wrap bracelet

I made this wrap bracelet ages and ages ago and was waiting to post about it until I've sewn a button on for the closure.  Well, I'm not convinced that is ever going to happen, so I'll post about it and hope it will spur me on to doing it!

I used 2 pieces of 1mm satin cord (rattail) for the sides and just weaved over and under and through the Swarovski pearls in the centre.

I used two needles, one on the left and one on the right, so it was pretty quick to do.  It wraps twice round my arm.

yuck, how gross is my arm!  My skin is all either that lovely shade of red, or milk-bottle white. No tans round here...

My original idea for the closure was a woven knot.  I chose Turk's Head ring from Celtic Knots Beaded Jewellery by Suzen Millodot.  It took me hours!

It's less than an inch small so it's too small to use as the closure.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it though as it did take me hours to make!  I could bead embroider round it to make a pendent maybe...  and another WIP is born.

micro macrame bracelet

I still have some pieces of jewellery to show you but I haven't got round to writing posts, or, in some cases, even photographing them.  Photographing jewellery is a nightmare for me.  I usually use my little light box, but that was on the top floor and I was downstairs.  It was a sunnyish day so I thought I'd go outside.... just a shame my garden isn't picturesque.

I'll put it on the edge of the bunny run and take pictures there, that should work.

Oops, I got my garden trainers in the shot and they're FILTHY.  Let's try something a bit more artistic.

Hmmm, it's not really sitting right and if I show this picture everyone will know that my lone flowerbed only contains weeds.  Overgrown weeds.  And a patch of mud.  And straw and sawdust from the hutches.  And bunny poo.  Back to the run.

Oh no, now Harry's photobombed the shot!  As if anyone is going to look at my bracelet with Harry there.  He's so cute and sweet, I'll just spend a few minutes stroking him instead.  Right, Harry stroked.  Back to the photos.

Not only is there a bunny in this one, there's also my filthy trainers AND a torn up toilet roll tube (What would Sandra think?).  It's going to have to do.  I clearly can't take a better shot.

This micro macrame bracelet was made in a workshop at The Bead Shop Nottingham a little while ago.  It's made using C-lon cord in grey/silver, silver 8/0s and some faceted beads that might be 6mm.  Or might not.  I love this bracelet and wear it a lot.

Micro macrame

Micro macrame is basically little tiny macrame with beads.  Me and my wonderful mum went to another craft course at The Bead Shop Nottingham to find out what it was all about.

The piece is pinned to a macrame board whilst you're working on it, so I didn't realise what a mess it looked when I took it off!  We were supposed to use size 11/0 beads, but I just couldn't thread them onto the C-lon cord we were using, so swapped to size 8/0s.  If you're a beader, that gives you an idea of the scale.  If not...

This ruler is showing centimetres, so this piece is about 3" long, including the ring.  I do intend to finish this as I did enjoy it, but I just don't know where the time goes... 

I'm liking up to:

Something New for 2014

  

Craft book review Mini Eco

Good afternoon ladies, I hope you've all had/are having/will have a lovely Sunday.  I'm getting to the end of mine and wishing I didn't have to go to work tomorrow!  I did manage to pack plenty in though.

The lovely folk at Cicada books agreed to let me do a couple of craft book reviews for them, and today I have the first one for you.  I'll show you the book and then show you the project I made from it.  The book was provided to me free of charge so that I'd share a review with you, but I was not told what to say, all opinions are 100% my own.  The links are affiliate links, so if you click on them and then buy, I will get a few pence towards an Amazon voucher.

The book I'm going to review today is MiniEco: A Craft Book.

I was a bit worried when I got it.  I don't want to completely trash a book, but I do want to be honest and I wasn't sure this was my cup of tea.... I was wrong!

Projects are over a variety of media.  It opens with some paper projects including pop-up cards, origami and these fab fruit boxes.

image: Garry Maclennan 

There are also sewing projects such as a funky triangular cushion and a toy snake.

                                                           image: Garry Maclennan 

Other projects covered include signs made of Lego, a space invaders Pinata that no boy (or man) would sneer at, pots and earrings made from Hama beads and a section on macrame. 

