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

The biggest seed beads you'll ever find!

Say HELLO to the two largest seed beads. Currently, at 6:22PM Australian (in Victoria) time on the 12th of April 2012, the two above beads are the biggest seed beads you'll find anywhere (well, according to google)!

This month at the Etsy Bead Weavers Team, the challenge was "Seed Beads Only." Participants were challenged to create a piece of work using only seed bead (ie, round or delicas mainly).

I thought long and hard about this challenge theme about what I could make, and I couldn't think of anything! I thought I wouldn't be entering, until I had a dream a couple of weeks ago about giant seed beads. And I thought, what the heck? Nothing speaks "seed beads only" better than giant seed beads!

If you remove the beadwork over the seed beads you'll find blue polymer clay rings underneath. They look quite basic but they actually took a LOT of work. I wanted the colour to match the beads I was going to use (blue iris), so I spent an entire afternoon trying to make the perfect colour blend. They mainly consist of light blue perle, but I also incorporated black (make it darker), royal blue, sky blue, a blue in between the previous two shades listed, and just the faintest hint of purple. I think I did quite a good job to be honest! They had to match the beads properly so they couldn't be seen at all through the gaps in the bead work, as this wouldn't have had just eed beads showing, and that would have been against the rules (can you imagine if I'd used bright yellow?). There was also the issue of trying to make strips of this colour the same width and height, and then joining the strips into rings with them all having the same circumference, and not having the join thicker than the rest of the ring.

I had originally intended to make 6 beaded seed beads (I made 6 rings! The looked like blue cheezles when I took them out of the oven!), but after taking almost 2 weeks to bead just two, I was fast running out of time. So I left it with two.

In my head I had imagined beading around the PMC rings long ways in tubular peyote stitch using 11os. But after beading several rows I found that the beading that was going around the inside of the ring was ending up further along than that on the outside, and so the nice neat rows were suddenly out of wack. So I changed to using 15os when I got to the inside, and kept the 11os on the outside, and cut out the original rows I'd done. Yet after several round of that (more than just using 11os) I found the same thing to be happening. So finally I stopped doing that section, and started another section a third of the way around the ring, and beaded this section until the frustrating wacky-ness began to start again and the 15os inside the ring joined up, and then did another segment. Finally, when the inside was all zipped up, I filled in the gaps on the outside until I could zip up the outside beadwork. Whew! A LOT of work!

The next drama I had was trying to work out how I could separate the beads on the rope, as I wanted them to be the focal point, so I needed something to space them out a bit. Space... Hmmm, spacers!! A friend of mine had once shown me a picture of some beaded spacers she'd found somewhere, so I tried to create something that looked like what I could remember of it. I had recently found instructions to increasing within the herringbone stitch, and after a bit of thought and trial and error and bit of excess thread and sicssors, the above pictured beaded spacers were born! I'm quite happy with them, so hopefully I can remember how to do them for future works!

The rope was also interesting (and time consuming, and trial and error!). I used right angle weave (RAW), but I wanted to have a silver pattern running through it. So I drew out a few rows of RAW and coloured in a diagonal line of where the silver (these "few rows" turned into a whole page lol) and began beading. I've never beaded RAW off a chart before... But I have only done it twice :P This massive long strip of RAW I then sewed into a massive long tube around a black leather cord. The clasp is simply peyote stitched. I ended up using three stitches in this necklace: peyote, herringbone and RAW.

Making these beads (actually, this whole necklace) was very much trial and error. I'm not generally very good at designing my own beadwoven (ie, specifically beadwoven, bead embroidery is easier) creations without a pattern of some sort. I don't know how to manipulate stitches to do certain things, or to fit with certain beads, or to work in some special way, very well, so trying to create what was in my brain was an extra challenge for me. But I have found this to be getting easier to do (althought I have such a long way to go!) with the more bead embroidery I do, as it allows me to explore the concept of design and I can actually create what's in my head!

I hope you like Size 0.005, the largest seed beads you'll ever find. It was definately an experience!

