Fish Are Friends Reveal and Blog Hop

Today's the day for the Fish are Friends Blog Hop.  Thank you to all the members of my Design Team, and to everyone else who participated in this challenge and hop.  The goal again was to use my Fancy Fish tutorial, or another favorite fish pattern to create wonderful new creations.

Without further ado - here's the Official Fish Friends list:

 Francie Broadie - FAB Custom Jewelry

 Shirley Moore - Beads and Bread
 Bobbie Rafferty - Beadsong Jewelry
 Tanya Goodwin - A Work in Progress
 Cynthia Machata - Antiquity Travelers

Kathy Jo - KJ's Beadacious Beads

Therese Frank - Therese's Treasures

Nancy Sopp - AlaskanNancy 

Alison Oman

Amy Severino - Amybeads

Hostess: Karen Williams - Baublicious

 

Acrylic puffed oval beads as cores for fish bodies

For my own entry, I wanted to do something different.  You've already seen my Fancy Fish.  Some new, larger core beads seemed like a great place to start.  The photo at left shows one of the larger beads in comparison to the standard sized core beads I use.

Then a friend asked if I could stitch a Lionfish.    I didn't want to try to go for photo realism, but Lionfish and Scorpionfish are such fun with their spikes and plumes.  So I decided to take artistic license, lots of artistic license, and see where it took me.

My new fish is an extrapolation from my original pattern - you won't find the exact instructions for it in my PDF, but rather it is an outgrowth of the pattern.  I stitched two fish, but I think I may save the second and try submitting it to some magazines.  

My latest, very Fancy Fish - isn't her topknot fun?

Fish in Process

My New fish with one of my Blue fish

Oh, and later this week, I'll be hosting a giveaway here on my blog for some core beads for Fancy Fish. 

Alison Oman's Three Fish Friends

A couple of the participants in my Fish Are Friends Challenge and Blog Hop don't currently have their own blogs, so I'm hosting them here as guest posts. Here's Alison Oman talking about her interpretations of the design:

Three Fancy Fish by Alison Oman with peyote stitch bodies

Another view of the Fancy Fish by Alison Oman

This has been an adventure for me!! Not only am I an avid loom weaver, I'm REALLY left handed, soooooo the RAW has been quite a challenge for me....in fact, I'll admit the two fish I've done so far I cheated and did peyote for the body.

However, my photography skills are really awful - I have a point and shoot camera and the colors and beads just all meld together.

My daughter is the camera aficionado and she has had fun walking around the back yard with these three fish.

I've had such a great response from the fish and as the local art gallery is having a show called "Fish" in July I'm working on a piece that is inspired by your fish designs.

-Alison

Kettle's Overboiling, Soup's Definitely on....

Soups on!  Bead Soup that is, courtesy of our fabulous hostess, Lori Anderson who organizes the entire show, pairing beaders from around the world to see what they come up with.  Wondering just how big the Bead Soup party is?  Check out this map that Lori put together.  

My partner this time around is the wonderful Tracey Nanstad of A Beadiful Mess.  For a peak at the soup mix she sent, check out my earlier post. 

Her Lucky Robin Bluebird pendant really gave me the fits, trying to figure out what to do with it.  The bail was too prominent (and pretty) to remove, so I couldn't just bead bezel around it like a cabochon.  But it was too narrow to fit any of the various beaded ropes I came up with.

So I finally broke down and pulled out my favorite book on wirework and sat down with my wire-snips and pliers.

While my wireworking is fairly simple, I don't do it often.  It's outside of my comfort zone, which is supposed to be part and parcel of this challenge.  Yeah.   I had fun figuring out how to wire the flower beads onto the metal knots.

I used Tracey's pendant, clasp and silver circles.  Searching through my stash for coordinating beads, I came across the pressed blue beads, leftovers from Kalmbach's bead soup party last fall.  The red beads are garnets - I started to worry that I wouldn't have enough because less than half of them fit onto my wire. 

While I wrestled with what to do with the Robin Bluebird pendant, I noticed that the stone cabochon Tracey sent was perfectly shaped for a fish body.   If you've been following my blog at all lately, you know I'm working with a fish theme this year.

