Did you find the face yet?

Today we welcome innovative designer, prolific author and charming instructor Nealay Patel. Nealay is an artist who crafts in beads and fiber to produce jewelry designs that are striking, colorful and textured. He is a problem-solver who sees his designs as solving a puzzle. His intricate jewelry is always highly textural and full of life, using a mix of metal and fiber and beads and wire. He has authored three books: Jewelry for the New Romantic, Jewelry Designs with Knitted Wire, and his most recent, Jewelry Made with Wire & Fiber. Recently, Nealay has started doing monthly Live Facebook videos (so much fun!) featuring a kit that he sells on his Etsy site to go with it. It is called Beads & Bubbles, because there is always a glass of champagne at the ready! Nealay was kind enough to share an earring project with us from his new book.

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Picasso Earrings

Wire is something that I’m very uncomfortable working with, but that won’t really stop me. In fact, it fuels me to try harder to try to find new ways to use it, where if I screw it up, it’s okay!

I would hardly call anything of Picasso a screw up. He found ways to reinterpret what was considered normal or standard at the time. This lead me to think how wire can interact with another material to create something with interest and movement.

So, I started with a scrap of flat fiber cord and looked at it for a long time, thinking “how I can apply wire to it?” I thought the pattern on the fiber cord was gorgeous and didn’t want to cover it up.

So, after twisting and turning the wire I placed in on my table over the fiber cord by accident and took another look. There an idea was born! So after tweaking the design format a little bit, I came up with some Picasso art of my own!

This pattern is available in my book Jewelry Made with Wire & Fiber, available on Amazon.

Nealay is inviting you to come and join him at his Facebook page where he says all the action is happening!

@beadsandbubbles