Blanche and I just put several new workshops on our calendars for me to teach at Beads By Blanche in Bergenfield NJ. Mark your calendar for February 6 for a day of Felted Component Jewelry. Info and pics will follow in next post. Set aside Saturday April 16 for something beaded and beautiful and yet to be decided.

Allow me to tell you about the Tuesday evenings we've schedule. This Pentagon Pendant is Feb 16, 6-9pm. This solid Swarovski necklace is an ideal way to get cozy with cubic right angle weave. Notice the sweet star-shaped spaces that develop in the corners. Finish with a sparkling chain of crystals and charlottes that works up faster than you expect.

On March 30th (6-9pm) learn a quick and easy bead rope of matte and shiny 8s that finishes with a distinctive button & loop closure. We'll make it bracelet length and for the button, we'll bead a highly textured bezel for an Aurora Borealis Rivoli that is lovely from every angle.

May 4th, also a Tuesday, from 6-9pm, capitalize on the unique position of each of the multiple beads-per-stitch of polygon stitch, to incorporate tiny holed beads such as seed pearls. The closure is a decorative vertical loop centered over a beaded toggle created by joining two bead-bezeled dentelles.

As a post script, my web mistress Marylyn is preparing a huge sale on my website http://www.carolcypher.com/ . We want to clear the decks, well, Marylyn's office and my studio, of everything we've offered there to-date, to make room for the NEW kits and designs. One of the new offerings will be, while they last, the kit to make these sweet earrings featuring lampworked beads by Lea Zinke , earring wires, and an easy to follow recipe that walks you through a touch of ladder, fringe, netting, polygon stitches to create a calyx and petals for the glass bud beads. Tell me your preference: pinkish, lavenderish or light yellow. If you don't want to wait for the website posting, send a check for $30 (free parcel post or $4.95 for priority mail) and I'll get it right off to you. I'll run a New Year sale on the Turbo Felting Board ($5 discount and free shipping until Feb 2)

Saori called from Dortmund Germany to discuss the workshops I will be teaching there in March at Europe's largest craft event, Creativa. The registrations are coming in and at last I have the website to share with you that has beading workshop information. Click on Creativa now and it will open on the Bead Academy (perlen akademie) homepage. Click on workshops then click on each instructor's name: Carol Cypher, Diane Fitzgerald, Laura McCabe and Anna Draeger, to see what each of us is offering to teach there. We added the Diamonds Of Fire Necklace (a popular project that I taught at Bead & Button Show last year and will again in June) but, this is the convertible version. It has two magnetic closures hidden within bead work (all Swarovski crystals!!) and can be worn connected as a necklace or separated into two bracelets.

Having more studio time this month, I've been prolific. The felt rings have been a consuming passion. Plus I've new bracelets that will be ideal evening workshops at Beads By Blanche (I just have to call her and get them on the calendar.) One features seed pearls and a pair of bezeled dentelles and another has a bezeled rivoli closure.

Last month at our bead gathering, Myrna brought a selection of new beads by lampworker Harold Jargowsky, for our shopping pleasure. Jill incorporated one of the floral pendants into a bead crochet necklace. Lovely. Glad you're back at the torch Harold. I used many of Harold's beads in projects in HAND FELTED JEWELRY AND BEADS. His contact info listed in the book's resources section is beadsinbarn@aol.com.

Today I submitted two designs to use in a trial run of an electronic venue geared to teach beading to beaders in Asia, Europe and U.S.A. How exciting. Next I must submit two designs/projects that will be offered as animated lessons that can be purchased. I will keep you posted as things develop. They are projecting something substantive by March 2010.

Yesterday I brought a few kits for 2-Sides to the Story Bracelet (Clicking on this link will transport you to the Bead and Button Show site, where I will be teaching this project. Information about classes will not be on their website until this Friday.) to a gathering of my spinning buddies. This is that stitch that I devised after an exhaustive exploration of the tubular beadweaving stitch unfortunately named "polygon". It produces flat beadwork that corrugates as you work, the beads over-lapping, resulting in its being reversible. It is quite magical. It has a most peculiar start but, 3 rows into it and you're on a roll. In 3 hours, even these non-beaders (though clever and crafty) were more than half through the project. (The hoop earrings seen sitting on the bead mat were beaded by Mary Jo using my recipe that Bead & Button published in their magazine, in their book Creative Beading and a had their editor Linda Augsberg demonstrate on PBS TV's Beads, Baubles and Jewels.
Though everyone else headed home, I remained rather that face an hour and half drive that would be much longer and scarier on ice. So, Judy and I fortified ourselves with a litle dinner and beaded until we dropped. Judy beaded a bezel for a rivoli using one of the new kits that Bead Gallery Inc and I are offering using their rare and vintage Swarovski items with my bezel recipes. A simple band of 3-bead wide peyote, makes it a beautiful and comfortable ring.
Today Puget Sound Bead Festival sent an invitation to propose workshops for their July 9, 10, 11 show in 2010. Though I met some very creative and fascinating beaders who took my felted jewelry workshops there in 2008 and 2009 and loved being in Tacoma at this event and in the verrry lovely Hotel Murano, I was unable to put it in my calendar in 2010. Giving a nod to the trend in wire and metal jewelry, they state that they will be choosing classes based on these criteria: 60% metal & wire, 10% metal clay, 10%, contemporary jewelry, 10% seed beading and 10% mixed media.
Last week Blanche and I put a couple dates on our calendars for 2010 workshops at Beads by Blanche, in Bergenfield, NJ: April 17 and October 23. In addition to those full day workshops, Blanche offers 3 hour evening workshops during the week. I just put a wrap on two bracelet classes that I will suggest to her would be perfect evening offerings. They each offer a beaded closure using beautiful Swarovski elements. One is a bezeled rivoli and the other features a pair of joined dentelles. Photos to follow as soon as I speak with Blanche.