I thought about making a grand daddy of a Fancy Fish.  Instead, I decided to draw a cartoony-style fish with beads.  As I worked, it occurred to me that the way I planned for it to hang, people would only ever see one side of the fish at a time.  So I decided to create a split personality fish, with a different look on either side.  So it's like having two pendants in one.  I made sure that the necklace worked worn either direction as well. 

What started out as a way to pass the time while I waited for inspiration to strike took on a life of it's own:

"Fresh Catch of the Day"

The fish hangs from a felted, beaded bead 'float' that I made.  For the supporting necklace, I wanted to carry on the ocean theme, without becoming too busy, especially since the necklace is quite long.  I stitched a couple of my standard fish bodies, but decided not to add any other identifying details other than a little bead fringe to hint at tails.  For the clasp, I used one of Tracey's textured copper discs, then made a 'fish hook' closure. 

While figuring out the components for my Fresh Catch of the Day, I also stitched a couple of beaded beads and used brick stitch to create several medallions.

By skipping every other bead when adding the fire-polished beads around the outer edge, I came up with a design that reminded me of a ship's helm wheel.   But they never did quite fit into the design.  I turned two of them into a pair of earrings for now.  All three are likely to get used in something else in the future.

So that's what I came up with working from Tracey's Bead Soup.  Now it's time to see what Tracey made with mine.  And to check out what everyone else has made as well.

Lori has a complete list of participants on her blog.

Focus on Life - Up Close and Personal

China Rockfish - his pectoral fin remind me of fingers!

This week Sally has challenged us to explore the details of the ordinary up close with macro photography.  Since I seem to be on a fish kick, I thought I'd share a few closeups of some of my favorite friends from the local aquarium. 

I took a number of shots trying to catch the movement of this China Rockfish's pectoral fins.  Rather than a solid fin, it's composed of individual streamers that seem to fan somewhat independently, in waves of motion.  

Spiny Lumpsucker

This little guy is only about two and a half inches long.  Isn't he cool?  There are so many interesting things about him - all the little spikes, how fast his fins fan (you can't even see his pectoral fins in this shot, they're moving so fast - like a hummingbird's wings), his bright blue eyes.    Then there's his name - Spiny Lumpsucker!  So named because he also has a suction cup on his belly for attaching himself to reef rocks.

Another rockfish

This shot is straight out of the camera - the slight graininess is from pushing my macro to the limits to catch this guy.  He's yet another species of Rockfish, but I think he looks like a dragon. 

Thanks again Sally for this week's prompt.  To see what others decided to study up close and personal, take a gander over at The Studio Sublime and Week 14 of Sally Rusic's Focus on Life photography series. 

Fancy Fish Redux

The fish are checking out sample pages from my new tutorial

This week has been a flurry of sorting and purging to move my studio and renewed work on my Fancy Fish Tutorial.

Our Destash Sale last weekend was a bust in terms of finding new homes for our old inventory.  Turns out it was openning day for ticket sales for the Mariners and there was a Sounder's game, so the few people who did try to come couldn't find parking.  Ouch!

The hours spent in the studio waiting for visitors were productive time however, as I continued to sort through my stash.  It's really frightening how much I've collected over the years.   I'm looking for new homes for much of my fabric collection from when I used to do costume design, wearable arts and crazy quilting.  (Thanks to a link I found in my inbox this morning, I may try consigning some of it through Our Fabric Stash.  Talk about timing!)

While sorting through tubs of fabric, buttons, lace and who knows what, I also came up with a better way to organize my Fancy Fish Tutorial and ideas for several additions.  Luckily, the kind souls who'd purchased my tutorial were willing to wait a couple of days for delivery.  So it was back to the the drawing board and several more rounds of edits.  I finished it up Tuesday evening just before bedtime.  And sighed with relief.

The latest edition topped out at twenty-four book style pages.  This is my most detailed tutorial yet and the diagrams are the prettiest I've ever created.  I showed my newly refinished tutorial to my husband (who had been out of town for the past week) and my best friend yesterday and got a tongue lashing from both for underpricing my tutorials.  Chatting via email with one of the people who'd purchased my tutorial, she agreed that I'd underpriced it - especially since my license allows the purchaser to sell items they make with my pattern at local craft shows and galleries.

