able to make my own. If only I wasn't busy trying to finish my BFAC project (more on that tomorrow). But since I don't have any performances coming up any time soon, there's no great rush.

I've had the nude bra for a while, I actually bought it to wear as, you know, a bra, under clothes, like a normal woman, but Tucson is too blasted hot to wear extra padding on my breasts. So I decided to make it into a dance bra. My first thought was to tea dye it, but initial tests quickly showed that the synthetic micro fiber would not hold the dye. So instead I'm going to try to cover it with that pretty brown, white and silver stripey fabric, for an awesome steampunk look. I should even have plenty of fabric to make a belt or maybe even a little panel skirt (I love panel skirts). The only problem is that it's an odd shade of brown and I couldn't find any appropriate trim to match it at JoAnn's. I'll have to shop around.

The other bra is a little more doubtful. I found it at Target for $8. They have the same style in a lot of other beautiful colors, so if it can actually support the weight of embellishments and look decent as a costume, it will be awesome. I'm just not certain if it's sturdy enough or if it will have quite enough coverage. But I would love to have some nice, colorful bras to go with my nice, colorful costumes, instead of sticking to the usual tribal black.

As a side note, there are those among the dance community who find it incredibly tacky and possibly even downright offensive to wear a bra that has not been covered by other fabric (hence my desire to experiment with the nude bra above). I'd like to acknowledge that segment of the dance population, and state that I understand their feelings. However, in my area it's pretty much the norm to take a bra and just add trim and coins and such, without an extra layer of fabric. My compromise is that I will no longer wear a lingerie bra without layering some sort of top over it to conceal the straps. I'm sure that's not good enough for everyone, but it's not my goal in life to please everyone :)

Working on my BFAC

I know this post isn't much without pictures, so I'll try to have some in-progress shots soon. I finally started my 2011 Layne's Legacy -- Beading For A Cure project about a week ago. It's due at the start of August. It's been years since I procrastinated this much on starting one. Kind of odd, because I love the bead kit and I decided exactly what I wanted to do and what components to add soon after receiving the kit. I've just been so busy with dancing and the gym and such that I haven't wanted to tackle a large-scale beading project. Now with a looming deadline, I really have no choice.

Bezeled rivolis will form the focal point. Since almost every weaving project I've done this year has involved at least one peyote-stitched bezel (around a rivoli or a button), I'm really quite bored of them. Once I'm done with this it's time for some bead embroidery!

Happy Fairy Day!

Today is Fairy Day, and I would have forgotten all about it if not for Facebook! Thank goodness for Twig the Fairy!

I did two and a half things to celebrate. First, I finally photographed and listed Miss June, the faerie pin-up girl inspired by the Egg Moon challenge back in April. I also decided to have a faerie-themed sale in my Etsy shop, so you'll find 9 faerie, elf, and dryad items in the Sale Section, with discounts of up to $25.

The half thing is that I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts, this tanktop, but I put it on before I knew what day it was, so it doesn't really count ;)

For the Bride

Please forgive this bad photo. White/crystal AB/pearl jewelry is hard to photograph, especially when you're in a hurry and have poor lighting. I'll be borrowing this necklace back from the bride sometime after the wedding to take high-quality images to show off.

When I showed my friend Helen the O. Bersten necklace in Rachel Nelson-Smith's Seed Bead Fusion, we both agreed that it was the perfect design to go with her wedding dress. Besides the white wedding color scheme, I made a few small changes to the design. Rachel used 5mmish freshwater pearls, and a single pearl dangle from the bottom of the pendant. I used 4mm Swarovski pearls, and decided to do 3 dangles, since the pearls were so small. Her original design had the necklace attached to the pendant at two points, but I decided to do a wire-wrapped bail on mine so I could hide the crimps in the back. Her design used two colors of drops to embellish the bezel, and I just used one, because it was all I had that matched the color scheme ;)

The O. Bersten component is fun to make. It's really dimensional and I can see a lot of opportunity for color variety... but I don't recommend doing it in various shade of pinks, otherwise the floral base will look like a little ring of boobies. Just saying...