Voting for the "Seed Beads only" EBWC is currently happening on the blog, so feel free to head on over and vote for your favourite between now and April 15th (mine is number 36, if your favourite happens to be mine)! :)

Happy Beading!!
Meg

Winter Wonderland...in the middle of Summer...

Ok ok, I know this is a bit late, but I'm writing to you today about The Etsy Bead embroidery Guild (EBEG)'s  first Bead Fest- "Winter Wonderland" (a bit stange for me, as I'm currently in the middle of Summer here Down Under). All the entries were submitted by January 1st, and may I just say that they're all absolutely WONDERFUL entries. :D You can view them all on our team blog. Please take a moment to head on over and check them all out. :)

(collage of all our pieces)

And now I'd like to talk to you about the thoughts and ideas behind my piece- Winter's Fingerprints.

I suggested the theme "Winter Wonderland" for the Bead Fest, and when the team voted, most of us voted for this one. Which was sort of perfect for me, as I now had an excuse to make a piece for Winter for my "Season's collection," to go with my Autumn piece. I was asked to find an inspiring picture and give a description of the theme. As I was trying to find a suitable image on Google, and writing my description, I kept coming across snowflakes. I think they're even mentioned in the description I gave. And suddenly, snowflakes were all I could think about...

It is said that each and every snow flake is different; each is an individual. This thought got me thinking... I was studying for a biology exam at the time, and we'd done a huge section on genetics. Genetics, huh? Genes, inheritance, all the things that make us different, individual. And I thought of our fingerprints: how each is different; each is an individual. You cannot find a single finger that has the same print as another finger, not even on your own hand (I bet you just looked :P ). Pretty amazing!

I knew I wanted to make a necklace, that much was clear. And as I was thinking about snowflakes and fingerprints, ideas started to flash across my mind. What if I made a whole heap of snowflakes...joined them together...like so... gradual size decrease...that one can be the fanciest...I'll have to research this...like a collar, almost!!! (and there you have it, my crazy brain in thought process :P ) I sketched a basic design and went back to studying.

This was an unuasual piece in that I had decided the name of it well before I'd even begun stitching, something I don't usually do. I love giving my pieces names, it makes them so much more alive and special, and person. For this one, it had to be something to do with Winter. And snowflakes. Fingerprints. Snowflakes. Individual. Special. Different. Could Mother Nature have her own fingerprints? Hmm... Mother Nature's fingerprints. Snowflakes. Mother Nature's snowflakes. Winter's snowflakes. Winter's fingerprints. Aha! "Winter's Fingerprints." It fit perfectly, even if I hadn't even cut out fabric or picked my colour pallette. It was going to be perfect.

I did  a lot of research on this piece. I had no real idea what a snowflake could look like. And I wanted the biggest one, the "focal," if you like, to be the most special, fanciest one. So I set out to find the most beautiful and appealing (well, to me) snowflakes online that I could. Here was the inspiration for the big one (the latter is also shown on the right):

I love this one, it's just magical. :)

I came across more snowflakes, some of which were inspiration for the others-

And then after about 2 or 3 snowflakes I couldn't find any that I thought were absolutely brilliant that were, at the same time, simple enough to be able to be stitched at a small scale. So I started trying to make up my own. Which I found to be rather difficult after a while, because I couldn't make them really complex looking because there just wasnt enough ROOM, and there's only so many tiny snowflakes you can bead all differently before they'll begin to start looking the same. So it's a good thing I found I only needed to make 5 in all...

 (close up's of each side)

Snowflakes are typically displayed/shown/photographed on black, to show it up most clearly.  So this is what I did here: beading on black material, yet not filling in the background, to give an impression of the snowflae being momentarily "caught" on the fabric. The largest one was big enough that I could cut around it's whole shape proerly, but the smaller ones were not big enough for this. So I settled for cutting them out in hexagon shapes.

I chose a very simple colour pallette: opaque white, metallic silver, pearlized/milky white, and silver lined clear (silver). I wanted to make it simple to show up the snowflakes properly. But it wouldn't be truely Winter if there wasn't the faintest hint of blue, now would it? And this comes in in the attachments between the snowflakes, and in the ribbon, which finished off the piece.

