Sweet Hedgie Love: Inspiration from Etsy for the October Challenge

Such a charming painting, don't you agree?

I got so inspired I made up three treasuries on Etsy. Who knew that there were so many hedgehog items out there? And what about all the fall foliage and woodland creatures? And the monochromatic color palette? For your shopping pleasure and inspiration, I give you these three treasuries filled with

hedgehogs
acorns
snails
rocks
oak leaves
branches
natural leather
monochromatic beads and stringing materials

Enjoy!

'Sweet Hedgie Love: Inspiration from the Art Bead Scene October Challenge' by TesoriTrovati

Inspired by the charming still life of A Hedgehog in a Landscape by Giovanna Garzoni for the October Art Bead Scene challenge.

Little Hedgehog bead - Sleep... TreeWingsStudi... $8.00	Cute Porcelain HEDGEHOG Pend... potterygal66 $4.00	Hedgehog Pendant NBDesigns $35.00	Lampwork Hedgehog Bead (1) gardenpathbead... $14.00
Hedgehog Family - Bead Set sals25 $24.00	Mr. Hedgehog Ceramic Pendant... BirdsNestTreas... $12.00	hedge hog bead siezetheclay $8.00	Green Girl Studios Rolling H... beadlady $8.00
Hedgy the Hedgehog, Hand Pai... tuckooandmooco... $30.00	Stargazing hedgehog necklace... otherworlds $85.00	Baby Hedgies Pair humblebeads $15.00	Hedgehog Necklace BlueDasher $17.00
Hedgehog Necklace enameled c... ticklebean $34.00	Hedgehog - Fused glass penda... ArtoftheMoment $45.00	Hedgehog Ceramic Glazed Pend... craftyladyleah $8.00	HEDGEHOG lunacyglass $22.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

'Forest Floor: Inspiration from the Art Bead Scene October Challenge' by TesoriTrovati

Inspired by the charming still life of A Hedgehog in a Landscape by Giovanna Garzoni for the October Art Bead Scene challenge.

Fall Colors Raku Oak Leaf Pe... uniquebuttons $15.00	Snail Necklace - Slow Down blockpartypres... $30.00	oak leaf - each season in it... TesoriTrovati $18.00	Handmade ceramic acorn charm... kylieparry $12.00
HandMade Rich Rustic COPPeR ... GiRLZlvPEARLS $9.00	Oak Leaves Pendant Orange humblebeads $18.00	Wax Seal Charm "Always ... RQPStudio $39.00	Lampwork Bead Acorn 2 susanlambert $10.00
Bronze Oak Leaf - Handmade M... AshlynDesign $12.00	Acorn bead in mustard yellow SummersStudioE... $4.75	The BIG SNAIL....Handmade La... beatlebabyglas... $8.00	Felted acorns, set of 6, the... HouseOfMoss $9.00
Acorn Bead Set Jangles $9.00	Mighty Oak Pendant- Handmade... jNicDesigns $18.50	Stoneware Acorn Pendant maydog $5.00	Acorn Pendant - Green humblebeads $12.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

'Monochromatic: Inspiration from the Art Bead Scene October Challenge' by TesoriTrovati

Inspired by the charming still life of A Hedgehog in a Landscape by Giovanna Garzoni for the October Art Bead Scene challenge.

Old Lace White - 16mm Patina... missficklemedi... $13.00	Carved Wood Resin Bead Trio knwarren65 $3.50	Rayon Ribbon yarn thread - 5... NellsEmbroider... $4.00	Fossil Beads 6mm Natural Rus... BeadFrenZ $1.50
Vintage Delicate White Glas... WhoKnowsWhat $7.00	shades of chestnut recycled ... jmozart $7.00	Vintage Rare Faux Walnut Sli... vincijewels $14.00	Beach Pottery, Cream, Natura... SarahSeaGlass $9.00
18mm Snail Shell Beads , Hal... yakutum $6.99	beige cream glass Beads ... yukidesigns $5.00	Vintage Sequins, opaque pale... narceine $12.50	Grey Plume Agate, 4 beads, l... bijouxbeadsupp... $16.00
Cream Beads - 12 Jablonex 14... LythaStudios $6.85	Leather Cord, Bolo, Flat Bra... ThePeddler $5.80	CREAMY LATTE .. Picasso Czec... artebellasurpl... $2.65	Stone Frosted Desert No. F90... mbonan9 $6.50

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio. 