Seed Bead Fusion

You may recall that I bought this book on a whim because I had some JoAnn's coupons and I was mad that they didn't have any of the stuff I wanted for my next coin bra project. Amusing then, that this is the first beading book in a while that I've actually made something from! And that was also because of a whim. I was flipping through all my bead books looking for something elegant to do with Swarovski pearls for my friend Helen's wedding necklace. I thought that Seed Bead Fusion was all funky stuff, but there was a beautiful rivoli pendant project hanging from a strand of pearls, and when I showed it to Helen, that was the design she chose.

So I can actually give a real thorough review, since I've tested the directions! Author Rachel Nelson-Smith provides step-by-step written directions, with a few helpful graphs. For visual learners, each tutorial is followed by a couple pages of thumbnails of the major steps. The photographs of the projects and steps are very clear and sharp against a plain white background, making it easy to see what you're making and how you're doing it.

I found one or two small typographical errors in the project that I did, but they didn't throw me off since it was easy to infer what the author actually meant. Over all the project was very doable, though I bent three needles, and as I mentioned in my last post, it took three tries to get a 36 bead bezel that actually fit perfectly around the rivoli.

The projects use a lot of right angle weave and peyote stitch. Many of them are very dimensional, and the examples tend to be in extremely bright colors, so that I usually have to imagine them in green and black to think if I would actually do them. The fusion in the title comes from the fact that most of the projects also incorporate some wirework or stringing along with the seed bead weaving, but there's still plenty of interesting stuff for beaders who are strictly interested in weaving.

After making Helen's necklace (which I'll post tomorrow or Monday), I want to make something for myself with the same technique, and there are at least half a dozen other projects that I could see myself trying out. In fact, I'd dive right in if my BFAC deadline wasn't looming large on the horizon.

Brunette-locks and the three bezels

I'm trying to finish my friend Helen's wedding necklace before I go see her on Friday afternoon (her wedding is on the 26th). The pendant involves a bezeled rivoli. The bezel has to be exactly 36 beads, to attach neatly to the base I've already made. The first 36 bead bezel I made, out of the white opal gilt-lined seed beads was too small. The second bezel, made from the silver-lined matte crystal ab is so large that I think I might be able to fit an 18mm crystal in, instead of the prescribed 16mm crystal. So what bezel will be "just right"? Should I go with crystal AB, which I've already made most of the pendant out of? Should I try alternating the little white opal beads with the big matte beads? Should I swear off bezels since they almost never fit on the first, second or even third try?

Weekend of Dancing

My weekend of dancing was a fun and educational time. On Friday night, I went down to the Black Rose Caffe to watch and perform in the hafla. It was a great evening, lots of talented tribal style and tribal fusion dancers and a very enthusiastic and supportive audience. My performance didn't go quite as well as I had planned; I started out a little nervous and as such, I forgot some of the things I was going to do and all the flaws that I had been working through in my practice came back in my dance. But people seemed to enjoy it, so that's the important part. Unfortunately, I can't post the video here on my blog, as it's 10MB over Blogger's tiny limit, but if you're one of my Facebook friends, you can view it there.

The guest of honor, Oracle from Atlanta, performed twice and was a real treat to watch. Amazing physical skill and really in touch with her music and the audience. Also, abs that I would consider selling my soul for. You know, if anyone out there is in the market for a soul...

A bit shout-out to Brandye for organizing the hafla, inviting me to dance, and gathering such a great assortment of local performers!

Saturday had a serious lack of dancing fun times and is honestly not worth talking about.

But then Sunday rolled around! And off I went to my workshop with the amazing and talented Ava Fleming, who is based out of the Phoenix area. I had been warned that Ava would probably kick my butt, and the workshop was in fact pretty hard. There were moments when my muscles were crying for a reprieve, but luckily I didn't have any lasting ill effects. Thank goodness for CrossFit, it's really helped my endurance for belly dance workshops.

