Happy New Year! ...And very nearly happy new February.

It's been a strange few months in terms of creative endeavours; blame it on stress in the day job, perhaps, or the fact that a few of my usual craft fair gigs have stopped running. Sales have been down, and while the sensible thing to do would be to go online and start pushing, I think I lack the self-promotion gene. Talking to people about the jewellery when it's there in front of them and they're picking it up and experiencing it is one thing, but actually putting it out there in their faces via social media feels wrong on a very fundamental level. Without wishing to turn this into a therapy post, self esteem has never exactly been my forte. Therefore, if the pieces aren't selling then I usually land up concluding that it's because they're rubbish and that this has nothing at all to do with the fact that nobody's actually seeing them.

The perceived solution? Buy more beads so I could make better pieces. Except that all this did was create a huge mountain of beads that I was ashamed to look at because it was a reminder that not only was I creatively dead inside, I was also a spendthrift. Every time inspiration hit, I'd spend 30 minutes looking for the beads I wanted before the guilt set in at my own uselessness and I'd slouch off to play Candy Crush instead.

It's all been rather wretched, to be honest.

Fortunately, Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Blog Party appears to have come around to rescue me. I had an amazing time participating last year, so with a date set for the 8th party sign-ups I knew I had to get in proper beady shape beforehand.

Drastic measures were called for.

Step 1: Identify the problem. Easy enough: too many beads, making it too hard to find what I wanted.
Step 2: Decide on a course of action. Again, fairly simple: streamline and organize my stash so it felt manageable again.
Step 3: Implementation. Well, thinking about implementation and then wondering if there was any possible way I could just carry on doing what I was doing whilst getting back to having fun and making new pieces.
Step 4: Accepting that no, implementation was actually necessary and resolving that no further beading would be attempted until the stash was under control.
Step 5: Implementation. No, really.

A week on, and I'm most of the way there.The real dreck has been thrown out and the rest is in two big piles - one to keep, and one to re-home. It's been a journey, too; memories have surfaced along with beads I haven't seen in years. The best part has been feeling my impatience grow as the flashes of inspiration have started to hit again - can't wait to have everything done and tidy so I can start trying all the new projects I have planned.

Besides, with all the space I've created, think of all the new beads I'll have room to buy!

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Finally, a couple of photos, because the creative well never dried up entirely...

Over the past few months I've been having a lot of fun making beaded dodecahedra, so when I was looking for a showstopper piece to draw attention to my stall at the Christmas craft fairs, I decided to use them as a starting point. This piece was originally going to have a triangular centrepiece, but after putting the beaded beads in my trusty cereal bowl the flower centrepiece formed itself and I realised I'd found something a bit special:

I used opalite rounds and Swarovski bicones for the flower petals; at some point I think the bicone petals will have to be replaced because they compress that little bit too easily under the weight of the rest of the piece. It proved to be a real eyecatcher on the stall, though, and I landed up putting the price right up when I realised I liked it too much to want to let it go.

Beaded dodecahedra also make great cat toys if you make them with chunky wooden pony beads and hardwearing acrylic yarn.

Bead bloggers also often like to post photos of their cats under very flimsy pretences indeed.

Bead Soup Blog Party 2013 - Polychromatic Spree

So, this is my first year participating in Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Blog Party, and it's been a real adventure. I've encountered new materials, colour schemes and textures, and adapted a bunch of old favourite tricks and techniques.

Agata, my partner this year, is a polymer clay genius, and she sent me a couple of truly gorgeous handmade focals. Faced with these, I did what I did best and panicked: I'd known I'd be working with a focal bead, but my normal technique of attaching a jump ring to one end and threading it onto a chain obviously wasn't going to cut it for a project like this. Okay, that was fine. I could cope. Yeah.

Ideas for each of the focals hit me more or less immediately and more or less simultaneously, but several weeks of dithering about the materials and worrying about the details ensued. I looked, I shopped, I worried, I shopped some more, I made at least six pieces utterly unrelated to the challenge and then I pulled my head out of my backside and got on with it.

Here are the finished pieces: I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them.

The yellow teardrop focal practically screamed to be a pendant, but I had a couple of concerns: firstly, that the light weight of the polymer clay would affect the drape, and secondly that it was just too obvious. I've always loved making big elaborate hair accessories, and this seemed like a natural alternative. I've teamed it with the faceted pink stone Agata sent me (I know these as Brazilian rubies, but they seem to have a lot of names) and aragonite, which I bought in specially as I wanted something relatively matte so the textures wouldn't war. To get neat edges on the barrette, I used glass magatamas which have since become my go-to bead for finishing hair accessories. Oh, and there's matching pink and citrine earrings that remind me of the rhubarb and custard-flavoured sweets you used to get when I was a kid.