Almost everyone in class at Beadzo last night, wanted to make a Bead Happy bracelet using their own palette of happy colors. Tara's (upper left in photo) is tranquil happiness in blues, purples and greens, as opposed to my exuberant happy of yellow, red, aqua and greens. Actually, the kit for Bead Happy has about 50 different beads! It takes nearly as long to make a kit as to bead the bracelet. I wish I was kidding! Though it is retired from the roster of classes I teach at the Bead and Button Show, it remains popular. It is one of the classes I will teach in Germany in March at Creativa. Ithas been kitted by Coronet in Japan, and used in the beadstitch curriculum for herringbone stitch.

Kitty chose to forgo the Bead Happy bracelet to work on more bezels for rivolis. She is doing several in sizes 18 and 12mm to connect into a reversible bracelet, taking advantage of this style bezel that is as lovely from backside as from the frontside.

A reminder: I have kits for 3 bezel styles for 18mm rivoli. The kit features a rivoli (some rare and vintage and unusual colors) with easy to follow illustrated instructions. At $15 each, perhaps you'd like one of each! Just give me a call to check on colors 845-384-6417, or e mail.

Today I received my "teacher's" e mail from Bead and Button Show
with hotel info, early registration, a poster and the show schedule. Featured on the show schedule is this photo, captioned "Glass Bead Inspired Lariat: Artist Carol Cypher." Great exposure. THE inspirational bead is this one by Nancy Tobey. She wrote to say she has made all the 20 beads for the 20 kits I will make for the registered students. My covenant with B&B and the students, is that the kits will make a piece JUST LIKE THE ONE IN THE PHOTO. Don't you just know that the little stripey bead that dominates this piece has been discontinued! How I just adore those little stripey beads. Well, I have accumulated sufficient to make all 2o kits, plus a little to spare. When WILL I learn not to use rare or unusual beads in the projects I must kit? Honestly, I just cannot help myself. It is those uncommon beads that draw me in.

When I taught at the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild they were wary of an $85 kit that was really mostly seed beads. That project was composed of my accumuated collection of German and Italian seed beads from wayyyyyyyyyyyy back. Their exceptional colors have not yet been duplicated in the Czech and Japanese beads offered today. And when these discontinued beauties are gone, they're gone. This is why I say, when you see a bead you like, BUY IT. And if you risk not being able to get your beady little hands on more, BUY ALL OF THEM. Mind you, I'm not advocating greed. It is an artist thing. When the color speaks to you, you have to listen.
In the previous entry I mentioned Motoko Natsubori, translator, interpreter, beader, friend. Here we are at this June's Bead and Button Show.

Ronna Sarvas Weltman's polymer clay ring (we swapped her clay ring for my felt bracelet at Beadfest) inspired an entire line of felt rings. In the top photo her polymer ring is flanked by my first two felt ones. She is author of ANCIENT MODERN: POLYMER CLAY + WIRE JEWELRY.

The next photo shows several of the styles I have been working on. My workshop: Felt Component Jewelry, will be enhanced by the addition of these new designs and techniques.

It makes my heart sing every time I see someone wearing felt jewelry. So, at the studio class

this week, with 4 of us wearing felt jewelry, my heart was singing an aria!

Amy, shown here, wore her felt pendant with beaded bail. If I recall correctly, this was to have been featured in the gallery section of HAND FELTED JEWELRY AND BEADS.

BTW, The blue beaded necklace Amy is holding, she bead-crocheted a few months agao when I shared this techqniue that Kumiko had shared with me when I was in Japan in January. Kumiko had learned it from her protege, Keiko Seki, one of the contributing authors of the recent article in Bead and Button Magazine on what they call Turkish Bead Crochet. I have beaded with Keiko on both of my visits to Japan. Her contribution to the article was translated into English by Motoko Natsubori. You've read about Motoko here in previous entries. She interpreted for me when I taught in Japan each time and translated MASTERING BEADWORK into Japanese. I hope to see her at the Bead and Button Show in June.
And on the same evening, Elaine wears her felted beads bracelet. Lovely.

Jill is wearing one of my new felt rings (can't see it so good here) while working on Fireflies at Sunset necklace. I will teach this project again at next years's Bead and Button Show. It is Amy's exciting palette of colors that makes this piece so popular and the versatility of the stitch that makes it such a valuble technique to learn.