Posts tagged ‘Beadaholics’

Brenda Branson (AKA My Sister’s Beads) suggested the Beadaholics start a new beading challenge. We’re calling this one “Bead In A Brown Paper Bag”. If you’d like to participate, bring an “interesting”, “unique”, “pretty” or “fun” focal bead or pendant to our May 22nd Meetup at On A String Bead Shop to swap. (If you forget to bring your bead, you can always purchase one at On A String.) We’ll place everyone’s beads in individual brown paper bags and you will choose a bag. The challenge is to design a piece of jewelry using or inspired by the bead you receive in your bag.

And if that isn’t enough to get your design juices flowing, Anne at On A String recently returned from a bead buying trip. She brought back more than 2000 new strands of beads and dozens of new chain styles! That’s right…I said 2000!! I just love this shop.

We’ll bring our brown bag bead challenge pieces to the June Meetup. (We’ll also be doing an exercise to help us hone our design styles. More on that later.) Hope to see you at On A String on the 22nd! (Not a member of the Beadaholics? No problem. Join Us!)

I agreed to give a presentation at the October Beadaholics meetup on applying color theory to jewelry designs. As I’m doing research for it, I thought I’d post the sites I use as references.  Why wait, right?

Fashion Trendsetter has a fabulous color trends section. I love the Lenzing Textile & Color Trends Autumn/Winter 2010/11 booklet you can download (look for the pdf download on the right). It’s color trend heaven. I’m also using the Interfilière Fashion & Color Trends Summer 2010. I took the forecasts with me to several bead shows to help keep me on track. It can be overwhelming to try to pull together colors on the spur of the moment. A little color prep goes a long way.

Several sites make the Pantone color forecasts available. Fire Mountain Gems has lovely pages for the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 and the Spring/Summer 2010 colors posted. They also offer the Color Association of the United States color forecasts. You can download pdf files for each of these.

If you print a color forecast, be aware of the differences that can occur if you (more…)

Attended the Beadaholics meetup yesterday. We met at the University City Blvd. Hobby Lobby. It was the first time we gathered there. They provided one of their  classrooms for us and that gave us plenty of space to spread out. I love attending these meetups because it’s inspiring to see what everyone is working on.

The group is planning a day trip to go bead shopping in Asheville, NC. I would love to go but it’s the same weekend I have family in town. Hopefully, they’ll plan another trip later this year. Can’t wait to see what everyone comes back from Asheville with.

I attended the Charlotte Beadaholics Meetup this afternoon. We celebrated the one-year anniversary of the group. Their first meetup was at the Intergalatic Bead Show last April. I joined the group last month so this was my second interaction with them.

We got together at Expressive Impressions. It’s a Charlotte bead shop that generously donates their workspace to the Beadaholics for meetups. The workspace is just amazing. It’s feels like you’re in a jewelry artist’s studio. Of course, that could be because they regularly hold jewelry classes there. They also sell a myriad of beads, findings and all sorts of supplies. (more…)