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Thanks to Karen Williams, a few of us formed a support group to tackle our UFO’s. We’re not building spaceships; just facing our UnFinished Objects. These earrings are the first work I’ve completed. There are links to the other participants at the end of this post.

Some of these motifs will be used in other pieces. See those two pearls on the upper left? I’ve tried this bezel three different ways, and am still not happy with it. Herringbone, square stitch, and a third method I don’t remember. Brick stitch won’t get me quite this look, but I’ll try for something similar.

This mess was the starting point. Two years ago I played around and made several bits of beadwork. I was considering a class for a bead retreat. I wanted to show various motifs from the same start. I couldn’t make the retreat, and these got pushed aside.

Last summer I decided it was time to use some of these. I wanted to make a lariat with some of the green motifs and seed beads. To my surprise, Toho doesn’t make a single seed bead that I like with the Czech olivine. Or at least, I couldn’t find one. I sadly gave up the design I had envisioned, and ordered some more olivine rounds to make a different type of necklace. They went in the box with the rest of the beads, and remained on the shelf.

I can’t quite get happy with the rounds. Maybe I’ll order some Czech olivine seed beads, or use some simple chain… I’ll have a necklace out of these yet.

Here are the rest of the bloggers

Karen Williams, Baublicious
Francie Broadie, Francie Broadie Custom Jewelry
Christine Van Dyke Altmiller, One Kiss Creations
Amy Severino, Amy Beads
Therese, Therese’s Treasures
Kim Dworak, CianciBlue
Liz E, Bead Contagion
Margo Lynn Hablutzel, My World and It’s Full of Books
Cynthia Machata, Antiquity Travelers
Cathi Salzarulo Kent, The Cat’s Meow
Liz Hart, Treetop Life

smaller egg

It’s time for another blog hop showing our completed UFO’s. Artists and crafters are all too familiar with wonderful plans petering out and stalling along the way. We end up with all too many UnFinished Objects. I started this months-long challenge with the idea of tackling the projects that had languished for years. I was surprised to have that morph into not allowing newer projects to add to the problem. This little egg is only a few months old. I’m happy it didn’t get permanently passed over for newer, shinier ideas.

Beaded Easter eggs like this have been made in Russia for 100 years or more. This is a fairly traditional pattern, but I wanted to make a small change to the usual instructions. Most eggs are finished at the top and bottom with straight rows of beads.

egg again

I don’t like abrupt change at the end. I knew I wanted to continue the little 4 bead motif over the entire egg, but had no clue how to do this. At that point, something else came up and it was all too easy to set this aside. Fortunately it sat by my bead table accusing me. What? You’re not willing to think a little bit? Don’t you feel like playing? Eventually I listened and played with the beads until I came up with a couple of solutions. They’re not perfect, but they work, and I like the finished product.

ends