Guilty Pleasures

Hubby and I returned from our trip back east (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, respectively) and have finally cleaned up the mess that living out of our car/tent for three weeks made of us and our gear. (ok...hubby did all the cleaning. Loves to hubby.)

I've been reviewing all the photos I took. I'm not a big photographer, but I took a lot of photos on this vacation...of flowers. We went to this wonderful garden on two occasions, and I was snapping photos like mad. I'm not a flower person, I don't even have any plants in my apartment. So why all the flower photos?


Colourways. I was looking at all the natural colour harmony for ideas for colour schemes for future beading projects.

I also photographed a few ornaments and cross-stitches I found in Doug and Pam's house...I saw all the neat and pretty patterns and wondered how I could replicate them in beads.


Obsessed just a little?

(I'll keep how many hours I spent with graph paper sketching things out to myself. Let's just say I've got this really cute cholker-necklace idea brewing that's going to need fresh colours - and a trip to the bead store!)

"My" Design?

I'm sure this is a question that every 'hobbyist' or 'amateur' beader asks themselves at one point - what constitutes an original design, and what is simply a small modification of the original? What is original vs. 'inspired by' and is there really a difference? What is a stitch technique, and what is someone's hard-won original work?

Some answers are easier - if you make a piece stitch for stitch, colour for colour from a magazine or book, you're copying! It's certainly not original. Change the colours, but keep everything else? Still copying in my book. Different colours does not an original design make. Change the stitch a little...probably still copying!

So, my discussion piece is above. Stitch - circular flat peyote. No one's got the right to claim that one as exclusive! It's the colour placement - in a recent issue of Beadwork, in my favourite "Seed Bead Style" section, there was this circular flat peyote piece that placed colours in such a way to make them look like they were swirling. Neat! I thought. It's diagonal peyote designs for round things!

In the artist's example, she created a bracelet with her circular flat peyote pieces stitched side by side. I had just completed the main body of "Geometry Experiment #1" (see earlier posts) and was into let's-see-what-happens-if-I-interlink-things stage. The result was above - "Green Gordian" (after the knot). I played with the bead count and made smaller circular peyote pieces to add some dimensional interest. I did a peyote toggle clasp, as in the magazine design.

Is this bracelet "my" design?