Now, this piece is for sale right now.  I had loads of fun making this one, since I am a nut for Siberian Huskies! I did the main body on the loom my husband bought for me to replace one that had broken. It's a beautiful loom, and I love it a lot. I bought it here, and this couple makes AWESOME looms!

I used silver-lined Miyuki Delicas throughout the main body, and silver-lined bugle beads on the fringe. For the backing, I used black felt, with a thin piece of cardboard between it and the beadwork itself, to stiffen it a bit, as it's meant to be hung on a door rather than a Christmas tree, and Nymo thread. The hanger is Ndebele stitch, and is both glued and stitched to the felt. This is actually the second one of these that I made. The first one was ultra-special, and the fringe was done longer on that one. It was ultra special because I made it specifically to donate to Harnessed to Hope Northern Breed Rescue, to be used in their fundraising auction on eBay. I hope it got a good price for the rescue!

This one is on sale at my Etsy store, so feel free to go buy it! If it's already gone, there will be another made if it's popular enough!

I just finished this one, and I'm not sure yet that I like it, so please feel free to comment and suggest changes! Please be gentle, though! I used Ndebele, or herringbone, stitch on this one because I like the look of the stitch. This was another practice piece, as this is the first time I've embellished a finished piece. I thought the bracelet was fairly plain before I added the embellishment, but it didn't come out quite the way I had it pictured in my mind. I think, for me, that's the hardest part of jewelry-making: getting what I see in my head to the finished product! Again, that's why this is a practice piece. For practice pieces I use the same Nymo thread that I use in loomwork. For sellable pieces, I like Berkeley FireLine, but it's considerably more expensive than Nymo, for a lot less yardage! That's why I don't use FireLine for loomwork! Fifty yards of FireLine costs $9, as opposed to 488 yards of Nymo for $3!

Anyway, for this piece I used size 11 Miyuki Delica seed beads, and pearls that I had languishing among my bead collection. Yes, I will buy beads because I like the look of them, long before I have any projects in mind for them! If my husband or daughter would let me, I could probably waste an entire day in a bead store, agonizing over what I'm going to buy! There are so many things I want to try that I've never done!

This was my first attempt at creating something using the ladder stitch. All of my previous work has been done strictly on loom, and I wanted to branch out. I'd done little samplers of other stitches, just to see if I was capable and how they would look, but never completed any projects. This came out of a desire to make something for my other half, who is a Gemini, and was inspired by the graceful lines of Chinese calligraphy. As it turns out, I like off-loom work as much as on loom. Both have pros and cons. I can work the loom much faster,  because you pick up a number of beads at once, but there is more thread waste, especially if you're doing a piece that is relatively small. The off-loom stitches are much slower, because you stitch one bead at a time, but there is almost no wasted thread. Overall, I like how this piece came out, and learned a lot from the mistakes I made while creating it!

INTRODUCING MYSELF

As with anything else, you begin at the beginning, so I'll start by telling you about me.

I'm a stay at home mom to a beautiful little girl and four dogs, all of whom conspire to drive me mad on a daily basis--and  often succeed--and all of whom are adored and spoiled nearly rotten.

I live in Arizona, but I'm a born and bred New Yorker. I have realized, in the years since leaving, that regardless of where my hat is presently hanging, I will always be a New Yorker.

I'm an animal lover, and dogs and horses rank high on that list. Highest on the list of dogs is the Siberian Husky. Of my four dogs, two are Sibes, and the other two are Labs. I love them all, but my Sibes are my favorites. And not only do they know it, they take full advantage of it!

I discovered loom beading in my early twenties, and my first loom was one of the cheap metal ones. I cannot describe my loathing for that particular loom, but it is a good starting place for someone who's never done loom beading before.

THE NAME

To explain this, I must first tell you about Thor.

When my daughter was seventeen months old and not really talking yet, other than a few isolated, all-important words such as "mama" and "dada", we rented "Eight Below" on pay per view. For those who have never seen it, Huskies and Malamutes figure prominently in the movie. My daughter saw them, screamed "Dog!", tried to pet the screen, then sat down and watched the entire movie in enthralled silence. From start to finish. For more than two hours. At seventeen months old. This, for anyone who is not a parent, is a miraculous occurrence.

I had had Sibes years before, but we didn't at this point. We did have the two Lab girls, Smoky and Bandit (have I dated myself yet?), and a coyote-Chow hybrid puppy named Cheyenne that my other half brought home, but no Sibes. Here was my daughter showing signs of partiality to the same breed I loved, well, something had to be done! So, online I went, and found Thor on the first site I hit. He was young, only three, and had a gorgeous face and a fantastic coat that was not standard. He had been in a kill shelter in Ohio, was found, pulled, and fostered by a rescue in North Carolina, and had been up for adoption for some time with no takers when I called them. He had a deformed foreleg, I was told, from a probable puppyhood accident, which would probably explain the lack of interest. But it didn't hurt him, and I wasn't looking for a dog to show or pull a sled. I was perfectly okay with it, as long as he was.

After being interviewed and our references being checked, we found out Thor was ours. All we had to do was figure out how to get him to Arizona from North Carolina. I had joined several Siberian groups online, and posted about the problem, and several people I have never physically met donated all the money needed to get him here. It took nearly five months, but he walked into our house and hearts in March 2007, and we haven't had a single regret about the adoption. He's a fantastic woolly-coated Siberian that makes you want to cuddle him, which I do regularly. We regularly contact the rescue to let them know how he is and to thank them again for letting us have him. Two years later, he is still the only male dog in the house, master of all he surveys, and has more cuddling and loving than he knows what to do with!

That, finally, brings us to the name, Siberian Star Beads. I wanted something  to honor the breed I love, something that would roll well off the tongue. I couldn't think of a way I liked to incorporate Thor's name, but I could get Siberian in there, and he is a wonderful representation of the breed, whether he meets the breed standard or not! 

BEADING

Let me say, right up front, that I am not a professional beader...yet. Beading is fun, I enjoy it, and it's a process. It never stops. There is always a technique out there that I haven't learned yet and want to play around with to see if I can do it, if I like what I produce with it, if anyone else likes what I produce with it. It's not hard to bead, by any means, although some techniques cause me to swear at myself more than others, but it does require patience, and it is time-consuming, and it is addictive. My favorite venue is glass seed beads, especially Delicas, and I've only recently begun to play with other types and sizes of beads. I'm also debating about wire working, but the tools are an expense I can't support at the moment. Beads I have aplenty, though, and even my daughter, now three, wants to bead with Mama, so she has some leather strips and bags of pony beads that she can string while I bead.

My darling other half set up a dedicated work area in our living room for me. For some people, this wouldn't work. It's not quiet, but it does allow me to keep an eye on mini-me while I work. The area consists of a desk, two dressers containing tools, findings, finished pieces, fabric and other crafty things, and a bookcase holding all of my bead books, magazines, and, of course, beads. My friends contribute to my addiction by saving prescription bottles for me, which, of course, means that since I have all these empty bottles, I simply must go to the bead store and buy more beads to fill them!

I am just getting started on selling my work, and I will try to upload pictures of it as I go. If you want me to make something specific, let me know, in as much detail as you can, and I will tell you honestly if it's something I can do or not.

Any photos I post, unless otherwise noted, will be pieces available for purchase, if you are interested. Even if you're not buying, please feel free to comment and criticize: feedback is important!

Blessed be,
Stacy