Designer of The Week

Each Monday the Art Bead Scene features a Designer of the Week.

One of our editors picks her favorite from the Monthly Challenge entries.

This week's featured designer is....

Mary Ellen of Bee Tree

Here is what ABS editor Jennifer Heynen said about Mary Ellen's necklace:

 

I love how Mary Ellen captured the color and feel of the monthly challenge necklace. The stick link is a wonderful natural element in the necklace.

Link Library with Melanie

  In July of 2007, Heather posted a fun Tassel Earring project here on Art Bead Scene that is ideal for small art beads and which is also great for using up those tiny scraps of flexible wire and seed beads

A Bead A Day
If you like vintage beads, you will LOVE this giveaway! Follow the link over on Lisa's post and enter to win a $100 gift certificate for BEADS! 


About.com Jewelry Making
Make a fall patch of pumpkin beads using polymer clay.


  Art Bead Scene
The November Monthly Challenge is announced, revealing a historical painting of a beautiful woman in autumn tones 

Beading Arts
Cyndi is featuring innovative stringing techniques all month on Beading Arts! Come join in the fun :-)

Cindy Gimbrone Beads
This week's Minding the Business is about taking care of you.

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done!
Jean re-reviews a book by Maggie Meister she finds particularly outstanding  

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

Studio Saturday with Jennifer Jangles

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 weeks winner is LisaS, Congratulations you won one of Cindy's Mokume Gane Mini-Pendants.

Welcome to Jennifer Jangles studio!

Hi there! Hope everyone is doing well and staying warm. It's a great time of year to cozy up with your beading supplies and make some jewelry. Things are in full swing here at the studio. I spent all last week re- arranging the gallery and decorating. There is still more to do , but isn't that just the way it is?

Here's what I have been up too.

I have also been working on my holiday gifts and holiday beads. I been making some of this...

And some of these...

It's very busy, but I love every minute of it. I love the energy of the holiday season. Right now as I type the studio has ten kids in clay class making gingerbread houses. It's fun to see them creating.


This leads me to the question of the week, do you love the holidays and all of the rush or would you rather skip them all together? Leave me a comment and you could be chosen randomly to win one of my holiday pendants.

And before I go, I want to give everyone a holiday gift... Printable gift cards. Click on the link to download the PDF file. I like to print mine on white cardstock and then punch for a ribbon.You will be able to find these on the side of my blog for the holiday season.

Happy Holidays!
Jennifer

Smarty Pants - Free Project

This is such a cute gift idea featuring one of my new tiny charms!  These would be perfect for a stocking stuffers or holiday gifts.

Supplies:

25mm copper disk 

2 7.5mm copper jump rings

2 5mm copper jump rings

18" copper chain & clasp

Tools:

Hammer, texturing plates, letter stamps, dapping block & punch, metal hole punch and chain nose pliers. 

1. Stamp the words on the copper disk first.

2. Create texture by hammering the texture plate on the disk, avoiding the text.  (Here is a video showing you how.)

3. Use the hole punch to create a hole at the top of the pendant.

4. Dome the disk using the dapping block and punch.  (Antique the pendant with liver of sulfur for a darker finish.)

5. Attach the charm using a jump ring.

6. Attach another jump ring for the chain, slide the chain through, adding on the clasp.

Offer pendants with inspirational words or a floral background for quick and easy impulse buys at your next show.  (Chain & copper disks from Ornamentea.)

I can't wait to whip up some with my tiny holiday charms with words like, "Jolly", "Peace" and "Merry".  For the holiday ones I would suggest using Vintaj's gunmetal blanks and chain.  They will buff with a silver finish that looks like darkened silver - lovely!

Tiny Disks can be found in my Etsy shop - use discount code HolidayPreview to save 20% off your order until Monday!

November Monthly Challenge Sponsors and Prizes

Our wonderful sponsors for the November Monthly Challenge. 

We will have 2 lucky winners this month.

