A few years ago, I was a dedicated decorative painter. And then I discovered beading; stringing to be exact. I made dozens of simple necklaces and earrings using beading wire, headpins, and eyepins. Some of my creations looked more like creatures than creations. But, I perservered and I think I made some pretty niffty jewelry pieces. 

Two years ago, my husband and I were lucky enough to spend a winter in Arizona, where we became "rockhounds". We joined a rock club called the Apache Junction Rock and Gem Club (http://www.ajrockclub.com/index.html). Members of this club taught us how to make cabochons out of rough rock. Talk about getting hooked on a hobby! In the last two years, I've made hundreds of cabochons, a lot from the rocks we found in Arizona, and a lot from rough rocks we bought at rock shows.

Well, after making all those cabochons, I didn't know what I was going to do with them. I took a short class to learn how to wire wrap cabochons and used quite a few for that. But, I have arthritis in my hands, so wire wrapping was starting to take it's tole on me. I had seen several cabochons that were beaded in place seed beads, so I bought a book by Jamie Cloud Eakin called "Beading with Cabochons: Simple Techniques for Beautiful Jewelry." This wonderful and easy to use book taught me how to use seed beads with cabochons to create pendants, bracelets, earrings, and other jewelry. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn this craft.

To get back to the subject of beading, after I played around with seed beads and cabochons for a while, I decided to try my hand at beadweaving, also known as off-loom weaving. I've made several necklaces and bracelets using beadweaving. I learned how to do brick stitch, tubular peyote (which took me a LONG time to learn even though this is supposed to be a "beginner" stitch!), spiral rope, and am in the process of making a necklage with herringbone stitch. Later, I'll post pictures of some of the pieces I've made and tell you where I got the patterns.