Hello everyone!  I realize today that I haven't written on my blog since December and it's April! How could this happen? I don't know, but I've been very busy the past months with beading new designs, and of course I cannot show you much before things are published. That might be the reason why I didn't write anything here.. but today, I have things to show and tell. First a little hurray: today is the day I started beading, 20 years ago. In my head at first... and beads arrived a bit later :D That's because at first I found myself marveling at photos of utterly gorgeous creations made fo ..read more

Looking back at it... it's been quite an 'annus horribilis'. Not very long after my MIL passed, my father left this earth too, short before his 92nd birthday. I didn't get a chance to see him irl one last time, although this was planned - but my husband ALSO ended up in hospital at the same moment, and nearly died - they nearly let him die and then saved him in extremis. He needed me here. My dad with his partner An, photographed by my MIL at her place. My dad had a bad fall resulting in 2 broken ribs. The doctors decided against surgery because of his age, giving him no other option ..read more

We had a great evening with the Beadworkers Guild on the Thursday Zoom meeting during IBW, when we talked about storage hacks. Not only useful, but so much fun was had. All the lucky attendants later got an email from Sylvia Fairhurst with all the links to the best storage hacks and solutions we knew of, including a link to my past article about the subject.  Perhaps you will remember it? I had a larger space for my beading than I have nowadays. It now is a "handkerchief-sized studio". Hopefully I will soon have more space again. But the storage solutions, which also include many great t ..read more

Upon popular request, I transformed the Sunshine workshop into a video class. You get the full, detailed tutorial with lots of explanations, and access to 8 videos with all the demos you need to make your own pendant - or brooch or toy or ornament - at your own pace.  Browsing my blog for a photo of the Sunshine, I realized that I never posted one of the original Sunshine pendant! I am not the most tech savvy so it was - and still is  - a bit of a learning curve. But feedback has been very positive. I'm really happy with my first efforts and hope to do more of this kind o ..read more

Now that it has been revealed, I can finally talk about my make for the Beadworkers Guild yearly challenge. Clearly, not one of my BWG challenge beading and planning processes are the same. First time - for the Egypt themed Wesekh, I had everything I needed in my stash, and made the clasp myself. The next year, I made my Fantasy chess play so it was easy to choose the right colours, although "ivory" is not the same from one brand to the other, and the Czech shaped beads are called "champagne" (let that sink in ;)). Past year, I recycled a sculpted bird to create "Peace, astray" because the the ..read more

While writing this, it rains, and still is very cold over here. But!! On the 26th of January I saw a couple of bulbs bravely pointing new leaves to the sky despite the nightfrost. Wow! It surprised me and made me smile out loud Yay, Spring is on its way: ?. I also saw catkins past week.  Now if you don't have signs of Spring outside, yours truly made sure that you nevertheless would see something Spring-like this month: Fairy Flowers. I'm a cover girl again! In the 113th Bead & Jewellery magazine, you will find this pretty project designed to welcome the Spring: geometric Cellini pey ..read more

Many people come to beading because something inside of them said “I can / want to do this too”. Then, after starting to gather information and learn to bead, they will show their first makes with pride. Then, after some playing and showing more, there might be occasions where they will hear “you need to give credit, you may not reverse engineer, you may not say that this is yours, you may not copy”. This results in loads of promising beaders abandoning our lovely Art form for another where things seem to be less complicated. I am a designer who uses often geometric beadwork techniques. With ..read more

I didn't  plan on doing anything special for Christmas this year, beadywise. I had my mind focused on Octavio the Octopus, the Sunshine pendant workshop and I want to work more on my 2022 Beadworkers Guild Challenge piece. Not much progress has been made on the latter; it has been an endless tergiversation resulting in tons of beads bought that won't work (the trouble of having a specific idea in mind!). I also have a pile of Czech beads to play with... I'm busy, happily busy. Beautiful version of Sunshine beaded by Eileen Montgomery But!!! I did an unexpected and totally improv ..read more

By golly, what a week, my friends, what a wonderful week this has been!  Thanks to the ever so dedicated folks of the Beadworkers Guild, we've had the most wonderful online celebration ever with beads.  It was like a very good cuvée of champagne: great taste, festive bubbles and no headache afterwards.  Every day a new stitch to talk about and lovely promps and quotes, meetings, a fabulous prize draw and many thing learned. It was fantastic. Even a new international common project has been launched, once more, by Sam Norgard, the "All Colors" project. It was wonderful to Zoom ..read more

The past months have been very busy for me.  I've been working on several patterns among which my brand new Lady bug, and a tassel (Gazebo, for IBW) and I still am working on on my rainbow project, for International Beading Week. I just wrote a separate article about this. I am a permanent IBW Ambassador after all. I have also been working since quite a while on a design parallel to the mystery project for the secret beadalong with the wonderful Cliff Swain-Salomon who invited me to join him in this project for the Facebook Group Seed Beads & More. Pick your path flowers and po ..read more