Scrolling through the inner Workings of a Cuff pattern

I don't often do bead patterns. Especially peyote stitches patterns. Have you tried them? Following the picture pattern always does my head in. BUT when there's a word pattern, I can survive.

However, when Ann of FrancescasFancy on Etsy asked for some people to test drive some patterns/kits she had designed, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to develop this skill of reading a pattern. So I put my hand up, got sent the kit, and got to work. :D

It was a very interesting pattern to work through. I started to see the pattern come through quite quickly, and it was fun trying to work out as I went where the repeats in the design were happening. It was a very clever design.

Another great thing about doing this for Ann was that in the kit she sent me she had included delicas (cylinder beads) as the beads to use for the pattern. And my goodness WOW! I had only ever used round seed beads, and I had had some problems when doing large peyote stitched-pieces that my tension with these beads was a bit out in some places (I like to pull hard it seems...). But not with delicas! I can pull the thread like normal and it pulls all the beads together into nice locked-in rows, and it's STRAIGHT! :D :D Can't even begin to describe how excited I was to discover this.

So ever since then I've been slowly purchasing the odd packet of delicas to add to my stash. :D


So there you have it. I finished it (around my Europe trip lol), sent it off, she photographed it and listed it and sent it back and now it's part of my VERY small self-made jewellery collection. She said she couldn't believe how small my wrist was when she opened the box and saw how small I'd made the bracelet (still enough for two repeats of the main pattern)! Haha

She has named it the Scroll Works Bracelet pattern (hence the play on words in the title of this blog post ahaha), and it is one of many wonderful designs availble for you to buy and bead in her shop (I really recommend trying this one out!). Check them all out, they're awesome!

And while you're there, take a look at her Green Dragon Bracelet - Baby Dragon Fantasy Beaded Cuff. It is absolutely amazing and SUCH a clever design!

Happy beading y'all!
Meg

La Mia Italia

Hello!! Long time, no posting. Sorry about that. See, I got back from Europe about 2 weeks ago... :D

Yep, that's right. EUROPE. :D I spent 6 weeks over there and it was absolutely fabulous! I have a new appreciation for Winter now. Man it was cold! But I saw snow for the first time, and now I can legitimately attest that every snowflake is indeed different, and wonderfully magically AMAZING. :D

I went to 9 different countries while I was away, and who knows how many cities. Ready? Here's the list:
-Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburugh, up north near the Loch Ness and all the places up there)
-England (Exeter, Bath, Statford-upon-avon, Stonehenge, London)
-France (Paris, Lyon, Nice)
-Switzerland (Lucerne)
-Spain (Barcelona)
-Italy (Pisa, Florence, Rome, Venice)
-Austria (Vienna)
-Czech Republic (Prague)
-Germany (Munich, Berlin)
-The Netherlands (Amsterdamn)

Wow, 10 different countries! :D

                                                                           Scotland

                                                            Stonehenge, England



The March EBW challenge theme is "destinations:" pick a place you'd like to go and bead about it. WELL.  I had a great many choices didn't I? Most of the places I went to I'd love to go to again one day. What do I choose? Orignially I wasn't going to enter the challenge, as I thought I wouldn't be back in time to make something, but I was desperate to bead so I did anyway. :P

Scotland was my favourite place, definately. But I didn't really know what I could do for Scotland. I wanted lots of iconic things in my bracelet, and I couldn't think of that many that I could do for Scotland in such a limited time. So that was out.

I really enjoyed Vienna; I love Mozart you see. So I started planning a cuff that would have the Austrian flag around the outside and images of musical notes and stars (Mozart wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" when he was 5, hence the stars), and have white beaded snow swirling around, perhaps an Ice skate as well (I went ice skating in Vienna). So I started beading the flag: Red, white, leave the last colour (red again) for when I line the piece. But then half way through doing the white I decided that I didn't want to do Vienna anymore...

Italy! Thank goodness the flags were similar. I looked through my european coin collection and found a 2 euro cent coin. I'd thrown a 2 euro cent coin into the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Apparently if you threw one coin in it means you'll come back to Rome; two means you'll fall in love, and three means you'll fall for an Italian. So I put the coin on the bracelet, to represent the one (or perhaps two... :P) coin I threw in. I'd like to go back to Rome.

But then I couldn't think of very many things that were exclusive to Rome that I could put on the bracelet. I could put a cross, but there were churches all over Italy. I could put a pizza, but that's more of a "whole of Italy" thing as well. So then my sister came up with the suggestion: why not just make it about the whole of Italy?

Thankyou, dear wonderful sister! :D So it became the whole of Italy. I made a slice of pizza and a venitian mask from polymer clay and put them on, I sewed a cross on, I stitched a ring of blue around the coin (to represent the water in the Trevi fountain), the coin is there too (to represent the coin I threw in the fountain, and also Italy's currency: the Euro), "ITALIA" is beaded on there, and the background is white to represent the snow that was there when I went, and that I'd like to go back in Winter again (I LOVE snow :D ) one day. And around the border: the Italian flag, finished with the edging.

               (Funnily enough, the ring I'm also wearing in this photo I bought in Italy (Florence))

 It's backed with suede and closes with a toggle clasp.

So there you have it! "La Mia Italia": my Italy. :D

Please vote for your favourite "Destinations" challenge entry between the 9th and 15th of March here (mine is number 32 if you'd like to know). :) It's the 3rd largest amount of entries for a challenge so far!

Back to work now :D
Meg