Pendant quick fix.

I made the necklace in the 1st photo a while ago & have to admit it's sooo boring. So today I thought I would give it a bit of a make-over, a couple of peyote strips & a starflower from Diane Fitzgeralds Beaded Garden book & it's much nicer. Quick, easy & economical, three of my favourite things!

Nice necklace, shame about the picture

I have to admit that I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the quality of my pictures. This necklace is very pretty irl & the pic makes it look a bit blah. I guess I need to take some time to really practise & get a decent set up but the free time I have I want to actually bead. Oh well, can't have it both ways. Have a great bank holiday weekend!

Red & Gold Collar.

I made this for a challenge on the UK Beaders Forum. It had to be completed by this w/e & I started it late Thursday night, remind me never to do that again. I am quite pleased but it's not quite what I wanted, I had intended to do extra layers of netting but it was just too much work. I have wanted a collar for ages though & now I finally have one.

Herringbone bracelet & huge earrings.

I have mostly been mucking about with herringbone this week, here is a finished bracelet & the earrings are this week's YOJ entry.

Quick & Simple Peyote Bracelet.

I made this quick & easy bracelet yesterday. The pattern is by Julie Walker & it's in Beadwork Aug/Sep 06. I took tons of photo's but this was the best I could do. I really need to take a course or something.

Shark Fin Earrings

I learnt circular peyote last week so I did not really concentrate on planning a design for week 17 YOJ project, but at about 8.00pm last night it hit me, circles with a 'fin' on one side. I used these colours to coordinate with a favourite shirt but I am thinking they'd look good in clashing bright also.

Apart from these wire wrap clip on's I haven't completed much this week, I am learning circular peyote stitch, which I picked up ok but is a little slow at the moment, kind of fun, hopefully I will have a finished project soon. Of course I should not be faffing about with a new stitch because I should be either working on my week 17 year of jewellery piece which is due tomorrow & I have no clue what I am going to do, or I should be making 2 other spiral rope bracelets as I made a personal committment to make a series of five within 1 month, I guess I still have 2 weeks though. Oh & I have a few birthday presents to make & I wanted to make something to send off for the Bead Magazine Gallery. I need a to do list!

Herringbone Twist Finally Done!

I seriously thought this necklace would never be finished! I am so slow at this stitch. The pendant started out as a medallion from Suzanne Coopers Victorian & Variations, I peyoted around it for 3 rows than added two rows of netting, increasing the no of beads in the 2nd row to create a frill (which doesn't really show on the pic).

Sarah

Spiral 2 - the spicy version.

I've decided to do a series of spiral rope bracelets, experimenting with colour & texture. Here is number 2, very unusual colour choices from me but I really love it! I used miyuki 11's and a colour mix from The Bead Merchant size 6 I think. I like the contrast of the plainer rope in between the mix versions. In other beady news, I actually picked up the slowest necklace in the universe and dd another couple of inches, yippee!

The 2 hour bracelet

I have been stuck in a bit of a rut with my seed beads lately, my colour combo for a planned beaded bead necklace was not working for me & the herringbone twist necklace I am making in brown & turquoise is so slow it's sending me to sleep. So last night I pulled out a couple of tubes & decided to make a nice simple spiral bracelet. I used silver-lined crystal 11's & colour lined purple triangles with some easy wrapped beads using swarovski pearls as a base. I am really happy with it, the simple colour combo is very striking and the focal beads add a nice touch I think.

Week 15 of YOJ - Earrings

Copper & sterling silver earrings with swarovski bicones. I made the earwires myself! I am very proud!

Technical issues

I am having problems uploading pics to my pc. This is particularly annoying since I was actually intending to be a good blogger & write a post about our day out today. I even took photos as we went along, how very organised of me! Oh well, soon hopefully.

Some Spiral Ropes

Someone on a forum I frequent asked what our favourite stitches were. I decided on spiral rope because it is super quick, easy & can be varied to create a lot of different looks. Here are a few of the spiral ropes I have made. A necklace in silver lined aqua and lilac with a murano glass bead & some swarovski crystals, a chunky red rope using s/l red ab 11's & 4mm miyuki cubes, a bracelet using a mix of accent beads & a necklace in teals using alternating sets of outer beads which include triangles & size 11's, I also used easy beaded beads in this one & finished with a tassel.

Sunday's show & tell.

This week I have mostly been surfing the web after discovering Craft magazines blog http://www.craftzine.com/blog/ , it's rapidly become a favourite of mine, but be warned, you could lose hours at a time on this one. I did manage to make some stuff as you can see, a simple s link necklace using copper wire & tigers eye & some super quick earrings , the 1st are laborodite & swarovski, the second are a mix of Czech glass. I have also been making an i-pod cozy from the tutorial here http://craftydaisies.com/category/tutorials/ , scroll down, it's right at the bottom of the page. I haven't done any sewing in about 6/7 years but this is coming out quite well, it would be finished if I hadn't sewn one of the snaps on wrong, grrrr! It's a great tute tho' & the blog is well worth a read, beautiful crafts!

