Beads For The Book

It has been a while now since I had a book update. Too long. And now is the perfect time for an update! A few things are going on in the bloggy background and lots of it will have to be kept under wraps. BUT, I can give you a little sneak peak at a couple of details.

One thing going on is title talk. I have title ideas, and Interweave has title ideas. Remember those two books I wrote projects for back in August and September? Well, I need to turn in my "artist bio" for both those books and we would like to mention the new book in the bios. You need a title to mention it, right? I mean, sure we could say "Kerry is currently working on writing her first book..." and leave it at that. But that's no fun. I wanna say "Look for Kerry's new book, fill-in-the-blank, coming in the spring 2010." Oh well, we'll figure it out.

Almost more exciting then figuring out the title is the BEADS!!

Back in early November, I started sending out emails to some of my favoritest, most amazingest, beads artists. I am so psyched that everyone I have asked has said YES!! I am honored to be working with every one of them. The bead packages have already started arriving in my mailbox. (Which seems early, but considering I have to turn in more then half of the book and as many finished projects as possible by Jan 19th, I have get my backside in gear.) One of the first things I did when starting to write the book is come up with a project list. I work on writing the steps for each of those projects, then check it off the list as written. As I was thinking of who to ask for beads, I looked at the project list and tried to visualize the best project for that artist's beads. I don't know if that makes sense... but it works for me.

The first beads to arrive were the ones from farthest away. The super talented Melanie Moertel sent me this lovely set.

You can purchase Melanie's beads HERE in her Etsy shop. Melanie's beads are truly miniture masterpieces. She has stringer control like no other. I wish you could see how fine the detail lines are in these beauties. Not only are they wonderfully high quality, but the colors!! OH THE COLORS!! One of the topics of the book is going to be using color in design. For beads like these, it is all about contrast. Orange and Blue are just about as opposite as you can get on the color wheel. Melanie choose to use a subtler shade of coral orange with pops of dark periwinkle blue. The contrast is softened just a little bit with some bits of opal yellow, cobalt blue and turquoise too. Just dreamy.

These beads are going to work perfect in the project I picked out for them. And no... I am not going to tell you about it. You'll just have to wait for the book.