SCA: On Making Glass Beads and New Viking Jewelry

At the beginning of March I posted about making my own glass beads at home (here).  I'm still going strong, and I'm getting better with every batch I make.  It's SO much fun, and although it's pretty fast, it takes a lot of focus to get them right. 

My work table, all set up and ready to go

Right now I'm making about 7-10 beads per session, about 2 sessions per week.  Most of the beads I've made have been in shades of blue and green, although I recently picked up some white and yellow to throw into the mix and to use to make dots and stripes on my beads.  So far I've mostly been focusing on perfecting my round and oval-shaped beads, and learning to control the glass enough to make some larger ones; my next phase I think will be getting better at making dots and stripes and other patterns.  

A selection of beads I've made at home

All of this, of course, has been for the purpose of re-making my "festoon" for my 10th-century Viking kit.  Until now, the strands of beads I hang between my brooches have been made of store-bought beads - mostly glass and acrylic, in blue and amber tones.  I liked the color arrangement of my most recent iteration of the necklaces, but the beads were too perfect and modern looking; and to be honest, the more I look at the grave finds, the more this necklace just looks plastic and garish to me: 

My most recent set of necklaces, in modern store-bought beads

It's an SCA-ism, I suppose, that the more huge and ostentatious you can make your Viking jewelry, the better.  The reality is that (based on grave finds) most of these bead necklaces ranged from 18-20 beads per person, and that the beads themselves ranged from 10-16mm each.  We have no idea how exactly women wore these bead strands - whether they were worn as a single strand or multiple strands, how many beads per strand, etc., because only the loose beads have been found - whatever material the beads were strung on has disintegrated with time.  Found beads are usually glass, although some of amber, jet, quartz crystal, and carnelian have been found as well.  These were understated jewelry pieces by SCA standards - not 30 pounds of rocks and glass to impress your friends.

My first  "festoon" necklace set with about 95% homemade beads

Here's what my new set looks like for the time being.  Beads are small-medium sized, with a couple of larger ones in the center of each strand, in shades of blue and green and yellow.  (There are also 4 glass beads that I didn't make included here as well, because I loved them and wanted to re-use them).  It's simpler and plainer; and the beads themselves are more in line with what I've seen from grave finds in color and shape and size.  

A couple of smaller points, because people have asked:  

This necklace is strung on #10 cotton crochet thread.  I forgot to wax it this time for strength, so we'll see how it holds up. (The last set did just fine). 

I have three raven pendants that I hang from my beads. Two of them are historical representations based on actual finds; the third is a modern pendant I received for my birthday many years ago. The use of metal pendants may or may not be period (it's probably not); but I love my ravens.  

I no longer incorporate metal beads into my design, now that I have enough glass beads to make up the entire piece.  I read somewhere that metal beads have been found in graves/a grave, but I can't find the source anymore, and I've also read that metal beads were NOT a thing, so for the time being I'm not including them unless I can find something definitive one way or the other.   

 

Glass bead on an iron mandrel, Gotland (photo from 

Gotland Visby Museum; via text and trowel) 

So, what's next? More beads! This is my first set of necklaces; I fully intend to keep going, to get better and learn how to do more patterns and styles.  I would like to make a better set of necklaces for myself, and I'd also like to make enough beads that I can start giving them away as presents and largesse.  

I want to write for pages and pages on Viking-age bead finds, and maybe I will someday (maybe I'll turn all this into an A&S project and write a huge paper one day), but for now, here are some of my favorite online places to go to read about Viking-age beads: 

• Dr. Matthew Delvaux's FANTASTIC blog about Viking-age glass beads and trade routes, called "text and trowel": https://textandtrowel.wordpress.com/ 
• A Wandering Elf's Viking bead research blog posts: http://awanderingelf.weebly.com/blog-my-journey/category/viking-bead-research 
• Viking Age Beads, by Elin Hreitharsdottir https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273133694_Viking_age_beads_from_Iceland 
• Perler fra vikingtiden (Beads of the Viking Age) by Megan Hickey https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8571/1/Megan%20Hickey%20MA%20Final%20Dissertation%202014.pdf

Regency: New Jewelry and A Repair

 Here's a beaded necklace set - necklace, bracelet, and earrings - that I made a couple of weeks ago.  This started out as just a bracelet, but I had LOTS of these teal beads, so it ended up being a whole set.  

The beads are plastic, and the chain and fittings are gold-colored brass.  

I'm planning on wearing my white Ikea Matilda dress for Halloween this year, with a teal ribbon and this teal jewelry, and a teal shawl I plan on ordering myself for my birthday.  However, the Matilda dress still needed some work:  it was about 3" too short! 

I needed to add a panel to the bottom of the dress, but I didn't have much fabric left.  I had to piece the panel together, which made the stripes not match up.  In order to draw the eye away from this - and hide the seam - I added a row of puffs to the bottom of the dress.  

It's period, it was easy and quick to do, and it camoflages the added panel very well.  

