Ruth had her first experience of beading when she was little and told me that she had been taught by her mother to make a daisy stitch chain with picots when she was four. After a long break Ruth rediscovered her early fascination for beading about three years ago when she went through an arch she hadn't been been through before at her local craft centre and found her local bead shop. It was like walking into Aladdin's cave and Ruth left there that day with an armful of beading materials and beads and treasure.
I really like this cuff bracelet and amazingly Ruth had only tried bead embroidery for the first time about three weeks before making it. It was her entry for a Making Jewellery magazine bracelet competition and it took second place. When I asked Ruth about the inspiration behind the design she explained - The coin came about because I was skint at the time and didn't want to fork out for a cabochon.
Ruth designed the pattern for this delicious peyote cuff one day when she was bored at the day job. She describes this Celtic cuff as a cow to work out but even worse to stitch. Since then Ruth has moved on to using computer software to design new patterns for her peyote work but her designs will always start out on paper first.
This necklace is a real work of art. I asked about the inspiration behind it's creation and Ruth said - I’ve always like Egypt (used to have a bright yellow bathroom with Egyptian stencils all over and full of cheap and nasty nick knacks although the camel was rather cool) and I got a book out of the library about jewellery design through the ages, just to get an idea of the thought process behind designing a piece and there were some lovely Egyptian pieces. I had an idea to create a beaded Egyptian style piece and Google some images for inspiration and spotted the piece I made out of gold and enamels. bead embroidered pendent based on ancient Egyptian jewellery design. The polymer clay scarab was created by the very talented Caroline Harvey. In total this beautiful embroidered bead necklace took about 9 months from idea to completion.
Visit Ruthies blog and flickr to find out more about Ruth.
Jolene x
