Mad About Marcia

I've been really inspired by Marcia and her blog lately, and thought I would follow along with another blogger and beader I found via her site.  She's doing sort of a Julie/Julia thing, but instead of cooking, it's Marcia's book Beaded Opulence.  You can find her blog here. The first project in the book is called Abacus, and it's actually pretty gorgeous, although I have to admit, along with Cyn, I didn't give it much thought at first.  Now, this is pretty much what I do on a daily basis, so I've already finished the first three projects in the book, along with a few others that I had done previously, so I'll post pics of all of them at the end, for now, here's Abacus:

and this is how it sits on a wrist:

I've been really pushing myself to try and be more open and creative with my patterns.  It's a struggle for me since I learned to bead entirely by reading and figuring out patterns, so simply making it up as I go isn't usually an option.  Now that I've been beading for as long as I have and gained a better understanding of how the beads sit and the foundations for different stitches, I find it a new challenge for me to simply let go and bead by feeling.  It is the reason I took Marcia's class at the 2011 Bead & Button show, to challenge myself creatively.  It is paying off exponentially, since I have just done one of my first pieces ever that is entirely without a pattern or a picture to go on.  Here is the result:

Now, on to the second pattern in Marcia's book, Spun Glass!  I had made this one previously, before I ever started on this journey through her book, but never the less, it is a completed version.  I did not use wonderful crystals as suggested, but plastic bicones that had been sitting around for ages.  It just felt like the right time to use them:

and the result seems to have turned out okay.  I'll admit for the next project, I did in fact, watch the movie Twilight while making the Twilight project, only because I watched with the Rifftrax (essentially Mystery Science Theater 3000 aka making fun of the movie the entire time)  and it just made sense.  I was initially turned off to this project because I am so stuck on wanting patterns and everything to be in order, so this was one of my biggest challenges, just mixing up the beads and letting it happen:

There are a few others through the book that I've already completed, but we'll get to those later on.  I'm off to prepare for dinner with my in-laws tonight as well as two shows later this week.  As a parting thought, I'll leave you with one of Marcia's kits I did that I picked up at the Bead & Button Show.