Bead Retreat Goodies

Might as well share some of my stash-enhancement items from the weekend retreat. I got my bestest goodies from Sally Ingram, master of the traditional diagonal weave. In this technique, Sally charts a design and then warps up the beads ahead of time, making sometimes incredibly long beaded bands. I love, love, love this pair, which is one of her medum-length designs. The beads and tiny buffalo nickel charms dust my shoulders:

Sally also makes beaded critters. First she makes the forms from soft white smoked leather, stuffs them, and then she uses tiny charlottes and whatnot to embroider them. She makes pins with the smaller ones. Several of us were able to "ensnare" some of her critters -- here's my new stash!

In the photo below, Judy and I are modelling our new earrings. Me (don't judge me by my hair, I forgot my brush! Seriously!), I'm wearing Sally's diagonal weave shoulder dusters, and Judy is wearing the pair she STOLE from me.

See, I was teaching earring wires, and I tossed a bunch of bottlecaps in my tote bag in case someone wanted to make a quick pair of earrings by smashing the bottlecaps, punching a hole in them, and hanging the bottlecaps from their newly created earring hooks. Rita had handed out some coppery, pumpkin-colored feather charms during our trick-or-treat swap, so I smashed some orange bottle caps and hung some feathers fro them. Left the room for a minute and returned to find Judy stubbornly wearing them. Well, they did match her shirt. So I made another pair. Left the room again, and returned to find Bonnie wearing the second pair! Evil wenches! What the heck, I made Nik a pair in green and gave them to her before she could steal them. ;-)

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