Bowing to their wisdom, I raised my price a little on Etsy.  However that didn't seem fair to my blog readers who knew the old price.  So, through the end of the month, you can still purchase my Fancy Fish Beadwoven Friends PDF tutorial for the old price by using the coupon code BLOGFRIENDs, which will take $3 off at checkout.  This coupon is only good for my Fancy Fish tutorial, please!  

What I've Been Working on

I haven't posted anything about my own work for a while, largely because I seem to be much better at starting than finishing things right now.  As I packed up my bead box for the day yesterday, I grabbed a snapshot and thought I'd share a few of the things that I'm working on right now.

I am always amazed at just how many projects can fit in one medium sized box.

Slowly shading towards magenta

The top row mostly holds the beads for my latest Lacework bracelet, which shades from Quinacridone Magenta to Pthalo Turquoise.  The bracelet itself is nearly half way along and is hiding under the beads.  It doesn't have a name yet, though the colors in their little baggies remind me of Mardi Gras. 

Extra thread wound on card to keep it from tangling

 I have supplies for two, maybe three projects in the next row.  There are my wedding fish, so named because they started life on the way to my cousin's wedding.  I'd selected the beads to make a bridal lacework bracelet, but somehow fish emerged again.  I still have enough beads left over for that bracelet, however.  And then I'd have a bracelet with matching fish! 

 I also have this awesome cabachon that my friend and fellow seed beader, Shelly Gillman made last summer during my open studio evenings, working with concrete and resin.  My captured cabochons class is coming up in just over a week, so I thought I'd make a new sample. 

The strand of beads on the side is my test strand - what I think I'll be using.  More than I'd normally use to simply capture a cabochon, so this may well turn out to be a complete necklace, not just a pendant.  We will see what happens as we stitch.

And that's just half of the box! But it seems I've run out of time for writing - Wormwood's shouting for his breakfast and it's time to get going. So there's a little look at what I have cooking. Soon I'll have more to share.

A Little Inspiration - Book Reviews

I haven't come to any conclusions yet regarding taking Freeform Peyote to a digital format and would still love your feedback whether you've used craft books in a digital format, what you're looking for in a digital craft book, and what formats its usually in (epub, pdf, kindle, etc).  There are so many options out there, it's a bit hard to know where to start (or if it even makes sense to do so).

In the meantime, I thought I'd share three more inspiration books from my library.  The first, simply titled "Karl Blossfeldt",   features his black and white plant photography.  His close-up photographs take on abstracted, sometimes alien shapes and often resemble wrought iron.  Which is funny, since it's actually the other way around; his forms have inspired generations of artists, including metal workers - Blossfeldt lived from 1865-1932.  My copy came from a used book store and I think I picked it up for $5.00.  It's a lot more on Amazon, but it's definitely one I'd recommend keeping an eye out for, and definitely worth checking out from the library if it's there.

I picked Reptiles up from one of the bargain tables at Barnes & Noble a couple of years ago.  Even if you don't like snakes and reptiles, it's worth looking through this book.   I don't have it in front of me, but I'd guess the book is at least 14" tall, and most of the photographs take up the full page, with a number of two-page spreads.  The colors and patterns are exquisite, and reptile scales look so much like bead work, the translation is almost automatic.  Searching through Amazon for the book, I came across a number of other titles by the same photographer, Paul Sarosta that look equally interesting. 

The last, Ocean Soul by Brian Skerry, is a brand-new book that I picked up last week after his National Geographic lecture by the same name.  I'm a sucker for fish books with great photos, and this coffee table book definitely lives up to that requirement.  Unlike Archipelago or The Deep, two of my favorite sea-creature inspiration books, most of the photographs in Ocean Soul show the animals in their natural environment as one of Brian's self-proclaimed goals it to act as an underwater journalist for the denizens of the sea.  The book is also wider ranging than most of my collection, both in creatures featured, and in geographic locations, which makes sense as Brian has more than 20 National Geo articles to his name. 

And here's my reader question:  what are some of your favorite inspiration books, and why?