Inside the Studio with Rebecca of Songbead

Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you'll leave comments! As an incentive, we offer a prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard and tell us what you think. The following week a winner is chosen at random from all eligible entries.

Congratulations to Bairozan!

You have won a set of Claire's porcelain rose beads!

Send Claire a message to claim your prize. 

******

It feels a bit strange to me to be doing an 'Inside the Studio' post today. I feel like perhaps I don't have quite enough to show you - cut back to late January, and I was working on designs pretty much every day, but what with one thing and another, these habits have dwindled away. Not through deliberate choice, mind you - but simply because life has got in the way. 

However, jewellery is once more going to get in the way of life(!) as I have my first craft fair of 2015  in the pretty town of Holmfirth in West Yorkshire in a short couple of weeks, on the 28th June. 

TWO WEEKS. 

Can I tell you that the idea of doing a fair in only two weeks absolutely terrifies me?

There, I've said it. I don't think I've ever felt quite this way about an approaching craft fair before - never had quite SO little stock. Never felt as if I am sitting atop quite so stagnant a time in my creative life. Seriously, I couldn't even fill a coffee table right now, never mind this:

Eek. 

So, what am I going to do in this situation? 

Well, I can tell you what I am NOT going to do. I am not going to try and do something new, something ground-breaking, sometime startling. There's just not the time. Maybe that sounds defeatist - I certainly felt a little like that at the beginning of the month - but I don't feel like that anymore. I was talking to a friend about it the other day, and saying how each year, I want to bring something really new to the table - to move my jewellery on in a visible (to me at least) and almost deliberate way. But, my friend said, maybe this isn't the year for that, Rebecca. And maybe that's ok. 

So, ok it will have to be. I can't reinvent the wheel in 2 weeks, that's for sure! But I am pretty sure that, with my nose to the grindstone, I can fill my jewellery stand in time for the 28th June. I think I can, I think I can....hopefully by the 28th I'll be saying I thought I could, I thought I could...!

Here are a few pieces I *have* managed to create over the past week. A start, at least!

Art beads: Earthshine, Humblebeads, Beads by Earthtones.

As you can see, I am including my own handwoven beads more and more often in my pieces...

Art Beads: Swoondimples, Green Girl Studios.

...so just perhaps...

Art Beads: Earthshine

...I am achieving that elusive 'something new' anyway.

Art Beads: Beads by Earthtones, Elukka, Swoondimples. One side...

...and the reverse. I love these little touches that Heather Millican gives her beautiful beads.

 I recently celebrated my one year anniversary since I began making these tiny little handwoven beads. Well, I didn't exactly celebrate it, but you know what I mean! I would love to try other mediums to work in to create my own beads, but like it or not, I have a long, LONG history with a needle and thread and these tiny wee beads just found me again, even though I thought I had long since done with bead-weaving. I am glad they did. Stitching is one of those things that soothes my soul - rhythmic, repetitive, meditative. I enjoy playing with colour, simple folk-inspired designs - like those seafoam and rust daisies above - and how even in one colour, they add such a tactile and visually textural element to a piece of jewellery. 

I would love to be a master silversmith rather than a very, very basic one, a ceramics guru or someone who could carve intricate and detailed miniature pieces of art. But these skills are not within my arsenal - not now, at any rate. 

But stitching? Stitching most certainly is. It feels like home, somehow. I can sink into it, both physically and mentally.

And now for the prize I'm offering this week...Much like art beads, in the world of seed beads, even the plain old rocailles that I work with, there is always something new - a new colour, a new finish, a new way of dying them. I received a package of some brand new (to me, at least, and I certainly haven't seen them from my preferred brand in the UK before now) seed beads; various colours but with a gorgeous Picasso finish. Seriously, I am *ExCiTeD* to create with these lovelies! I have tiny wee bags of such deliciously-titled beads as Transparent Ruby Picasso, Opaque Chartreuse Picasso, Transparent Seafoam Picasso, Opaque Dark Teal Picasso sitting in front of me, to name but a few. They arrived only this morning, and so I don't have any finished examples to show you, but TRUST ME, these little handwoven Picasso {song}beads are going to pretty special - colourful, rustic, characterful. *Me.* And perhaps you, too.

A mix of the type of beads I have to work with....yummy! Picture found on Pinterest.

So I am offering you a small clutch of these lovelies. They will be hot off the press, and right now, I have a very, very limited quantity of these seed beads so there aren't going to be many of the finished article! 

To enter, answer me this - what activity or technique (jewellery-based of otherwise) feels like home to you? What do you return to, over and over again, whether your head want to or otherwise - what does your heart lead you home to? Leave your answer in the comments below to be in with the chance to win some of these very limited edition handwoven {song}beads!

Rebecca is a Scottish jewellery designer; currently living in Edinburgh, capital of her native land. You can read more about her and her work at her blog, songbeads.blogspot.com and see more of her jewellery at songbead.etsy.com. She also has a supplies shop at thecuriousbeadshop.etsy.com.