Inspiration II

What inspires me? Where do I come up with ideas?

It depends. I love nature and symmetry. I love all things German (as I used to live in Germany as an exchange student), French, Roma, Irish, Welsh, Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Native American, and the Middle Ages. I love old clothes and old places, cathedrals and cobblestone streets. I love dance and music of all types.

I started a belly dancing class today and I love the fringe and the bold colors of the costumes. I also love the bold colors of Fall, the oranges, yellows, and reds. But I also love the blue of the sky and the ocean and storm clouds with lightening. Creams and browns and the white of the moon. I love the night and all its creatures.

And, I love a challenge.

Beading is a much about creating the design as it is beading it. I take from two or three designs and add them together. I switch, I change, I envision.

I always say, "If I can see it (in my mind’s eye), I can achieve it (in reality)." That’s part of how I psyche myself up to complete pieces and create, not just duplicate.

On Tuesday I began a new design for a choker. It started with the idea of a man’s choker, thanks to Jon from Black Stone Cherry. Then I envisioned it. Next, I printed graph paper and got their CD cover. I began counting beads and graphing their logo on the paper.

It’s not perfect, it never will be. Although there are programs which would digitize this, graph it, and give me the color separations, I chose not to use them. I prefer to do it myself. It’s not exactly as it appears on their CD cover and that’s fine, because that makes it mine. As I work, I think of the size bead I want to use. After graphing the "B" I determine it will be small beads, 15's although I found some 16-22's online, the color selection is not great. The 16-22's or even 24's are antique and rare to find. But the detail is amazing. 15's give great detail too, so... I’m still kicking that around.

For those non-beaders, the higher the number, the smaller the bead.

Then, I ordered beads. While I keep a decent selection on hand, after looking at the CD cover again, decided I needed a darker cream bead and felt a rootbeer colored bead would do well for the antique look. Then I ordered burnished bone hairpipe and spacers and brass beads of two shapes and sinew.

I know I’ll be using square stitch, which makes the piece look loomed, except on a loom you add several beads in rows at a time, whereas with square stitch it is one bead at a time. I could have used peyote stitch but chose to use square stitch because of its durability. Unlike peyote, if square stitch breaks, it does not unravel. The chance of losing the entire necklace due to the degrading of the threads from sweat and body oils is increased with peyote and reduced with square.

If I’m going to be rocking out in a crowd and sweating, I need a sturdy set up.

So, here’s the inspiration. I’ll update as I begin creating.