Now the dress is finally ready to wear! 

Playing With Fire

Guess what I did last night?  I attended our local Flameworks Guild and learned how to make lampwork glass beads!  It was a lot more challenging than I expected it to be, and a little bit scary, having fire and molten glass so close to my face;  but I'm definitely hooked, and I can't wait til next time.  Here are the beads I made last night:

Aren't they ridiculous?  I guess they're not too terrible, for a first try.  I may actually add the two burgundy/purple ones to my Viking necklaces.  I actually don't like orange much, but the glass was free, and it was my first time - these are just first tries, they don't have to be fancy and wonderful (my skills so far don't remotely support fancy and wonderful anyway).  Next time - in January - I'll bring a few supplies of my own, including some blue glass, so that I can work on something that will go with my existing necklaces and my wardrobe.

Yay!  I can't wait to do this again!

Jewelry Redo

I re-strung my Viking beads over the weekend. Nothing fancy happened, but I made these changes:

•  I removed the wood beads and the "rockier" stone beads (jasper, agate)

•  I added more red glass beads and some clear ones

•  Tried to keep only glass beads and glass look-alikes (like clear green fluorite)

•  I graduated the beads so that the larger beads are in the center of each necklace and the smaller beads are towards the ends

•  Instead of making one big necklace loop which is looped around my brooches, I made two distinct necklaces and affixed them to a pair of metal hoops which hang from my brooches like distributors.



Here's what it looked like before, when it was one big necklace:

BEFORE

And here's what it looks like now, with the hoop distributors:  

AFTER 

The necklace hangs longer, and the two strands lie more smoothly this way.  I can also clip my little raven pendant off to one side instead of hanging it from the necklace itself.  Not shown is a small pair of scissors and a large needle charm I put on a chain to hang from one of my brooches as well.  

In the future I'd really like to bring in more cobalt blue glass, and more lampwork beads.  In December I'll be attending my very first Flameworks Guild meeting, where I'll learn to make my very own glass lampwork beads!  I'm so excited.  I'm hoping to come away from that class with enough [blue] beads to replace the metal spacer beads I'm still using, but we'll see.  

What's Next? 

Yea, and a case to put it into...

Viking Bead Jewelry

This is my Viking jewelry as it was in February at Candlemas:

There's so much wrong with this picture;  but we won't go into that right now.  See the red beaded string with the modern silver raven pendant on it?  I ADORE that pendant, and I don't care how modern it is, it will always be a part of my Viking wardrobe.  I love ravens, and I have little blue Viking ravens embroidered on three pieces of clothing, and a big knotwork raven tattoo'd on my back.  My ravens stay with me.

Those red beads, on the other hand, are too smooth and uniform to pass with Viking jewelry.   The other night I made a small string of random beads - wood, glass, carnelian, and quartz; just whatever I had on hand - and hung my raven pendant from it.  It goes with my boob necklace better, and goes with the color schemes I usually wear when I wear Viking:

Incidentally, you should check out this blog.  It's a research blog, to complement the research the author is doing into Viking beads and ancient settlements.  It's fantastic,  scholarly and clearly-written, and the pictures are really large and clear. I learned so much about Viking beads reading through the whole thing.  My one regret, after reading it, is that I don't have any cobalt blue beads or any fancy glass ones.  That can be fixed!

Anyway, this was just a little last-minute project I did because I'm impatient for this weekend.  See you on the flip side!

I Came, I Saw, I Made My Own (II)

I have a bit of a Thing about pomegranates. I always have, and when I joined the SCA, I made the pomegranate my symbol.  It's on my heraldry, many of my personal items that I've made, like boxes and bags, and in a lot of my jewelry, too, in every way I can get it.

So when I saw this on Pinterest, I HAD TO HAVE IT:

22 carat, hollow beads with a pomegranate pendant
Persia, 500BC

It's far earlier than SCA-period; but it's still GORGEOUS.  And people have always loved antiques and ancient things, so, I'm going with it. ;) 

While I do a lot of beading and wire work, I have zero experience with casting jewelry - and no materials which which to do so.  But I've been meaning lately to learn to work with modeling clay, and I figured beads MUST be easy, and probably a decent starter project.  They were a wee bit more challenging that I thought, mostly having to do with getting the holes right, but they came out pretty well: 

I formed them around some sort of knitting tool (it was in a starter kit I was given once, but I never learned to knit, and I have no clue what it's supposed to be).  It sure made a great bead mandrel, though. It might be just as useful for knitting, but for now it's the first tool in my clay kit, hehe. 

About a third of the beads I made came apart when I tried to push a needle through them the first time.  I ended up making a second round of beads, and a bunch extra - and it's a good thing, too, because while stringing them up I realized that the first round was really not nearly as many as I needed!

After all were done and baked, I spray-painted them gold, and strung them on a length of embroidery floss.  I ended up spacing them out with green glass beads, because my clay beads weren't as pointed as the ones in the inspiration pic, and it looked weird having them all butted up against one another.

