It All started with a bead.......

And what a Bead!! this lovely, universe in glass is the creation of my good friend Tera Belinsky-Yoder . check out some of her fab work here: http://www.beadygirlbeads.com/ I got this back in October, practically stole it out of her hands.. it was from her private stash. Hopefully she will forgive me once she sees this. Anyway, I've been wanting to make a bigger piece, but hadn't had the "idea", the flash of inspiration for something bigger. Then this weekend, digging out odds and ends for something else I ran across this bead ( and a couple cousins in the same colors but different shapes and sizes) and I realized it was time to play with it. I'm a strong believer in CCM... Creative Critical Mass. If your stash isn't big enough, when you get the good ideas you won't be able to carry out your plan. You will waste that moment of creative insight. This is why my studio is filled with beads and findings and gizmo's and tools.. and the hoard ever grows. Yes, being a red head I'm descended from cats ( as Mark Twain said) but I am sure I have some dragon blood in me also.. I am betting all jewelers do. See below are 2 pictures of my stash. I'm a bigggg believer!!

So I started to think about what I wanted to do , grabbed my sketch pad and came up with this.

I picked out some beads that I thought would work well and off I went. I wanted the big Universe bead to be free to swing to either side.. so you can rotate it within it's frame.

The first view shows the start of the coils.. the 2Nd view I'm maybe 1/2 to 2/3Rd's done.. I'll post finished pictures soon. I made some great earrings to go with it, and now I"m thinking of a whole "suit" of jewelry, using the other beads like this.. at least 1 more as a bracelet, I'm still thinking of possible ideas.

I've named this piece "Universal Soul" and to me it's a happy calm piece... probably the heavy blue/green color influences this feeling, but really I had the most fun constructing this from start to finish. While it has "wild" aspects, to me it's very well ordered.. well ordered chaos, which is what the universe is after all... or maybe the universe is 2 big to see the patterns. I do believe there is an order, a system to how the cosmos works, how it all fits together. I think art is trying to see how it's all connected. What fun connecting the dots!