Dulcey Heller » Bracelets

Ripit on the loom

Dulcey Heller — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:05:27 +0000

Here’s the before:

And here’s the after:

It was just too rippled; it didn’t look good. I’ll have to sit down and start over. I’d like to get this footer established and the beading going, as it’s a nice project to have ready and waiting for when I want to do just a little something. I’d also like to FINISH, of course. I don’t want to look back and see when I started these two pieces (a bracelet and a wall piece), let alone when I started the piece on the rest of the warp.

Herringbone and memory wire bracelet

Dulcey Heller — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:55:43 +0000

I have seen many wonderful bracelets in blogs (often Hungarian) that make some sort of beaded rope, and then string them on bracelet-sized memory wire. Here’s one that I saw, by Ande. Mixing sizes of beads in herringbone makes it a different texture, not the slinky-smooth especially evident if you use the size 10 Miyuki triangle beads. I’ve mixed sizes before, but this bracelet, and others I saw after by others, prompted me to make one for memory wire.

So I’m beading away, at about inch 16, and someone asks me, “What are you making?”

“A bracelet.”

“A bracelet?!”

This is about 19″ in total, and heavy, more than 40 grams. The beads on the ends are Swarovskis.

Looming idea for remaining warp

Dulcey Heller — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:25:09 +0000

I’m getting closer to figuring out what I want to do with the rest of the warp. I’m pretty sure I want to do a version of the Hoffman painting I already did — narrower and taller (so I’ll add to the top). I’m going to have to mess even more with his painting, as I’m almost out of the red, and have so few of the dark green transparent beads that I could actually count them, if I wanted to.

I like how the greens group together, I want to leave them as they are. The contrast of the light value of the yellow and the dark value of the darkest green I want to leave as well. So, I think I’m going to transpose the blue and red, giving this a blue background with some small patches of red. I have another dark transparent French green, but it’s a bluer green — which may actually be better, with the increased amount of blue in the painting.

I think I’m going to remove the painting from behind the current painting, continue it to increase the height by about 3/4″, and then cut it to the width I want. I’ll just have to remember to transpose the red and the blue.

For the rest of the width of the warp, I’m going to make the bracelet I want as well.

I fell in love with the cover of Aleutian Sparrow, a book by Newbery-winning author, Karen Hesse. The book is historical fiction, based on the invasion of the Aleutian Islands by the Japanese navy in 1942. The cover is a wonderful woodcut by Evon Zerbetz, an Alaskan artist.

I will use beads inspired by the colors in the woodcut.

In my feed reader not too long ago, I admired a bracelet by Kashaya. I like how it’s somewhat abstract, interesting both when you see the entire length, or just the curve on the top of your wrist. She generously provides the peyote pattern here.

In Photoshop Elements, I replaced colors to get something close to the colors I want, to make it easier to follow her pattern.

The center of the flower will be the transparent aqua. The opaque aqua will be the ring just inside the center of the flower and the outer petals. The inner petals will be the medium green, and the background the lightest green.

I will resize the image so that it is the length that fits my wrist — which is almost exactly the height of the second version of Hoffman’s painting, and the width is narrow enough to fit next to the painting. Then I’ll tape the bracelet and the painting images to a piece of paper, again situated so that I can loom right over the paper, doing paint-by-numbers with two separate pieces simultaneously.

That’s my idea today, anyway.

Bugles and right angle weave

Dulcey Heller — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:56:28 +0000

It’s been a really nice day. I “got stuff done,” and had some time to play with beads, and time to read a novel. Here’s the result of the playing:

I’d like to make this into a bracelet, but I would like to simplify the method. I would want this on the diagonal, like in the picture. These are size 1 Japanese bugles, size 15s to cushion them, and size 11 beads on the top of the points.

I have a dislike of clasps that stand out as different from the rest of the piece. What would be ideal is if the edges would just seamlessly go together without any visible clasp. That’s not happening. The alternative is to make the clasp some sort of focal point. Hmm. I’ll have to think on it.