Recently I have been creating a lot of designs with a story behind them. The question I am most often asked is how I come up with new designs, so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some of these designs that do have their origins in particular themes or events.
I have had a shop on Etsy for a while, but only recently started to use it more. At the end of last year, I discovered the Etsy teams: these are groups of designer makers with a similar interest. We have a forum and a blog and the team to which I belong, Etsy Beadweavers, also runs a monthly competition. This is all with the intention of helping one another to promote our work, our shops and the artform that we use. In February of this year, I was introduced to the ‘Spring Swap’. I saw an email on the team forum asking who would like to participate in this and, having no idea what it was all about, I thought I would learn a little more. What better way, than by actually taking part myself?!
It turns out, the Spring Swap involves each participant answering a short questionnaire about their jewellery tastes, so I had to fill out my favourite colours (very tough question that one!), the kinds of jewellery I wear most, the styles of beadwork that I admire and also like to use in my own designs and last, but not least, my wrist and neck sizes. One of the team members organises this event, so she collated all the questionnaires and then paired participants up. So a couple of weeks after submitting my own questionnaire, I received the questionnaire that had been completed by another Spring Swap participant. All the participants had the same brief: we were to use the information on the questionnaire to guide us to make a piece of jewellery for that participant. The materials should cost something in the region of $10 (about £6) and we had to make our piece and send it to its recipient by 30th April. Before sending it we also had to take photos and submit these to the organiser. Everything about our designs and the process had to remain top secret until the big reveal on the team blog. Now this took place earlier this week, so I can finally reveal my design!
My swap partner was Chris Dillman who has a beautiful Etsy shop, Art Masquerading. As it happens, I had had a few conversations with Chris before the Spring Swap – she’s one of the team organisers and has had to remind me a few times to stick to some of the team rules (I won’t go into details, but I found it all a little confusing when I started out and made a few mistakes along the way…Chris has always been very lovely when putting me back on the right track!). Anyway, Chris’ questionnaire told me that she loves wearing earrings, loves bright bold colours and she has always been fascinated by geometric beadwork, but has never actually tried any. This sparked a lot of ideas and a few sketches (pretty unusual for me!). I happen to love working in bright, bold colours, I love 
geometric beadwork and at the start of this year I made a resolution to make more earrings! So, guess where my ideas were taking me. However, I thought it would also be nice to personalise this a little more and as Chris had said she would love to try some geometric beadwork, I also wrote up the pattern for these earrings and sent this to her as a little gift package. Chris was really thrilled with her earrings and I loved the process of making something as a gift for someone, trying to create something perfectly suited to their tastes.
Of course, the ‘Spring Swap’ is all about swapping, so not only did I make a gift for someone else, but I also 
received a mystery parcel in the post one day. This happened to come on a day when a few things in my non-beading life hadn’t been going so well, so this was the most fabulous boost. It turns out that my questionnaire had made its way to another team member that I know through online chatting, but not personally: Chris Boyer Maj. I have long admired her beautiful work. I found that my parcel contained a beautiful little bead embroidered pendant on a dainty herringbone rope. It was just perfect for me – the colouring was very much ‘me’ and it was such a pretty dainty style – exactly what I would have chosen for myself, so I love wearing it.
The pattern for my earrings is now available for sale here, but I haven’t given away the exact colouring that I used as I wanted that to remain personal to Chris – after all, these were her gift from me! I thoroughly enjoyed the Spring Swap experience and I think it embodies everything that the beading community is about: sharing skills, giving and receiving and of course really beautiful work. It also goes to show that you don’t need a huge budget to create something stunning. All the designs can be seen here, so I hope you have enjoyed hearing about the evolution of my own design.
