For the love of a Gemduo

In 2014 I had a little brainwave and created my paperbook earrings – I’ve blogged about this before in How I fell into the world of beads. I haven’t mentioned this little activity here on this blog much, but I have now decided that this blog will be a vehicle for ALL my art practices (and there are a few) and beadwork is one of them.

So where to start? I have been seriously bead addicted for a couple of years, I’m now writing my own patterns, and know what works and what doesn’t, what is quality and what I should never buy, and how to make a good piece of jewellery. My credit card has yet to forgive me.

My main focus with beadwork is off-loom beadweaving. I have a needle and beading thread and I sit there threading beads and weaving in and out of each one creating patterns. Here is a snapshot of some of my recent creations.

But I thought as an initial post on this adventure I would start with my latest craze – Gemduos.

Lots of good beads come out of the Czech Republic and my mainstays are two holed beads – Superduos in particular (see the petals of the pink flower bracelet on the left above) – but a new series of two holed beads has recently been released called Gemduos.

These are glass diamonds, and unlike many other two holed beads they have a colour series called ‘Backlit’ where a silver coating is added to the flat side of the bead, enabling the colours of the glass to be reflected back in all their glory. I bought my first few tubes of these on a whim…there has been no whim since, they’ve become must haves (yes, my credit card hates me even more). The moment I opened the mail, I dropped what I was doing and made some earrings on the spot.

Then followed somewhat of a frenzy as I had to have more and expand my collection. I’ve now racked up something like 15 pairs of earrings and four pendants. I’m just obsessed with them. They come in a glorious range of colours.

And I feel that I have just scratched the surface of what I can do with these.

I tend to do beading when I don’t have the energy to do anything else, plus when I’m obsessing, which does happen extensively. I just love the ease of fitting the beads together like a puzzle, the mathematical flow and the bling – I love the colours and shine – I’m a sucker for pretty coloured glass 😀

These Starfish pendants also use Japanese seed beads which are the best for beadweaving and come in a stunning range of colours. I’m in love with the 15/0 size as I can create a canvas with the duos and then draw on it with the 15/0s – I think it is my visual art background 😀

 

So this is my current bead addiction. To do something new, I thought I would share it on Handmade Monday, which I only discovered this morning and am looking forward to exploring extensively 😀 Why don’t you join me and meet some new arty people?

Art always!

Best wishes,
Liz
(off the edge, but learning to fly)