My Purple Heart

So I came up with another creative urge.`Another necklace -My Purple Heart was born.

Here, I have chosen the amethyst glass beads which are actually very very tiny teardrops,(the most delicate, tender, forgiving shade of purple) as the main thread. This will be holding the playful bunches of pink bicone crystals.

Look at the wires at the end of the swarovski crystal bicones.. They are individually wrapped with unique twists.. No easy quickfixes with commercial headpins.

Here, I played with the light and dark shades at the two sides of the locket. Oh, by the way I learned this new trick of wire work that I have applied in wrapping the locket. Did you notice that? This locket is a highly faceted Czech glass briolette crystal. It is so capable of splashing beautiful rainbow hues just agreeing with your mood.

So, how do you like it? Did you like Pinky Princess better or My Purple Heart? None of them? - Really!

A Beadazzled Day

Finally I got a chance to play with my beads and was quite busy the last two days. The memory of the tulip fields that I had seen in Kukenhoff, Holland visits me this time of the year in early spring. Ribbons of purple, lavender and pink stretched all the way up to the horizon. I can still see them if I close my eyes. Then I get up and fetch my bead box. I am inspired to make some thing with those colors.

I had seen a picture of a necklace some where. It had an amber drop in the middle and on the left side there were swarovski beads from the cool family, I mean the blue, green purple... all united. The right side was rather ruled by the hot stuff- yellow, orange and red.

Hmm! That's an idea. But how about keeping the main tone PINK but play with the translucent and the opaque beads? So I mixed up fresh water pearls with pink and copperish swarovski faux pearl with the crystals. The metal is sterling silver though.

Now after making this I felt happy. I named it PRINCESS PINKY.

The next day Princess Pinky took me by the hand and made me open the bead box again.

Home Sweet Home

Here, my home was anxiously waiting for me too, as I was for her. The tiny crocuses are out and the yellow daffodils greeted me with a warm nodding of their heads. The cherry tree that we had planted thirty two years ago in the back yard on our anniversary date is in full bloom now.

The rolling hills across 680 look so green and soft .Yellow mustard flowers and California poppies are happy to see me back.

Tomorrow I am going to organize my workshop and start making jewelry. It's been such a long time I haven't played with my beads.

My first real snow experience

One day it snowed. I saw it all from the very beginning. In the wee morning as I was rocking Zoe in the rocking chair, I watched it falling very slowly, very gently like soap flakes falling from the sky. The sun has still a couple of hours to come and the sky is steel gray. It is amazing how quickly the snow covered the whole alley and buried the cars and every thing that were parked at the street sides.

Then icicles hung from the awnings, the schools declared a snow-holiday, children gathered and came out for snow rides and tobogganing.

Later, much later the sun came out eventually and the snow from the awnings are quickly evaporating now. It looks like flocks of cloud going up back to the sky.

We are stuck inside but it is lovely watching all these and sip hot coco.

Zoe is a month old now, her cold is much gone and she makes all kinds of funny faces and plays with her hands and fingers, pedalling up in the air with her legs.

I am now writing from California where it is not snowing of course.

I miss Zoe. I miss their cozy, tiny N.Y.home and her mom and dad.

The Valentine Gift

This Valentine Day I was presented with the most precious gift- my first grand child. Zoe Shona Zych landed safely on the planet Earth on the morning of 14th February 2009.

Hearing the news we flew to N.Y. and for a whole month I had been busy grand mothering my precious Zoe.

In these thirty two days she learned how to gulp after a coughing fit, handle hiccups and burps. Though she loves to hear mommy baby talking to her and daddy's deep voice, she feels a bit perplexed at the sounds of siren and smoke alarms which are quite abundant at the 81st street apartment ,N.Y.

Then there are lights. Some are nice like the warm glow of sun rays that come through the window and play peek-a boo with her in the morning but those two kitchen lights- they are just awful- too harsh to look at. And those weird smell that comes from the kitchen when Dido cooks- make Zoe sneeze, sneeze, sneeze. Why don't they rather have mommy's milk instead and mommy's smell...mm! That's best- even when she's sweaty and stinky That's what Zoe'd say if she could talk , I think.

In the mean time I have learned that though sneezes and hiccups are harmless, coughs can be serious matter for little newborns like Zoe. And she did catch the cold from her mom. So we had to keep her almost vertical all the time for those few days. The only relief we could provide was taking her to the steaming bath room and pray.

I gathered a galore of knowledge from the lactation workshops when I accompanied my daughter and was wondering how do the mammal infants and their moms do in the third world countries where there are no La Leche support group or breast pump renting shops!

Bamboozling in Beijing

I was pretty upset when we were stuck in Beijing on our way back home to California from Delhi. The plane could not take off for dense fog and we missed our connecting flight and were stranded for thirty six hours!
The airlines (Air china , though horrible for customer service ) provided for hotel and food and transportation. We took advantage to see Beijing for one day.

It's a very clean, organized city. People are getting quite conscious for going green. Our guide Xiang (Jane) mentioned that one week in March the whole city plant new trees.All the children from the schools, families and businesses get involved. I could see rows of bare branch trees on both sides of the freeways. All the roses are meticulously pruned.

We saw the remnants of the Olympics and the Great Wall of China.
We took a trip to a jade factory and a cloissone place of which I had written in detail in my other web site http://www.Bead-z-mommys-business.com

We were taken to a tea ceremony and came to know that drinking some tea can lower your blood pressure and cholestrol. In fact we did have that tea and it's true we had to go to the bath room much more!!

But I loved the lychee tea the best. It's so sweet smelling.
Beijing is famous for three things said Xiang. Can you guess what?
The great wall - yes she nodded.
The cloisonne works that were only for the rich kings and emperors one day . And the third is the Peking Duck!

Well a taste of this and little taste of that and it was time to go home.
So see, being in Beijing was not so bad after all.

Don't you forget to check out the new jewelry sets I created after my visit to the jade factory.

Autumn Flowers

Autumn flowers for autumn jewelry fashion- yes, that's what I was looking for: asters, chrysanthemums, pansies or may be autumn crocuses. But what I found instead were the leaves and the trees.

All the way from our neighborhood streets in Walnut Creek, California to the tree studded streets in Central Park, New York I found spectacular burst of colors. (I went to visit my daughter, Antara for the Thanksgiving holidays.)

Shades of orange, crimson, sienna, yellow ochre,burnt cinnamom mesmerized me. I couldn't wait to create something with this energetic inspiration. I could not wait for mail order deliveries either, so I went straight to our neighborhood Concord bead store- Just Bead It and bought some fabulous glass leaf beads.

I played with them for awhile, mixed them up with some left over amber teardrops from another project and with gold filled wire I created my autumn necklace and then a pair of matching earrings too. I gave them to Antara.

I was a bit unsure if I did the right thing adding the ambers though I liked the yellow hue it radiated, but Antara said those ambers made it special. I liked the way it fell right under her collar bone and the hollow of her throat. (I chose the length 16'' )

Check my web site Bead-z-mommys-business where I plan to put the instruction about how I made it and other resources.

See, I went to look for autumn flowers, for their form, texture and color to incorporate in my autumn jewelry design, where I found them were in the wholesomeness of the colorful trees. It reminds me of a line from my favorite poet Rabindranath Tagore:

I travel far away to see the mountains and the seas. What I miss to notice is right at my doorway- a drop of dew on a blade of grass.