The weather may not be able to make up its mind here in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, but the neck­lace below has a beachy easy feel­ing that reminds me of warm sum­mer days ahead. This week in my Adult Ed classes I am teach­ing a neck­lace of a sim­i­lar style made from cot­ton cord rather than hemp, and I thought “The Per­fect Sum­mer Neck­lace” tuto­r­ial by Carotte and Lychee offered a great vari­a­tion on a theme. Enjoy!

See The Per­fect Sum­mer Neck­lace and 1000’s of oth­ers — or share your own on Cut Out + Keep

Well, I am on my way! …  toward mak­ing a tuto­r­ial that is! Many of you know that I’ve been want­ing to pro­duce refresher and project tuto­ri­als, but with my per­fec­tion­is­tic ten­den­cies (oh yes, I have them!), I haven’t wanted to post a video until it was per­fect — just the right light­ing, edit­ing, per­fect turn of phrase …   exactly the oppo­site of what I teach oth­ers — to go with the flow and see what comes of it.

Well, for the past few days I have been going with the flow, record­ing take after take, and putting together a few starter videos on crimp­ing as a fol­low up to my Bead 1 classes in Santa Bar­bara. These videos are not pol­ished, but they are a start. And they rep­re­sent cer­tainly a place from which I can move, learn and grow, and that place of begin­ning, as in any endeavor, is the place where cre­ativ­ity happens.

I’m post­ing my first attempts here for you to view and offer feed­back. Let me know what you think!

Com­ing next, I’ll post part 2 of the Crimp­ing Les­son — How to fin­ish your piece.

Enjoy the videos, and Happy Beading!,

Laura