Next up: the indigo doughnut and the Tibetan silver clasp. The clasp design is a favourite - I actually sent Agata an identical one, which led to a few moments of cognitive dissonance when I unwrapped my parcel! The choker is comprised of a double row of dyed amethysts (I deliberately sought out dyed beads for evenness of colour) held in position by frosted red Miyuki Tilas. I experimented a lot with different band designs for this, but in the end I decided to keep it simple and let the focal sing. Aren't those tiny leaves adorable? They remind me a little of the Black Rabbit scene in Watership Down, except, um, without the graphically-animated rabbit death, obviously.

...Moving swiftly onwards...

Finally, a bonus piece. The most perplexing items Agata sent me were a couple of three-ring silvertone connectors. It honestly wouldn't be a lie to say I lost sleep over what to do with these - the holes seemed to run the wrong way, and no matter how often I looked at them I didn't have any idea of how to make them useful. It's one thing not to particularly like a bead or component, but these were actively taunting me. In the end inspiration struck at 6am, in the form of the question I wonder whether they'd tessellate? Three hours and some unladylike language later (threading seed beads into hoops on wire is always rage-inducing), the answer was an emphatic yes. Of all the pieces I've made, I suppose this one is closest to my normal style - the haematite/amethyst/opalite combination is something of a staple for me, and I felt able to use neutrals and metallics in a way that might not have worked with the other pieces. As with the others, however, it was still a learning experience and still felt like a creative step forwards.

To see what Agata made from the beads I sent, check out her blog. I've been there already, and as always, I'm in awe of her creativity and technical skills.

Thanks to Agata and to Lori, and I hope to see you all next year!

Teardrops (In my eyes)

I'll be honest here; I don't often visit the local craft superstore. My official line on this is that prices are high and that they'd rather sell you a pre-designed project than inspire genuine creativity, but the main reason is that I'm too lazy to walk half a mile uphill out of town to the industrial estate by the railway station. Normally, therefore, I only make the hike when I'm feeling creatively stagnant and need to actively look for materials that inspire me. Continuing in the confessional theme: I'm also a materials snob. There, said it. I like my semiprecious stones, and barring seed beads and spacers everything else tends to seem just that little bit inferior. With all this in mind, here's a series of four necklaces I made from Gutermann Czech glass teardrops I bought from the Hobbycraft clearance bin at a pound a piece. The colours are luminous, they make up quickly and easily and they've drawn more compliments at work than anything else I've made in ages. They're around 17" long each, so they sit nicely on the collarbone where their relative delicacy works in their favour. Hopefully they'll do well as cheaper pieces on my craft fair table, but if not, they'll make great gifts or nice additions to my work wardrobe.

Bead soup!

My bead soup arrived from Poland today - thanks Agata! I already have a couple of projects in mind for these. Can't believe the detail on the polymer clay focals, either!

Getting back in the swing...

Looks as though I need to work on the layout for this thing, but that can come later. For now, though, here's a quickie bracelet I made this morning. My normal beading habit is to work out of a cereal bowl on the corner of the computer desk - our flat is small, space is at a premium and, critically, I've never been capable of separating my beading addiction from my online chatting addiction. When I design, I tend to tip a bunch of materials I think might work into the bowl and then see what connections I can make. The upshot of this is that at the end of any given project, I have a bowlful of unused beads that need sorting and putting away. Sometimes, it sits there glaring at me for a week or more. The bracelet below isn't so much a project as an attempt to not have to put my toys away. It's all fairly obvious, but for the record: haematite rounds and hoops, tiger eye rounds, 24k gold-plated faceted delicas and the ones in the middle of the hoops are actually garnets despite what my camera has to say about it.

Bead Soup Blog Party 2013

Hello to any new visitors! As you may or may not have noticed, this hasn't been updated since 2009. This is because I've largely moved my beading activity to my tumblr, as being quicker and easier to update. Still, I haven't been to blogspot in a while and now I return, I find that it far less faff than it used to be. So, who knows, I may set up residency here too, with the caveat that when you give me a huge blank screen to type into I'll invariably ramble like a very rambly thing. In the meantime, here's a (reasonably) recent picture of the kind of stuff I do.

NIFTY GIFTY...
It's practically a law: whenever I make something I really, really like, the camera won't do it justice.

No idea what I was on when I designed this one - I'm sure there's a reason for it being threaded on ribbon, I'm just not completely sure what that reason might be. I think it had something to do with the large-diameter holes in the African magazine beads I'd originally planned on using. This is the way my mind works. Or not.

