Beads everywhere!!

Kheops beads are small triangular beads with two holes, one either side of the point.  The jury is out as to how to pronounce the word!  Back in February we went to a beadweaving class at The Bead Shop Nottingham to make a design called Kheops windmill.

I love to use colour so have very few neutral necklaces, other than silver pendents.  For this necklace I chose dark grey and light silver Kheops, silver size 11/0 seed beads and Scabacious green Swarovski crystals.  The colours in both these photos are really off!

It was quite a quick pattern to weave and I would have finished it in class if disaster hadn't struck.  I had a bead stopper on one end of the necklace, but not on the other.  I held it up to my neck to see if it needed to be longer or shorter and dropped the other strand.  Beads everywhere!!  I rescued the crystals and weaved it again.  This time I didn't drop it and put calottes on both ends.  Then I went to put it on and one of the calottes fell off.  Beads everywhere!!  I haven't had the heart to mend it yet...

Cloud with a silver lining

I'm getting towards the end of my first term of silversmithing and I haven't had much to show!  Piercing out shapes is quite quick, soldering is quite quick, but filing, sanding and polishing is not!

This is the second piece I've made.  I hammered a sheet of 1mm silver with the round end of a hammer to create a nice texture, then I pierced out a cloud shape.  I'm afraid my photos aren't great.  The top one shows the colours well, but the second one shows the texture which I just couldn't capture before.

Nor did I think to take a photo of the back! I've soldered a little arch on the back, the chain is threaded through the arch.  I drilled 3 holes at the bottom.  I then made my own headpins by heating the end of a piece of wire in a torch flame until it balled up.  I added a crystal and and wrap-looped them onto the cloud.

I am VERY proud of this piece and I'm pleased to say that I've had quite a few compliments whilst wearing it!

I'm currently working on a bracelet and hope to have that finished to show you soon.  I've signed up for the next term which begins in April.

Beadweaving stars

Wonderful mum tracked down another source of craft classes for us.  There is a local textile group called Living Threads who run a series of workshops which non-members are invited to attend.  There are various textile and embroidery classes and also some bead weaving ones.  We're booked on to some of the embroidery ones later in the spring.

Our first class with this group was a bead weaving class with Patti McCourt,  we attended a class that she ran at the Bead Shop last year.

Patti had made up a load of kits for us, so we just had to choose the colour scheme.  The one I chose was mint, aqua, copper and red.  Not a colour palette I would have put together myself, but wow, does it work!

The pattern uses pearls, twin beads and size 11/0 seed beads and I think it's a beautiful pattern.  I'm really pleased with the necklace that I made (and I did finish in the class!) and have worn it quite a lot.  

Craft Book Review - Seed Bead Chic

The generous publishers at GMC sent me another book to review.  Although the book was provided for free, all opinions are my own and I was not told what to write.  The book in question is Seed Bead Chic, which you can see on Amazon here.

This is a beautiful book full of gorgeous projects.  This is definitely not a book for the beginner, some of these projects are pretty complicated.  A few that caught my eye are:

This Art Deco brooch, I think I'll make this one at some point.

This tube necklace.  I had intended to make this, but didn't get round to searching for the tubular material it's strung onto.

This lovely summery piece which I may well make, but I'd probably make it in copper as I'm not a fan of yellow gold.

This lovely bracelet.  This is actually the project I chose to make, but I made it into a necklace.  See below for more details and pictures.

This is another one I intend to make at some point.  I don't like the giraffe print beads much so I need to find a nice alternative.

I decided to make the bejewelled barrel bracelet as a necklace.  It required 2mm Swarovski rounds (as do a lot of the projects in this book).  I did some searching on line and bought some from Mail Order Beads / The Bead Shop Nottingham, not out of loyalty but because they had the best price on Swarovski.  I paired them with white 15/0 seed beads and clear 11/0 seed beads.

The actual necklace is a copper herringbone tube which was really easy to do, though it took a while!  The barrels are stitching in place so they don't all clump together when wearing it, as I'm going to prove in the next photo.  Oh yes, a photo of me.  In fact, my very first selfie!

I love this necklace and have worn it a lot.  The instructions were really clear and very easy to follow, I didn't have any false starts or any moments of "eh?  What does that mean".  Though remember, I do have some experience bead weaving so can't vouch that a beginner would be able to follow the instructions.  The weaves themselves are set out at the beginning of the book with easy to follow diagrams and written instructions.  Overall, I like this book and think it's a great addition to the library of intermediate to advanced bead weavers.

Let's finish off with another selfie:

Product details Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: Lark Books,U.S. (7 Dec. 2014) Language: English ISBN-10: 1454708174 ISBN-13: 978-1454708179 Product Dimensions: 28.2 x 21.6 x 0.9 cm Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

Finishing off

In a previous post I mentioned a box of jewellery WIPs I have lying around.  Back in the autumn I started to tackle them, and some other WIPs lying around.  It was slow progress!