                                                           image: Garry Maclennan 

I decided to tackle the geometric beads first.  This is what the project in the book looks like:

 image: Garry Maclennan 

Now, I couldn't find any wooden beads this big, nor did I correctly read the supplies list before buying some round wooden beads at the Bead Shop, I should have bought cubes.  No matter, the project still works, it just has my own twist on it!

I started with the largest bead and attacked it with my Dremel and a sanding attachment.  You could of course do this by hand, but it's so quick with a Dremel.

Not so much geometric as abstract, but I love the effect!  I'd bought some coloured beads too.  I knew they were either painted or dyed so I had to keep the sanding shallow.  If I attempted something like the bead above, I'd lose all the colour.

The dye on the purple beads seemed to be a lot thickr than on the blue beads.  As you can see, I was able to sand bigger areas and the colour still showed, albeit lighter.  With the blue ones, it was easy to go down to the wood.

Wondering what's going on between the beads?  I also had a go at the macrame section in the book, I tried the twisted square stitch and it works great.  I used my macrame board and my Kumihimo bobbins - great investments, both of them.

So what did I make?  I was going for one of the bracelets in the book, but didn't like my first choice of cord, so made beaded "dangles" instead.  OK, they won't catch the light, but they look nice hanging from my window.  The photo is upside down in case you're wondering!

If you want to buy MiniEco: A Craft Book you can get it on Amazon, and probably a lot of other places too!  I'd love to know what you think.

somebody take the Kumihimo disk off me...

Yes, yes, I know, but it's fun!  And so satisfyingly quick...

This is a 12-strand spiral using purple and black 1mm rattail.  I followed the tutorial over at Dream A Little Bigger.

Next I wanted a bracelet that went round my wrist twice.  Again using 1mm rattail, this time in red, silver and white.  You can't tell the white and silver apart, not a good colour choice.  I used the colour placement tutorial at Dream A Little Bigger for this one.

Finally, I made a black and silver 1mm rattail braid that will go round my wrist 3 times.  I made all these braids last week and just can't be arsed to glue the end caps on.  It's a little job, doesn't take long... why am I so lazy?

kumihimo

I've been braceleting again.  I can't seem to help myself.  Over the past few months, I've accidentally bought 3 Kumihimo disks.  I did mean to buy one, but not 3.  First I accidentally bought a square one when I wanted a round one.  Then I bought a round one and forgot about it.  So bought another.  It was time they were used.

With one of the disks I'd bought some rattail, but wanted to try it with cord first as I seem to have a lot of cord.  This is a simple 8 warp weave.  The colour placement  is random, it's going to take some experiments and taking notes for me to figure out how the placement of the first 8 warps affects the final colour.

These whip up really fast.  It's long enough for a bracelet, but I don't have the Kumihimo ends that I need to finish it off.

At the top of the picture is the 8-warp weave, the lower one is a 16-warp weave.  It wasn't really that tricky, once you get the rythme it's fine.  I miscalculated.  You start with cords that are 3x the length you want it to be.  I measured my wrist at 6 inches, so cut 20 inches.  Except I didn't, I cut 20 cm!!  Ah well, it's a bit too chunky for a bracelet anyway and was good practice.

See how pretty they are close up?

This was made with just 2 colours.  I love the spiral pattern and just wish I'd made a note of where the colours started on the disk!  I really need to keep a notebook to hand...

This is also in my favourite colours.

Now, Kumihimo wasn't on THE list, but it was on the secondary list.  So it's not a WIP crossed off, but almost!

I've since played with the square disk... I must remember to take some photos...

Joining in with New to Me in 2013 at Fiona's blog.

Shamballa

I'm having a bit of a bracelety week.  It all started when I decided it was about time I made the Shamballa bracelet I've been promising my friend for donkey's years.  I had to look up the instructions as I'd forgotten how to do it.  It took all of about 15 minutes - why do we put off the things that don't take long to do?

She chose the baby pink Shamballa beads, not my style!

When I'd finished that, I thought I'd make one for myself with some chunky clear beads lined with copper.  Black seemed to be the only choice of cord.