YAY!  I LOVE the way this came out! 

Here's the necklace on my dress dummy (Violet, who is in serious need of re-adustment, but we'll get to that in another post), along with a red...secret project...that I'll start discussing some time next week.

Stay tuned!


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Hippies With Tattoos Like Historical Recreation, Too

Once upon a time, many pious folks carried with them a rosary, or paternoster (lit. "our father") to assist them in their daily prayers.  Much like the Buddhist japa mala, the idea was that passing the beads through your fingers helps you keep track of how many prayers have been said/have yet to be said.  The mala is made with beads in multiples of 108; a paternoster usually in 10s or 50s.

(the priest standing behind the seated Madgalene)

While I'm not so into role-playing in the SCA that I need to assign my persona a religious affiliation, I DO like:

• making jewelry, and
• shiny things, and 
• keys

I also happened to have a quantity of large, pink, freshwater pearls, as well as some metal pieces I've been meaning to use for something pretty (I cleaned up my jewelry-making supplies and organized them all more efficiently recently, and I came across lots of things that gave me ideas).

I also really love the look of pretty things hanging from my belt.  I have a number of purses now, a cigarette case (and I no longer smoke, but I can keep other small items in it), and my search for the perfect belt hanger is ongoing.  I wanted something shiny.

Ta-da.   I like it.


The chain at the top will loop around my belt.  Period paternosters would simply end in a bead or finial of some kind and be carried in a pocket or simply tucked into a belt; but I'm not willing to risk this thing falling out of my belt and getting lost at an event.

(And if I decide I don't want the chain, it's easily removed.  Tbh, I'm still not sure I won't go back and close the loop, making this a circle with a key hanging from it).

The key at the end is just a little pewter thing from the craft store - I picked up a pack of them once for another project.  I love old keys.  I have a lovely iron one which I would have used instead, but I lost it several months ago.  :(

Thank goodness for bead reamers. I used up the best of this strand of pearls on a necklace a while ago; what was left had holes too small for the wires to go through, so I can to enlarge every single one.  Bo-ring.

For those who would ask, my "paternoster" IS actually a mala in disguise (12 beads, counting the key at the end).  Not that I get much meditating done while at SCA events, hehe, but it's meaningful to me, and while it's not 100% period, it enhances the overall costume.

Peace, y'all.










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Progress!

A

Remember the little painted black box?  I'm doing a much larger version - a 24" six-panel wooden chest.  The box itself is nearly finished, and painted; now I'm working on the box top:

(part of the upper right corner)  

B

I've also decided I need a Tudor corset.  I don't have a pattern, and I don't feel like drafting one from scratch, so I'm drafting one from an old renfest corset that still [mostly] fits me.  The first part was getting it on and laced up, and then marked with a chalk pencil where I'll be making shape and sizing adjustments:

C

And just for fun (because I'm still in the process of re-organizing my sewing and craft/art rooms, and because I had to re-organize my jewelry supplies into better containers and had the beads out anyway), I made a little necklace to wear with...whatever!  To me it says "rubies and pomegranate arils", even though it's just glass and tiny tumbled garnets.

More soon.

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Blue Velvet Gown

Success!  Drumroll, please...

Drrdrrdrrdrrdrrdrrdrrdrrrrrr....

Clockwise from top left:  15th/early 16th "transitional";  "Miranda" by JE
Millais;  color scheme inspiration; excerpt from the Lady &  Unicorn tapestries

....drrdrrdrrrrrr....

Yay!    *SpArKLE*

I have no pics of me IN the dress yet, because I'm still getting together the rest of the outfit - hair, accessories, under-bits.  I have it all in my head, but I haven't done a major test-run yet.


I'll definitely have pics after Saturday though; and it's entirely likely I'll also have video of me performing for Bardic, and/or performing in the dance that opens the feast! EEP!

Front opening with hidden lacings behind a lightly-boned placket to keep the lines straight. The neckline cuts deep on the sides, and has a steep point up the center.  I opted to omit a lining in the bodice this time, since this fabric, though comfy, is still pretty sturdy and thick, and didn't require it for fit or for look.

The skirt of the dress is split on the right side, and drapes up to the left hip where it's secured there by a brooch...of which I have no pics. Yet.

The skirt I'm going to be wearing underneath this is an ocean-blue silk - it's actually something that I've had for years, that just happens to be perfect with this dress. Yay!

Back neckline, slightly V-shaped, embroidery enlarged and graduated just a bit to accentuate the dip.

One of my favorite things about this dress?  It was crazy cheap to make:

• 2 Ikea curtain panels, clearance $10/ea
• "silver" (plastic) and "pearl" buttons: $4/dozen
• green silk suit lining, clearance $2
• glittering and glowing in the candlelight at my favorite event: PRICELESS

Yup. The whole thing cost me about $26.  ^_^

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