Woven bracelet.

I finally got my issue of the April Bead & Button last Wednesday. It was a good issue, there were quite a lot of projects that I really liked, sometimes it's just 1 or 2. This bracelet caught my eye & I just had to make one. The base is peyote stitch with a netted embellishment.

Sarah.

Birthday gift

I made this for a friends birthday & I am happy to say she loved it. It's a simple spiral rope with a petite flower pendant from Bead & Button (can't find the issue ). The colour combination really stands out irl & works well with the simplicity.

2 Beaded Rings

We took the little boy to our local library yesterday. I just happened to find myself near the craft section & found some beading books, funny that, eh? One of them was Beautiful Beaded Rings, I had hoped to find it as I knew someone who had it already & liked it. I really liked the book, some of the rings are similar styles to ones in some Japanese beading books I have, but others used techniques that were new to me, which I hope to try this week, watch this space. I made these two rings yesterday, they took about 30 minutes each & used up leftovers of beads from other projects. I am very pleased with them both, especially the blue & green one, it's absolutely huge!

Still can't find the camera.

Here is a piece that I did in class a few years ago. The teacher was a lady called Kaye Edwards. I've taken two classes with her & enjoyed them both, she does lovely work.

I got the latest Step by Step Beads yesterday, I am trying to decide whether to cancel my order with the newsagent or not, for the last few months I haven't really found it that useful, although if I ever decide to take up polymer clay it would come in useful, they have great poly clay projects, but not much seed bead stuff & I guess they leave the wire work to Step by Step Wire.

The only project I may do is the love knot bracelet, I have never tried to do tubular raw before & this looks like nice simple & wearable piece to start out with.

Where's the flippin camera?

The little boy's in bed, the sun is shining, I actually cleaned the kitchen so I thought I would slack off housework & take some photo's but I can't find the camera, it's not where it should be which means dh has moved it, grrr! I hate it when he moves my stuff! I would normally react to this in a suitably snotty way with an irate phone call screeching the above question, but he is in Canary Wharf at a meeting so stroppy phone calls are out of the question, bleurgh! I will stamp my feet twice instead. Childish, who me?

One of my goals this year is to make more of the blog, I haven't really put much time into it up till now & that's a shame. The fact that I got a comment from someone was really exciting & made me realise that it would be worth putting in a bit of an effort. So instead of stropping off & doing something else when I couldn't find the camera, I dug through some old photo's & came up with this bronze seed bead woven collar.

I made it as a leaving gift for a girl at work last year, the base is a simple 2 drop peyote, I added swags & drops & then edged it. I used metallic bronze & galvanised gold seed beads & topaz swarovski crystals. I was pleased with it because I did not follow a pattern & it actually came out looking like I wanted it too, always a bonus. She was really pleased with it too!

Right, I'm off to look for that camera again.

Bead Fair Loot, recent wirework & an old favourite.

I haven't posted for a while but am posting today to celebrate the fact that I got my 1st ever comment (well I had 1 already but that was a friend so it doesn't count). I was very excited! So I thought I'd better get posting again.

In January I went to the Chepstow Gem 'n' Bead Fair with some friends. To be honest I wasn't expecting much because it was the 1st one to be held, but I was pleasantly surprised, they were quite a lot of vendors there, mostly semi-precious out of my price range, but as you can see I managed to buy something. A few of the places I bought from were Richmond Rocks (Laborodite, Garnet & Peruvian Opal), Crystals 4 Less (I especially loved the ABx2 finish, it changes the colour so much) & GJ Beads, some nice seed beads & a lovely shell pendant). It was a lot of fun, most of the vendors were really friendly and helpful, although there was one who was a bit snotty, still her loss 'cos there was no way I'd ever buy anything from her. If they are running the event again, I will definitely go next year but I will take a lot more money!

The copper necklace is the one that I wore to the fair, it is one of my favourite pieces to wear, it is comfortable & I love the copper/dark amethyst colour combo, the earrinmgs are the 1st thing I made using my new beads from the fair, I have made other things since but haven't had chance to take photo's, will try to do so soon.

I came across this lariat today, I had almost forgotten it, don't know how since it took flippin' ages to make but it was about 5/6 years ago, the rope is graduated spiral rope, instructions are here http://www.rubysbeadwork.com/SpiralTutorial.html, the Russian leaves are from an old Bead and Button & the iris is here http://beadwork.about.com/library/weekly/aa081798.htm.

Sarah.