Go on and get inspired! Can't wait to see what you make! Deadline for the October challenge blog tour is October 26th!

October Monthly Challenge Sponsors and Prizes

Our wonderful sponsors for the October Monthly Challenge. 

We will have 2 lucky winners this month.

Marsha Neal Studio

Marsha Neal Minutella of Marsha Neal Studio makes her beautiful pendants from porcelain clay and beautiful glazes. Her inspirations come from nature and her Entomology degree. Many of Marsha's design look cellular as you would see under a microscope.

Marsha's many designs and beautiful artistry of her ceramics can be seen in many magazines and online retailers.

Marsha is donating all the items pictured worth over $50 .

Visit Marsha at her website, blog, Facebook and Etsy.

: : :

Humblebeads

Heather Powers of Humblebeads creates fabulous polymer clay beads and components.

Nature inspired with beautiful colors and shapes. Heather's new book, Jewelry Designs from Nature, is now out. Be inspired by all the wonderful ideas in the book. Read a recently published article about Heather's return to her home state of Michigan.

Heather is donating a Woodland Treasures grab bag worth over $50 and asigned copy of my book..

Visit the Heather on her website, Etsy, Facebook, and blog.

: : :

Submit photos of your wonderful creations using one or more Art Beads.

A Hedgehog in a Landscape by Giovanna Grazoni has with many different elements that can be used for inspiration, quills, leaves, nuts, muted colors and feeling of fall.

We can't wait to see where your creativity takes you with the art for this months challenge! 

Please remember to put OCTABS in the title or tag of your submission(s).  

Provide us with the artist of the Art Beads used and we always love to know all the materials you used. 

October Monthly Challenge

A Hedgehog in a Landscape, 1643-51 

9¼ x 15 in. 23.5 x 38 cm. bodycolor on vellum

by Giovanna Garzoni

About the Art

Garzoni's paintings depict plants with their roots and flowers, in the scientific tradition of Ligozzi, but she animates her compositions by adding insects, reptiles, and small fruits and nuts, each casting a faint shadow on the page. Overflowing ceramic bowls of fruit were another favorite theme, containing fruits that were sought after in the seventeenth century to grace the tables of the aristocracy not only as a pleasure to the palate but also as a delight to the eye.
These vibrant paintings display a conscious yet subtle balance between scientific realism and decorative effect.

About the Artist
Giovanna Garzoni, b. 1600 Ascoli Piceno, Italy, d. 1670 Rome 

One of the first women artists to practice the art of still life painting, Giovanna Garzoni pursued her career with intensity. Garzoni's paintings were so well liked that, according to one writer, she could sell her work "for whatever price she wished." One of Garzoni's earliest works, a 1625 calligraphy book, includes capital letters illuminated with fruits, flowers, birds, and insects. These subjects were to become her specialty, and tempera on vellum was her preferred medium. Garzoni's refined
interpretation of plants and animals suited the taste of her aristocratic patrons, like the Medici family, and could be found decorating their villas. 
She may have begun her training in Ascoli Piceno. In a letter written in the 1620s, she identified the otherwise unknown Giacomo Rogni as her teacher. The theory that she studied miniature painting in Florence with Jacopo Ligozzi is no longer accepted, although she must have seen his exquisite nature studies when she was later at the Medici court. In 1625, and again in 1630, she was in Venice, where she painted a miniature Portrait of a Young Man (1625; The Hague, Willem V Mus.) and wrote a small textbook on calligraphy (Rome, Gal. Accad. N. S Luca). By the late 1620s she had two influential patrons in Rome: Cassiano dal Pozzo and Anna Colonna, wife of Taddeo Barberini. She went to Naples in 1630, to work for the Duque de Alcal, and was still there a year later, when in a letter to dal Pozzo she expressed her desire to 'live and die in Rome'. However, she spent the next five years in Turin at the court of Charles Emanuel II, Duke of Savoy. She left Turin in 1637, probably for Florence; documents indicate that she was there from 1643. She continued to work for members of the Medici court after finally settling in Rome in 1651. There she was a loyal supporter of the Accademia di S Luca, to which she bequeathed her property on condition that a monument to her be placed in the Accademia's church, SS Luca e Martina.
She died four years later, after enjoying a life of steady work and constant success.
The monument was set up in 1698.

Color Palette

Blog Tour

The Blog Tour deadline is October 26th.
Links must be added to the monthly challenge post comments (this post).. 

The Blog Tour will be on the 28th.

Monthly Challenge Winners

Winners will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on November 1st.