I made some silver links and a silver heart in the silversmithing class Mr CA and I took in September.  See here.  I finally got round to adding some chain and a little porcelain bunny to one of them.  They are designed to wrap round the neck, then the part of chain with the dangle goes through the coil to hold it in place.  They don't really work and I need to rethink the design.  They fall off a lot when I wear them.

Also in September, wonderful mum and I went to a mosaic class, which you can read about here.  My tray needed finishing.  I'd bought a little pot of tester paint and over Christmas I set to work painting it.  Finally it is finished and in use!

In a ceramics class in August, wonderful mum and I made brooches.  She had hers all finished and ready to wear the day after the class.  Mine were ready in December!  You can see the original post here.

The second from the left isn't ceramics, that's a beaded cabochon I made for a blog hop back in June!

It was nice to get these pieces out of the box and into use.  I still have quite a lot of projects half-finished.  I need to get better at finishing!

another Kheops necklace

I see my last post was on the 28th October, so it looks like I totally forgot to blog this week!  My memory is getting worse by the day.  I wonder if I can remember any details about this necklace to tell you?

I remember I've made one before, and blogger backs me up - you can see it here.  This is the same pattern in different coloured beads.

The dark blue beads inside the silver squares are alternate denim blue Swarovski crystals and petrol blue Swarovski pearls.  I like the different textures.  I took about 30 photos trying to get a close up, but, alas, they all came out blurred.  So here is a blurry one for you!

Oh no!  I've trainer bombed the photo!  And not just any trainers, my filthy backyard trainers which are covered in bunny poo!

Luna cabochon

About a year ago I discovered the most wonderful cabochons in The Bead Shop Nottingham.  I bought a couple just because I loved them, but never did anything with them.  If you want to see what they look like, go here.  It turns out we'd missed the workshop using Luna cabs (we missed one?!?), so we asked the manager if she'd put another class on for us, and she agreed!

I took a Thursday of work and we took another workshop (more on that coming to a blogpost near you soon) in the morning, and then settled down for an afternoon of bead embroidery.  Using a piece of bead foundation, we glued our cab down, and then held it in place with some peyote stitch.  We then used O beads (which I also own but never knew how to use!) to stitch a decorative ring before adding an Ultrasuede backing and a row of crystals.

It was really hard to get decent photos of this, I wanted to show the way the Luna cab just seems to shine, whilst also getting the shine of the crystals.  I used my tablet for these photos, I really should have used my camera as the tablet doesn't have a zoom feature.  The problem is that I have no way of transfering the photos to my PC except by taking the memory card into work and slotting it into my laptop.  It would seem that modern technology has left me behind.

This will become a necklace, I already know how I'm going to do it, it's on my Finish-It-FFS pile!

Cleo

I couple of weeks ago I took a Thursday off work to attend a class at The Bead Shop Nottingham.  It was taught by Patty McCourt.  We learnt how to make this lovely necklace named Cleo.

Alternative colours of Swarovski bicone are beaded with size 11/0s to create the foundation, then the dangles are added with Kheops par Puca and Superduos, along with more 11/0s.  

I chose some of my favourite colours, a lovely petrol blue and grey and combined them with silver 11/0s.  The sample necklace was too long for me, so I made mine 4 units shorter.  I finished right at the end of the class and put it on.  It was too short!  I have to take it back quite a way to add a couple more of the triangle units in and I'm no longer sure how to go about it... I knew what to do when I came out of the class but typically, I didn't tackle it and now I'm not sure how to fix it!  I suppose I could just start again...

A touch of glamour

Once apon a time, long long ago, I started making a necklace from the book Sabine Lippert's Beaded Fantasies.  It was a beautiful necklace, I'd planned to make it in red and gold as I was in need of red jewellery to go with my many red winter tops.  

This necklace took ages.  I stitched it at my parents' house.  I stitched it at the dining room table.  I stitched it on the sofa.  I stitched and stitched and stitched.

Then I left it a few weeks all finished, just missing the sparkly cabochons (they were supposed to be added as I did the bead weaving, but they kept falling out so I left them out and glued them in at the end).  Then I left it a few weeks before taking photos.

It was not easy to capture the shimmer from the beads and the shine from the cabochons.  It was too bright in the sun and too dark in the shade.

Perhaps these photos give you some idea though?  I should, had I engaged my brain at the time, taken them outside in the garden using my lightbox.  That might have worked.  The greatest of ideas are always late, eh?

This is possibly the most glamorous necklace that I own.  It will be perfect with all my red winter clothes.

If only it weren't summer.  You guessed it, none of my summer clothes are red.

Kheops necklace

Wonderful mum and I did a great workshop at The Bead Shop, Nottingham a couple of weeks ago.  It was beadweaving using the new Kheops par Puca beads.  I didn't think to take a close-up of one of the beads, but they are a triangle shape with two holes.  We paired them with Superduos to make this lovely necklace.

I can't take credit for the colour scheme, I stole it straight out of the workshop leaders, Steph's, sample.  I used teal Kheops and purple Superduos with black seed beads.

