For long time viewers of my blog ( all 3 of you! LOL) I get together with my bestest buddies from South Dakota 3-4 times a year. When ever we get together we call it a BeadCon. We even have bags, and take turns making favors for our bags each time we meet. You can tell from the line of charms, we have been doing this for awhile! At least one of those weekends we camp out at a hotel in Omaha ( as it's the biggest city within almost equal distance of each of us) We bring our own tables, and fill a hotel suite with beads, components, findings, food and companionship. We usually try to take a class together, and we are either getting a new challenge for next time or showing off the results from the challenge. No matter what we do we have amazing amounts of fun.
This weekend proved to be no different. We met up at our normal meeting up place: Rockbrook village. It's this great block mall that's conveniently just off the interstate I use to get to Omaha, and the interstate that Cathie & Sue use. It's also got a very nice bead shop, a wine & cheese shop, great restaurants and the best damn sugar cookies I've ever had at Garden Cafe. I always get some with homemade cream cheese frosting. yum! HEAVEN!
After much exchanging of greetings and hugs, the first day together is usually shopping and settling in day. We usually take a tour of local bead shops, the glass shop (mostly for me!) check into the hotel and transform our suite into tableland, with enough combined jewelry making goodness to rival any bead store in town! Then we hunker down and get to beading.
Thursday night was mostly exchanging of presents, checking out the challenge pieces this year, and started our "class" - playing with resin, which I'll cover in another post. This year's challenge was to make something that represented one of us, and we drew names. Sue got my name, and made this most charming muse for me. (Cathie named her Esmeralda) The body is cut copper sheet, in a heart shape, then hammered for textured. The face is a bone cab and the hair is wire cork-screwed into pig tails. I often put my hear up in a pony tail or pig tails when I'm working on stuff-- my hair is thick, long and gets in the way! The legs end in tennis shoe beads, because I'm always wearing tennis shoes, unless I'm in bed. Thanks Sue, it's now decorating my main desk lamp in the studio!
Cathie got Sue's name, and made this wonderful "cha-cha" bracelet mostly in Sue's, Cathie's and I's favorite colors. Sue loves cha-cha's bracelets! They are an incredible amount of work, good job Cathie!I got Cathie's name. Now I think Cathie is one of best people I know, and she has a big heart and mothers everyone (but in a good way!) I don't think she get's the recognition she deserves for all her hard work on other's behalf. So I played around with this idea for some time, and finally decided she was the queen of good hearts, or at least a princess, and every princess needs a Tiara!! Besides I knew Cathie didn't have one!! If you can tell, the top wire motif is a spiral like heart, and it's a mixture of Austrian crystal and really good Chinese crystal. It fit her almost like it was made for her! LOL !! It's sort of funny this challenge was very open ended but we all used hearts in our projects... we all love each other like sisters of the heart, if not blood.
1 comment:
Awwwww. We love you too, Kat!
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