Our Sponsors

Our sponsors this month are: Marsha Neal Studio and Humblebeads.

Please visit us Monday to see the prizes!

Featured Designer of the Week:

From all the entries during the month, an editor is going to pick their favorite design to be featured every Monday here on the ABS. We want to give our participants more time in the spotlight! Our Featured Designer will be this Monday, so get those entries in soon.

How to enter the Monthly Challenge:

1. Create something using an art bead that fits within our monthly theme. We post the art to be used as your inspiration to create. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. The art bead can be created by you or someone else. The challenge is to inspire those who use art beads and to see all the different ways art beads can be incorporated into your handiwork.

***Beads strung on a chain, by themselves and beads simply wire or cord will not be accepted.***

2. Upload your photo to our flickr group. Detailed instructions can be found here and click here for a tutorial for sending your picture to the group.

Please add the tag or title OCT ABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.

Deadline is September 30th. Photos are approved by our moderators, if a photo hasn't followed the guidelines it will not be approved. You may upload 2 photos a day.

What is an Art Bead?

An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads here.

***A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.
Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped components are not considered art beads for our challenge.***

p.s. If you have a blog, post your entry and a link to the ABS challenge to spread the beady goodness.

September Monthly Challenge Winners!!

Congratulations to this Months winners! 

We have 3 winners chosen randomly from all the challenge entrants.

Kathy Engstom/CatherinesDream is our first winner this month.

She has won products (shown below) from Jennifer Heynen of jangles worth over $60.

Our second lucky winner is Joyce Hennessy/5StarArt .

She is the lucky winner of  product worth (shown below) over $50 from Yvonne Irwin of My Elements.

Mary Harding is our final winner.
She has won a custom made Bead Soup (example shown below) from Lori Anderson Designs!

 jangles                                        My Elements                              Lori Anderson Designs

Thank you jangles, My Elements, and Lori Anderson Designs for being our September Monthly Challenge sponsors!

Winners, please E-mail Tari with your information so your prizes can be sent to you.

A Big THANK YOU to everyone who entered this month using "Housetop"--twelve-block "Half Logcabin" by Lillie Mae Pettway a Gee Bend's Quilter, as your inspiration. 

We were so fortunate to have so many beautiful entries and experience such creativity from our wonderful readers.

Visit us tomorrow to see what October's challenge brings.

Link Library with Melanie

 I mentioned last Sunday that I wanted to bring some new content to Art Bead Scene on Sundays for my weekly posts.  One of the things that I thought would be fun is to poke around back in the Art Bead Scene archives.  I was here at the beginning, and I have kept up with the blog since the first post, but I thought that some of you may be newer, and might not remember some of the great posts that were written on this blog over the years.  I am going to call the Sunday posts "Link Library" and it will be a blend of old and new links for you to peruse!
Today's link from the past is one of my first posts here.  I started to develop an alter-ego named Ms. Bead It All and set out to answer technical beady questions, ala Miss Manners style.  It was fun and I didn't do nearly enough of them.  Maybe I will revisit that, too! 
The post asked the question:
Dear Ms. Bead-It-All,

Help! I have fallen in love with some beautiful art beads, but the hole is going the wrong way! The beads have cute little faces, but the holes go up and down...it's all wrong! How can I string them on a necklace so they are in the center and facing upright?
 Click here to go back in the Library to read more from this fun link from the past! And now, click on these links to read about some current events in our bead friends' blogs:  A Bead A Day
Lisa's got a quick tip for bead lovers! If a fabulous wholesale bead show comes to your city, don't miss it!    About.com Jewelry Making
My, oh my, what is your favorite type of mother-of-pearl, natural, colored, bleached, all of the above?   Art Bead Scene
We are all ready for Fall at Art Bead Scene! Check out the bounty of Autumn beady goodies we found from art bead makers on Etsy.   Beading Arts
Cyndi has a really fun giveaway book with great projects for fall weekends!   Cindy Gimbrone Beads
Cindy shares what she made with Cat's lovely etched copper heart.   Earthenwood Studio Chronicles
Melanie starts Etsy Holiday Boot Camp with some goals and promises   Resin Crafts!
Carmi has a blog post featuring a resin disaster.   Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!
Jean goes back through the mists of time and fondly recalls a favorite bracelet she made using components from two favorite websites!  

  The Bead Dreamer
Handcrafted jewelry and autumn looks for 2011 are just perfect together. Charlene shows how.

