Kaliedescope

Here is a new multi-stitch necklace that I finished this weekend. I wear a lot of purple and teals so I wanted a necklace that would work with both colours. I used a variety of stitches, including dutch spiral, circular peyote and spiral rope. It was a lot of fun to make the components and then decide how to piece them together to create the necklace.

Copper Rose Pendant.

I love Eastern art and architecture and was influenced by these when I was designing this pendant. I chose the pink to remind me of cherry blossoms and added copper.

Forest Crystal Burst Ring

So like many of you out there I'm now completely in love with bezelling rivoli's. This ring is made using Laura McCabes Crystal Sunburst method. The surrounding crystals are some amazing jet abx2 crystals that my husband bought me as a surprise. The abx2 effect is beautiful, I can't get over how different the colours are in this finish. I am running out of Rivoli's so I'll have to try something else for a while until I get some more

Rivoli Earrings.

In the pursuit of expanding my earring collection, I made these simple bezelled rivoli earrings using instructions from Laura McCabes book. I used steel grey delicas and galvanised silver size 15's. I like the simplicity of these but I think I will need to also have a pair of Crystal Burst earrings, after all a girl can never have too much sparkle!

Serengeti Ring

Here is a ring I made using Phyliss Dintefass's
pattern published in the most recent Beadwork
magazine. It is an interesting technique which I
enjoyed making but I didn't like the colour combo
enough to make another for an earring. It makes
a nice big ring though.

Red Daggers Necklace.

The inspiration for this necklace was the Beadalon Daggers necklace that I mentioned in an earlier post. Mine is slightly different, the pale grey triangles are 2 drop brick stitch with matte grey ab delica's with large red glass drops, the dark grey triangles are made with size 11
hex seed beads in single drop brick stitch. The necklace strap is peyote. It was a fun necklace to make and it drapes very nicely
around the neck.

Simplicity Ring

The easiest ring ever! A peyote band with a swarovski square pendant attached. This just took an hour or so while watching tv. The turquoise seeds are miyuki 11's and the square is bermuda blue. I am looking forward to wearing it, I love big rings!

Taking shape.

A 2nd photo of this piece, I bezelled 7 8mm swarovski pearls, attached them on to brick stitch triangles and sewed the triangles to form a flower shape. It was a fairly labour intensive task, I'm quite proud of myself as I have recently become fairly lazy & focused on instant gratification projects in my beading. I am hoping to change that though as I would like to improve my skills and take a step up. I am hoping that committing to this multi-component piece will help me move towards that goal. I have hit a stop at the moment as the green 11's which I bought to make a rope really don't look good with the green in the flower and I only noticed in natural light at home. I have to buy more of the delica's and that way I'll be sure that the base of the necklace and the other bits work well together. In the meantime I am back to the instant gratification projects!

A Teaser

Here is a teaser of my current project, it might take a while because I need to make lots of different components for it. Lately I have been making lots of quick & easy projects but I now feel the need to create a larger piece. I am hoping to incorporate lots of stitches & beads into this one. So far I have used peyote to bezel the 8mm swarovski pearls, fringe & herringbone. I am using swarovski pearls & crystals, delica's in various pinks & greens & I have green 11's that I might use for a rope for the strap.

Rivoli Cuff

Blue netted cuff with a bezeled rivoli centrepeice. The seed beads are a matte ab & they have a great crunchy feel to them!

Monster Pearls

I bought these organic looking blister pearls at my LBS last week. I wasn't sure what I would do with them until I saw these lovely size 8's. I made a 2 drop peyote band, edged it with picots and then sewed the pearls on top. It makes a nice chunky cuff.

An Old Favourite

While I was photographing my latest work I also re-photo'd this piece which I made a while ago. The centre rope is picot embellished tubular raw and the other ropes are spiral. It also has beaded beads and a peyote stitch cabochon. I used a variety of beads from size 15's to 8mm swarovski pearls. It was fun to make & I really must make another multi-stitch necklace soon.

Blackberry Ring.

I had some leftover fringe beads so I decided to
make a matching ring to the spiral necklace. Another
peyote band with simple fringe. So fun & easy to make.

Crystal burst Ring

Last week I finally treated myself to Laura McCabe's book Creating Crystal Jewellery with Swarovski. I've been wanting it for ages and I was not disappointed, it is a beautiful book 7 I wish I had more money to go out and buy a truckload of crystals to make every project in it! The instructions for this ring were easy to follow and it was a lot of fun to make. The photo is dreadful though, I wish I was a better photographer.

Spring Tickle.

I loved these lime delica's when I saw them at Chepstow, so I snapped up a couple of packets. This bracelet is spiral peyote, which is a technique that I have wanted to try for a while. I liked it, I'll probably use it in a bigger project one day.

Knuckle Up.

I don't very often wear dress rings as they aren't usually big enough for me & I am usually focused on making necklaces. I have recently organised my stash & found a few odd beads leftover from other projects and I thought rings would be a good way to use them up and would expand my finger wardrobe nicely.

These rings are simple peyote bands with fringe to embellish, they take little over an hour & are great to do in front of the TV or when supervising a four year old bundle of fun. I think I'll go through the stash & make up a few kits for these so that I am ready to go when I want to do some beading but don't have any inspiration or time to think up a new project.

Simple Peyote Tube Pendant

Peyote tubes are a great way of using up those little amounts of beads left over in the tube when you have finished a project. I made 5 beads of varying sizes, increasing the length of the strips by 4 beads each time. I then stitched them together and strung them with some freshwater pearls. I couldn't get a great picture of this one though.

Photo catch up part1

Well it's a very cold Sunday here. We had 3 days of snow this week, my son was happy as he had 3 snow days off school. I was not so happy because there was only an inch of snow with us and I think its crazy that the school shut for that.

The last but one issue of Beadwork had a great triangle project by Phyliss Dintenfass which I really enjoyed making. . The 1st piece uses Toho 11 seed beads and is flat triangles of 2 sizes stitched together, you might notice that turquoise & brown is my favourite colour combination! My 1st piece is using size 11 delicas and followed the directions exactly, I made 5 triangles and stitched them together, I then beaded a strip in the blue beads and wear it offset with the toggle in front, it always gets lots of compliments

Back to Basics - Black & White & Red All Over

This week I decided to go back to basics with my beadwork . When I first started beading, peyote was the bane of my existence & I absolutely dreaded learning tubular peyote, but it turned out not to be too scary after all! I haven't used the stitch for a while so I decided to make some beaded beads using black 11's & red & white size 8 Toho's, I made 5 and then threaded them onto some knotted suedette cord. So simple but pretty effective!

My next back to basic tubular peyote is using silver lined crystal 11's & blue delica's, the size difference is not so obvious and therefore the tube doesn't have the nice sculptural quality of this piece, might just have to be a test piece destined for the scrap box!