Hint Jewelry

Beth Hemmila of Hint Jewelry creates spectacular handcrafted silver charms. "Tell your unique story through personalized handcrafted jewelry." You create a meaningful piece of jewelry to that helps tell your story.

Beth is donating 3 Charms worth over $50 .

Visit Beth at her blog, twitter, Facebook, flickr and Etsy.

: : :

Mary Harding Jewelry

Mary Harding of Mary Harding Jewelry creates beautiful Nature inspired pendant and jewelry components. She also makes beaded jewelry using a freeform peyote stitch. You can see many of Mary's piece in Heather's New book "Jewelry Designs from Nature."


Mary is donating a the items shown above worth $75.

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

: : :

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

Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni by Marie Spartali Stillman has with many different elements that can be used for inspiration foliage, landscape, flowers, portrait, muted colors and feminity.

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

Please remember to put NOV ABS 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. 

November Monthly Challenge

Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni 

by Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927) 

Watercolour, gouache and gum arabic, 30.9in × 24.1 in.

About the Art
Given to the Walker Art Gallery on behalf of subscribers, by Harold Rathbone.

The woman is a character from the Italian poet Dante. She was described as a heartless lady dressed in green. In her hand she holds a crystal bowl reflecting the figures of Love and Dante.

This type of painting, a half length femme fatale in Renaissance costume, was initiated by Rossetti and imitated by many others. The artist of this picture knew Rossetti. She modelled for one of the handmaidens in Rossetti's painting 'Dante's Dream' (Walker Art Gallery).

About the Artist
Marie Spartali was born in Middlesex in 1843, daughter of Michael Spartali, import-export merchant and sometime Greek consul in London, and by birth and acquaintance like Maria Zambaco (mistress of Edward Burne-Jones) a member of the cultured Greek community in London whose doyen was Constantine Ionides. From 1864-70 she trained under Ford Madox Brown, alongside his daughters Catherine and Lucy.

She was a noted 'stunner' (the Pre-Raphaelite slang for a good-looking woman) and sat for Rossetti and Burne-Jones as well as the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. In 1871 she married against her family's wish the American journalist and amateur artist W.J. Stillman; they had three children, one of whom died in infancy. Owing to her husband's work as a newspaper correspondent the family settled in Florence in 1878, and then Rome until 1898. Despite prolonged residences abroad, Spartali became a regular contributor to Grosvenor Gallery from 1877 until 1887, and its sucessor - the New Gallery - as well as at various venues in eastern USA.

Her sustained output proves her professionalism, but little of her work seems to have sold. Her favoured subjects were literary-historical figure groups and decorative female heads preferred by patrons; landsapes and flower pieces are equally representative though less distinctive. Many of her works draw on Italian literary themes, especially Dante and Boccaccio as well as depicting Italian landscape.

Her daughter Euphrosyne (Effie) became an artist, as did her step-daughter Lisa Stillman; her son Michael was an architect and settled in America, where retrospective shows were held in 1908 and 1982. 
She died in Britain in 1927.

Color Palette

Blog Tour

The Blog Tour deadline is November 28th.

Links must be added to the monthly challenge post comments (this post). 

The Blog Tour will be on the 30th.

Monthly Challenge Winners

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

Our Sponsors

Our sponsors this month are: Hint Jewelry and Mary Harding.

Please visit us tomorrow 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 NOV 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 November 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.

October Monthly Challenge Winners

Congratulations to this Months winners! 

We have 2 winners chosen randomly from all the challenge entrants.

Janet Bocciardi/Biehive is our first winner this month.

She has won products (shown below) from Marsha Neal Studio worth over $60.

Our second lucky winner is Lynda Moseley/Diva Designs.

She has won prizes from Humblebeads, Woodland Treasure Beads + a signed copy of her book worth over $50.

Marsha Neil Studio                              humblebeads

Thank you  and  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 "A Hedgehog in a Landscape" by by Giovanna Garzoni, 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 November's challenge brings.