Overview of the Beadwork I have done thus far in 2009

This Video slideshow contains photos of the jewelry as well as the prayer beads I have made in 2009 thus far.

Somethingelse Studio and Boutique!

Jannelle Olmstead is a customer of ours who makes such great bags I want to share her work with you all, its just wonderful! Her business is called Somethingelse Boutique! Jeweled Pockets and Fancy Crowns by Jannelle. All these accessories are her own copyrighted designs inspired by historical medieval & renaissance items, yet given to her interpretation and imagination (SO PLEASE BE CONSIDERATE and do not steal her original designs). They are all handcrafted by Jannelle and are solidly constructed for years of use. The fabrics are of the finest quality and no adornment is ever pasted on. Many of these focal pieces are hand-made from other craftspeople in metals, stone, ceramics, horn or wood. She hand wraps all the jeweled dangles and adornments with quality beads and gemstones making these jeweled bags. Every item is unique so they will all have a special individual enchantment. All her hand-painted pockets are original paintings on canvas. All are from her own drawings/designs, except for the Celtic Knots, and all are done by hand by Jannelle. To visit her website:
http://www.somethingelsestudio.com/

Shows!


The Sterling Renaissance Festival, Sterling, NY. Find us in Merchants Bend. July 4th - August 16th. 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

(NEW) The Maryland Renaissance Festival - Crownsville, MD. Find us in Valley Meade. August 29 - October 25th. 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Jannelle Olmstead
SomeThing Else Design Studio
497 W. Foster Street
Palmyra, NY 14522
1-877-360-2774




jannelle@somethingelsestudio.com

Pentecost Beads

Red Carnelian stone beads with Sterling Silver, Celtic Beads and dove for Pentecost.


Folklore suggests that carnelian was used protect the traveler after death and guard against evil. Carnelian's healing properties are thought to help purify the blood, relieve menstrual cramps and back pain. It is also thought to be beneficial in the treatment of infertility and is worn to enhance passion and desire.

Pictish Style Garnet Necklace

I made this today and matching garnet earrings.

A better photo of the Garnet Prayer Beads.

This set of prayer beads I made for my husband. I made this using a small bronze Celtic Cross, and large, natural garnet beads. The Skull bead is made of Crystal quartz and I used small , brass, African trade beads as accents. It is strung on red hemp beading twine.

Agate Bracelet

This is a bracelet I made from large Botswana Agate beads. You can buy these chunky bracelets places but I had to make mine because I have such a wide wrist. Ever since I was a child bracelets have always been too small. I end up adding links to the chain bracelets to make them work.

The old English word bede or bead

The old English word bede (Anglo-Saxon bed ) means a prayer, though the derivative form, gebed , was more common in this sense in Anglo-Saxon literature. When, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the use of little perforated globes of bone, wood, or amber, threaded upon a string, came into fashion for the purpose of counting the repetitions of the Our Father or Hail Mary, these objects themselves became known as bedes (i.e. prayers ), and our modern word bead , as applied to small globular ornaments of glass, coral, etc., has no other derivation. In middle English the word bedes was used both in the sense of prayer and rosary. Thus Shakespeare could still write (Rich. III, iii, 7)
When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads [prayers ], 'tis much to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation.

While of Chaucer's Prioress we are told
Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene.

The gauds, or gaudys, were the ornaments or larger beads used to divide the decades. The phrase pair of beads (i.e. set of beads — cf. pair of stairs), which may still be heard on the lips of old-fashioned English and Irish Catholics, is consequently of venerable antiquity. With such speakers a pair of beads means the round of the beads, i.e. the chaplet of five decades, as opposed to the whole rosary of fifteen. Again, to "bid beads " originally meant only to say prayers, but the phrase "bidding the beads ", by a series of misconceptions explained in the "Historical English Dictionary", came to be attached to certain public devotions analogous to the prayers which precede the kissing of the Cross in the Good Friday Service. The prayers referred to used to be recited in the vernacular at the Sunday Mass in medieval England, and the distinctive feature of them was that the subject of each was announced in a formula read to the congregation beforehand. This was called "bidding the bedes". From this the idea was derived that the word "bidding" meant commanding or giving out, and hence a certain survival of these prayers, still retained in the Anglican "Book of Canons", and recited before the sermon, is known as the "bidding prayer ".

The words bedesman and bedeswoman , which date back to Anglo-Saxon times, also recall the original meaning of the word. Bedesman was at first the term applied to one whose duty it was to pray for others, and thus it sometimes denoted the chaplain of a guild. But in later English a bedesman is simply the recipient of any form of bounty; for example, a poor man who obtains free quarters in an almshouse, and who is supposed to be bound in gratitude to pray for his benefactors. Similarly, bedehouse , which originally meant a place of prayer or an oratory, came at a later date to be used of any charitable institution like an almshouse. It has now practically disappeared from literary English, but survives provincially and in a number of Welsh place-names in the form bettws , e.g. Bettws y Coed. Finally, bede-roll , as its etymology suggests, meant the roll of those to be prayed for, and in some sense corresponded to the diptychs of the early Church. The word is of tolerably frequent occurrence in connection with the early English guilds. In these associations a list was invariably kept of departed members who had a claim on their prayers. This was the bede-roll.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02383b.htm