The centrepiece is a rectangular sardonyx; this and its siblings cost more than I've ever paid for a string of beads before. Still, it would've felt wrong to have wasted my birthday money on something I didn't love.

It's a beautiful stone, but I swear the thing I like most about this one is the way the knots in the ribbon act as spacers.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE FUTURES GALLERY...

...Yep, that's me at the Coventry Womens' Forum last Saturday, hawking and also wearing my wares.

I feel uniquely privileged to have had the chance to be a part of such an uplifting and inspiring cultural event, and have spent the past few days rejoicing in renewed awe of my empowered feminine self.

No, really.

IN THE SWIM...
This, for the record, is what you get when you use a bead supplier with a minimum spend limit. You browse for a bit, you dither, you think about all the useful thread and findings you could buy to make up those last couple of pounds and then you buy cloisonné goldfish. I hear they've made this a law in certain countries.

Of course, once you've bought them you have to work out what to do with them. For a while I was leaning towards simply leaving them bagged up somewhere prominent as a reminder that I was running low on thread and clasps, but then I figured everybody's allowed to be whimsical sometimes, right?

The barrettes are made in three stages. First, I wire on a layer of semiprecious chips. After that, I apply the fish and the bubbles. After that, I go back to the couch to lick the physical and mental wounds I've acquired from working with large lengths of springy fine-gauge wire.

Making them drives me barmy, but I'm sort of hoping not all of them will sell so I can adopt one for myself.

ALL IN THE WRIST ACTION...
I love making bracelets. They're little bite-sized pieces of beading heaven, a safe place to investigate colours and textures without worrying about putting in hours of work on something that might turn out ugly or too heavy for the thread.

Better still, if I make three or four in a day they hang on the stand in a very satisfying sort of way. You've been productive, Sarah, they tell me, and I believe them and treat myself to a bit of chocolate as a reward.

Anyhow, clockwise from top left:

1. Wood rounds and tree agate chips - very naturalistic and a bit oriental.
2. Garnet chips with garnet leaf and lamp glass centrepiece - terribly, terribly sophisticated.
3. Wood rounds, glass rounds, moonstone oval - I liked this one so much I made two.
4. Small and large haematite rounds - some say funereal, I say a classic. You choose.

Damn, I'm looking forward to making more of these.

DANGLY BITS...
...Y'see, I swore I wouldn't get into the whole pendant thing. Pendants are for people who can do clever stuff with wire - stuff like cutting the ends of it in a manner that won't draw the wearer's blood.

It starts in such tiny ways, doesn't it? I'm not terribly confident with elastic, either, and it didn't really seem like such a huge deal to apply an extender chain to make a bracelet fit nicely. Out of extender chains? They're awfully expensive, aren't they? Why not simply buy a length of chain to cut up and make my own? Chain arrives but won't fit the bracelet clasps? Well, I have to do something with it, don't I?

I should probably mention at this point that the wastage of a couple of quid would not have flung me into penury.

I should probably also mention that these pendants contain no sharp ends - just glass, semiprecious stones, wood and these really funky little wire spirals I make with one twist of the round-ended pliers and then some clever stuff with the pad of my thumb.

JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH...
Two days before an event is a very, very awkward time to realise you don't have any double-length strings made up. The photograph to the left depicts several hours of undiluted adrenaline, cursing and decaffeinated Earl Grey tea.

It's always nice to have some longer strings available, of course; almost everybody likes a necklace they can knot and loop and mould to their own personal style. They look pretty, they sell well.

They suck the living soul out of me. Three tiny beads, one less tiny one, repeat until 1) you reach 45 inches, 2) the beads run out or 3) your brain creeps out of your left ear and flings itself to its death via the nearest window.

Pretty, though, ain't they?

IT TAKES ALL SORTS...

These were the jumping-off point when I realised I was likely to have a busy craft fair schedule for 2009 - a bunch of eclectic bead strings grouped by colour and featuring all the fun lamp glass beads I'd not been able to slot in anywhere else.

There's at least a dozen little stories hidden in this photo - the big red clay square from the beading carousel my parents bought me from Costco last year, the purple foil glass discs I bought in the form of five or six bracelets from the local charity shop, the little 4mil glass rounds in midnight blue that I still think are the prettiest colour I ever saw... I could go on about these forever. There's even some in here from the first bag of lamp glass beads I ever bought, from the British Heart Foundation shop next to the Etna restaurant in Coventry city centre. Back then, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Of course, some beads are more special than others, and so are some necklaces. Take a look at the second necklace from the bottom? It's another very simple design, chiefly because I thought the featured beads spoke for themselves. Discover their story at http://mzuribeads.com/.