I like the way this looks better than the Shamballa beads.  I used 6 knots between each bead, the same as for the pink bracelet.

A final attempt was called for.  I had some wooden beads in the colours of the rainbow and I went for white cord this time.  As the beads were quite big, I only did 4 knots between each one.

I'm undecided as to how much I like this one.  I like the colours but I think the beads might be too big.  I'll probably wear it a few times and see how I feel about it.

More braceleting to come this week...

Not tonight Josephine...

Not last weekend, but the weekend before, I went to a jewellery class.  I bet you can't guess where?  Yep, that's right the Bead Shop Nottingham.  Their classes are fab though, so you can't blame me.

It was another macrame class, this time learning the Josephine knot, which has several other names that I've forgotten! 

We used a lovely silky cord for this one.  I spent ages getting all my knots nice and straight and butting up together nicely.  Then I put it on and it stretched slightly and suddenly there were gaps between the knots!! 

I think if you want the knots to all butt up nicely, you have to do the knots really, really tightly to begin with.  Or glue them.

I really do like it though, even with the gaps.

craft class

No, I can't do it.  I'm trying, but I just can't think of even a vaguely interesting title for this post.  Craft class it is.  I don't know if any of you noticed, but I was absent from the online world this weekend.  I got sent home early on Friday (just a little early) as I'm one of the ones that commutes to work, and so I thought I'd catch up on my blog reading and prepare a few posts.  No broadband.  I called our provider and he started asking me all kinds of techy questions that I couldn't even understand, let alone answer.  I passed the phone to Mr CA.  He's even less techy than me but does have more patience and wasn't shouting at the poor man after five minutes like I was!  The upshot?  No broadband.  I'm waiting for an engineer to call.  I actually didn't think I'd survive the weekend and was planning on going over the parents' to cadge some free wifi, but 2 migraines, one each day, put paid to that!

So, that was Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but what about Thursday?  Vigilant readers may remember that I was due to go to a beading class at The Bead Shop, Nottingham.  It was actually a double whammy as there was a knotting class in the afternoon. 

The morning session was working with tila beads, which are beads with two holes.  Follow that link if you want to see what they look like.  We started with a Swarovski crystal cabouchon and made a bevel to go around it using the Tila beads, seed beads and Swarovski crystals. 

My apologies for the appalling photos.  We had no sunlight at all this weekend and it's very hard to take photos of crystals!

The crystal is actually clear AB (i.e. shiny!), not yellow as it looks in this photo.  Creating the bezel setting for the crystal was hard and took us a couple of hours.  Doing the zig zag chain was much easier.

That's the back, I'm not sure why I thought you might like to see a photo of the back!  My poor mum had beaded her chain completely when she realised she'd got the pattern wrong so it didn't zig zag.  She didn't mind too much, but when she put the calotte on the end to hold the knotted beading thread, it slipped off and the knot came undone and all her beading came off!

Wow, that's a particularly bad photo!  Terrible light, bad background and blurry too!

The afternoon session was macrame, using the underwriter's knot with beads to create a bracelet.

I didn't actually finish my bracelet as I don't like the colour combination and the knotting is too messy.  I spent some time practicing the knot afterwards, I really should have done that before.

I started on the left and you can actually see the improvement along the length.  I must have another go at this and create a bracelet, but one I'd be pleased to wear rather than a child's effort!

Disco balls

Just before Christmas I went to yet another jewellery workshop with my wonderful mum at The Bead Shop Nottingham.  This time it was Shamballa style bracelets.

The basic technique is macrame using the square knot.  It's really simple once you get started and I whipped this up pretty fast.  I chose a selection of bead colours, including my favourite blue.

We used the square knot to make the simple closure too, you just pull on each end to tighten the bracelet.  We were supposed to knot the ends and glue them shut, but I brought mine home so I could add on a small bead before knotting.  Needless to say it hasn't happened yet!

These babies are expensive to make at £1.50 per bead, but I bought some different beads to use to make more, keeping the costs much more realistic and making them a bit more unique.  I will show you as and when I get them done.