I've been playing around with photography again and tried some photos in full sun and some in shadow to see which would be better.  I've used a selection here and I'm still not sure!  When I win the lottery I'm going to get a photographer.  And a housekeeper.  And a handy man.  

I made this necklace to go with the many navy tops I own as navy beads are really difficult, if not impossible, to come by.  I love this necklace and plan to make another with a different colour scheme.

soldered circles

I'm afraid this is a bit of a dull post (aren't they all!) with only one photo.  The Wonderful Mum and I went to a class at The Bead Shop Nottingham to practice working with solder again.  Last time we made copper components and I made my favourite piece of jewellery: this copper bunny necklace.

This time we were working with sterling silver wire and I made my second favourite necklace ever!  I really should get it together to do some soldering at home as I really do love the results.

This simple piece is 3 wire circles, hammered to give them texture (I only hammered the outer two), then soldered to make continuous circles.  It's then simply hung on a chain.  I like it because it's understated and though I usually wear more statement kind of jewellery, I like something elegant once in a while.  

How a mistake can be a design element

A while ago I made a little dragonfly pendent from Swarovski elements and crystals.  I needed a necklace to hang it on and decided to attempt the Russian Spiral  from Seed Bead Stitching by Beth Stone.

I messed it up.  The design uses size 8/0 and size 11/0 seed beads.  Size 8/0 is the larger bead.  I got them confused and so my spiral turned out larger, and less spirally...  I noticed about a third of the way in, so thought I'd have a go at doing it the right way round to make a kind of focal point.

I really like it!  I prefer the smaller spiral, both the way it looks and the colours (I know they're the same colours, but the white stands out more in this central part), but overall I like the change between the chunkier spiral and the more delicate one.

My only issue now is that I don't have any clothes that gold goes with!  Why did I choose that colour scheme?



Linking up to the Craft Book Sew along

jewellery - finishing

It seems to take me forever to make a piece of jewellery.  I make part of it, then it sits for months before I do anything with it!

I recently made the worlds longest kumihimo braid (disclaimer: that's not actually true) and wasn't sure what to do with it.  In the end I made a double wrap braid and used the rest as a necklace for this knitted copper wire heart pendent I made ages ago.  The twisted wire necklace it was hanging had become kinked and misshapen so it was time to rehang it.

I finished this peyote triangle pendent in a bead class ages ago.  I wasn't sure what to hang it on, then mum gave me this beaded cord.  It was ready made, I didn't make it.  I thought the pendent would be ideal to hang on it.

The only problem was that I couldn't get the beaded cord through the bail as the bail was tiny.  I used a bit of wire to create a hanger instead.  Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but it works.

I love this beaded cord and have a bit more of it, I might have to make a pendent to go with it...  give me another year or so and I'm sure I'll get round to it!

Vintage lace style necklace

Last month, before the excitement of the Manor House Hotel, me and wonderful mum did a class at The Bead Shop Nottingham.  It was a beadweaving project using half Tila beads along with seed beads and Swarovski bicones.

Normally the word "vintage" in a title puts me off, but this time I went with it. The necklace was called "vintage style lace necklace".  I used black seed beads, jet bicones and the half Tilas are a lovely black but with shimmery iridescence on them.

I have to pat it all down flat when I put it on, I just couldn't get it to sit right in this photo!

It only took a couple of hours to make and I bought some copper beads so I can make another version in copper.

I had never worked with half Tilas before, I didn't even know they exist. Tilas are a square bead with 2 holes running through parallel.  half Tilas are the same, but they are half size so are rectangular.  I do love all these shaped beads that are coming out.

I had some time left at the end, so I whipped up a matching bracelet!  

Swarovski love

I love me a bit of Swarovski bling.  Which is fatal when I go to craft classes at the Bead Shop as they sell lots of Swarovski.

I'd bought these pearls a while ago, the larger ones are 4mm Petrol and the smaller are 3mm light blue.  I wanted to make a pearl necklace, using a traditional knotting technique.  Mum lent me her Knot-A-Bead so I thought I'd better give it a go.  I used grey C-lon cord.  The gadget was hard to get used to, then great, but whenever I stopped to make a drink, eat my dinner, feed the buns, whatever, I lost the knack.

I didn't want a plain pearl necklace so I created a beaded cluster to dangle from it using this lovely twisted jump ring and a short length of textured chain.

I wear a lot of blue so this will see plenty of outings.

More recently I bought the dragonfly wings Swarovski Elements piece, and some Golden Shadow crystals in various sizes to go with it.  I'm in the process of beadweaving a necklace to hang it on. By "in the process" I mean I chose some seed beads, chose a pattern, tried to get started, failed and so put it to one side...

This was a little kit I got when I came second at the bead show last year.  I'd put it to one side to put together when I had a minute.  I really only did need a minute... maybe 5? to put this together.  I'm going to hang it on some chain.

Simple pendents, made in minutes, but very effective.

How do you spell pendent?  Is it pendent or pendant.  I'm getting confused with the french word meaning "during/while".