Melanie Brooks is the ceramic beadmaker behind Earthenwood Studio, who blogs from her Metro Detroit, Michigan home.

Studio Saturday with Lori Anderson

Welcome to Studio Saturday! 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 free prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard. The following week we choose a random winner.

***** This week's winner is Starry Road Studio!  You won a Colored Wrapped Key Pendant!  Just email Miss Fickle Media by clicking here and she'll get that right out to you!  ************************

This week we visit the studio of Lori Anderson.  I'm preparing for my biggest show of the year, the Craftsman's Classic in Northern VA, so if you're in the area, come by and say hi!  I'll be the booth with the hot pink curtains.

This year, as with all years, I feel rushed and more than a little behind.  I always debut my holiday jewelry at this show, and while you may think October is a little early, when I went to Target yesterday to pick up Halloween candy, they were busy setting up the Christmas trees.  I've also learned from experience that people are LOOKING for that sort of thing at this show and I'm ready for them.  Bring it on.

In the past few weeks, I've moved my beading table (read, kitchen table) to the library of the house. I set up one of my 6' show tables and now I have this wonderful natural light that has helped my eyesight tremendously.  I have to get up and down and up and down and up and stub my toe and down again to get to the beading cabinet, but I've found it keeps me more focused.  Fewer extraneous beads make their way to my table -- although it doesn't look like it in this picture.

The wooden tray is all my staples, things I use all the time.  The plastic tray is all my holiday jewelry stuff.  The stuff on the floor is just stuff on the floor.  

Stop it.  I'll bet you have that, too.

I also have taken over the living room couch in the evenings as I set up my business card station.  SOME of my business cards have spacer beads attached to them, and I bought this cool ribbon punch to make the work easier.  Cut the ribbon, string on the beads, tie a knot, pretty pretty.  I'm not totally insane -- I only make a certain number of these, and when they're gone, they're gone.  But they're fun.   To look at.  Not to make.

(Yes, my thank you notes are stored in a lunch box.  I like cute.)

Then there are the official Bead Chasers.  When Zack is at school, I resort to these two.  They aren't very reliable in the picking-up department, but they do at least let me know which direction that expensive Bali bead skittered off to.

Next comes the Sticking of the Stickers.  I usually discover I don't have enough stickered boxes two days before the show, resulting in mayhem and general waving of hands and gnashing of teeth.  All of my boxes have inside a business card (non-beaded), an organza bag, and the sticker on the top.  Pink top, purple bottom, and I use Papermart.com to buy almost all my supplies.

And then there is my new sign, which proved QUITE the theft deterant at my last show.  Who could resist the serious little face of my sweet nugget?

The three days before the show are sheer pandemonium and utter chaos in the house.  The office is a mess of boxes.  The van is half-packed.  I do have a list my husband and I check off (he sets things up, I decorate, I un-decorate, and he tears things down, while Zack asks, "Are we DONE yet?").  I always forget something.  (Thank goodness my hotel is near a Target.  Once I forgot socks.  Once, pajamas.  One memorable time, cash.)  

Don't get me wrong.  I love to do shows.  My customers have become friends.  Many of them read my blog and stop by to visit, ask about Zack, give me book suggestions, share bits of their life.  I don't care if they stop by merely to play dress up and then go on their way without buying a thing.  I still feel the connection.  If a customer has become that close to me they make a point of stopping by to say hello, that's a customer for life.  They just didn't need something right that minute.

So that's the tidbit of information I'd like to leave with you.   Yes, you're exhausted, have worked your fingers to the bone, are likely eating bad restaurant food and sleeping in an uncomfortable hotel.  It may be a show where you have more looky-loos than buyers.

But.

 If you treat your attendees with respect, smile all the time, engage them -- give them a reason to remember you beyond your beautiful jewelry -- they'll take your card and keep it.  Get their address and email if you politely can (and tell them why).  Market judiciously but respectfully.  It takes time.  But you can build a customer base that will do your marketing FOR you.  Word of mouth is HUGE.  

Take your talent on the road -- but don't forget your smile, your natural charm, and your passion for your work.

Have fun out there.

 Want to win a lampwork focal, picked out by me?

Answer this question in the comments below:

What is the funniest/craziest thing you've heard in a craft booth?

(yours, a friend's, or one you've shopped in)

Lori Anderson writes the blog Pretty Things and creates jewelry for her web site, Lori Anderson Designs.  She is also the creator of the Bead Soup Blog Party.