Ramona, the lady who organized the workshop, did a great job. The workshop itself was held at a ballet school, so there was a good floor, lots of mirrors, and good lighting and sound. There was water and snacks to keep us hydrated and energized for our 3 1/2 hours of drilling techniques and then rolling them into combos. I'd like to publicly thank her for putting on such a nice event!

After a quick trip home for a shower and a pretty dress, I was back out the door again to watch the showcase, which featured Ava and an assortment of local Tucson dancers. While Friday was all about the tribal gals, Sunday night was heavy on the Egyptian style, with a little debke (a social line dance from the Middle East) and one awesome Turkish dancer. It was nice to see all aspects of the Tucson belly dance community in one weekend -- though it would have been even better to see them all together in one show!

And to think I was worried that my dance life would slow down to a boring crawl when summer rolled around. I actually had to choose between a workshop with Ava and a workshop with Oracle, and I have more difficult choices ahead of me as the summer just gets hotter!

Deep in Thought

I'm feeling introspective, about the way I manage my time, and what I want to do with my life. There probably won't be any huge, stunning changes that come out of this thoughtful period, mostly just little tweaks here and there to get things on track. It's just that between being busy, and being lost in thought, I don't seem to blog a lot.

I should have a review of Seed Bead Fusion later this week, and maybe even some new photos, and I should blog about my fun-but-grueling belly dance weekend, once I'm a little less tired.

Dreaming of the Flower Moon

The FAE Team Art Dare for June is Rose Moon, Flower Moon, or Strawberry Moon. I have another one of these pretty floral crescent pendants, so I will definitely have to use it. What could be more perfect than a moon with flowers already on it?

I totally missed the Milk Moon Art Dare. I guess my muse is lactose intolerant.

Dancing this Friday

One of my goals for 2010 was to find more opportunities to dance in public, and I'm happy to say that I'm succeeding so far. I've been invited to perform at a small hafla (belly dance party) here in Tucson this coming Friday. I'm excited, because it's my first Tucson performance, and a bit nervous, because I won't have my huge Plaza de Anaya dance family there to stroke my ego. But I will have my real family, some friends, and the Tucson dance community there, so it should be fun.

Mostly I'm happy for the chance to get to meet more local dancers, and see them perform. I had already intended to attend the hafla before I was invited to dance, as I'm really trying to get more involved with the local community. There's talk of more workshops, haflas, student nights and other fun dance-related events, and I want to make sure that I don't miss any of it, and that I do whatever I can to help make them successful. It's my dream that someday the Tucson dance scene will be just as vibrant as the Phoenix area one, even if it is smaller.

Crystal Brilliance by Anna Elizabeth Draeger

Crystal Brilliance is a new book from Kalmbach Publishing, written by Bead & Button associate editor Anna Elizabeth Draeger. As the title and cover photos suggest, it is entirely dedicated to projects using Crystallized Swarovski Elements, along with seed beads. Most of the projects primarily use the easy-to-find and relatively affordable bicone crystals, along with some pearls, rounds, and a few of the fancy cuts.

One thing very strongly in this book's favor is that it is perfect for a new beader, or someone who has primarily done bead stringing, who wants to give beadweaving a try. There is a lot of great basic information at the start of the book including a lot of really helpful tips that other books assume you know. Also, each chapter has the projects sorted in increasing difficulty levels, with several very simple ones for the easily daunted beader to cut their teeth on before moving on to larger, more complex projects.

A lot of the designs are very beautiful, and there are a few I'd like to try out, once I've collected the proper crystals (my selection is pretty much all 4mm bicones since those are what I use for my right-angle-weave bracelets).

My one complaint is that the interior photography is not very good. The primary photo for every project is focused on the front and center, with the rest of the project blurred behind it. That's very nice and artistic, but it makes it very difficult for the reader to get an idea of what the entire necklace/bracelet looks like! Many of the items have sharper photos for the "alternate version" picture than for the main one!

But if you can get past the less-than-stellar pictures, this seems like a nice book for anyone who loves to weave with crystals.