I used 4 different ribbons in finishing: pale grey, white, silver and pale/ice blue. The clasp is a simple toggle. This finishing is quite simple as I wanted to keep the magic of this piece in the snowflakes; the magic of Winter. I almost added a fringe, I'd always intended to have a fringe, and lots of bling. I even went and bought the beads for the fringe! But then I found it didn't need one. It's beautiful as it is: just snowflakes.

And there you have it: Winter's very own Fingerprints; the snowflakes that will never melt. :D

Keep beading!

Meg

It WAS an earring...

There is 7 days and the rest of tonight until Christmas. STRESS!! I don't even really have time to write this blog post. :O I have to finish 3 presents and an order for someone ELSE'S gifts. I've already made one present and done one order...

...as well as this accident:

It all started out as an earring.

In October this year, one of my Aunts ordered a pendant from me to give to my other Aunt for her birthday. So I got out my beads and fabric and needle and thread, and sat down to work. This $37 product is what was produced-

Do you like it? I'm pretty proud of it. And my Aunt liked it too, whoch is good. I love bead embroidery... *sigh happily*

So then mum decided that for Christmas, wouldn't it be great if the Aunt who now owns this pendant had a pair of earrings to match? I thought, great! I need some more money anyway. So I set out to make a pair of earrings to match the pendant.

I was trying to replicate the bottom half of the diamon which is the pendant. That way the earrings would be smaller than the pendant, and they'd definately match. I had ideas of making a collection, titled "Regal Tones." It would be grand.

I sat beading with my computer next to me, with a photo of the pendant to guide me in the colours I needed to use to get a match. I beaded for half a day, thinking, oh yes, this will be wonderful. And it was, just not in the way I had intended. I never made a pair of earrings after all.

I finished this first earring, cut it out and lined and backed it. Before edging, I held it up to my ear in a mirror, just out of curiosity. Oh my goodness, what had I created?! It was a MONSTER of an earring!! Who would ever wear something that huge? Certainly not my Aunt. I asked mum what she thought, and she promptly agreed with me: however nice it looked, it was simply too big to be an earring.

I packed away all my beads in dismay. Half a day's work wasted! I could have been doing Christmas presents. And now I had wasted half my day, and was left with this, this THING that I didn't know what to do with!

I sat on my bed with a bag of craft supplies I had not yet sorted and put away. As I pulled things out of the bag, what should I find? Lo and behold, it was gold brooch backings! I looked at them, and at my time waster, and back again. Ideas started forming...

So I began to pull off the back of the earring disaster (thank goodness I hadn't edged it yet!), thinking if I could just get this backing off I could put the brooch backing in like so, cut holes in the backing, it'd fit, I could edge it...

I ended up yanking the whole backing off. Thank goodness I didn't rip any threads...

In a frenzy I glued the brooch bit down and put slits in my NEW backing. This was exciting. I didn't even really know what I was doing, I was just following half remembered instuctions from a book... And it turned out that it was really quite easy! I edged it, added a lovely little fringe, and voila! I had made a brooch!! An accidental brooch, but a new skill learnt and a new product for my store all the same.

Beading accidents don't generally happen to me. I always hear about other bead embroiderers that always leave that extra bit of room in case their designs morph out of the original plan, which they usually do. I always leave that extra bit of room, because apparently my designs could morph too. But they never did. Until now. It's a pretty awesome experience!

It's the Regal Tones brooch. And I'm pretty proud of it.

Happy beading!
Meg.

P.S. I did end up making a pair of earrings to go with the pendant, but they were such simple drops (beads on head pins) that I couldn't even be bothered taking a picture of them, haha.

Sales and new listings!

I have TWO sales lined up! :D A friend wants two versions of my Peas in a Pod set (which was inspired by a project I once saw briefly in an old issue of Australian Beading-don't know how the designer was...) for Christmas presents. So I'm really happy about that!! :D

I have listed many new cabochons in my shop, such as the following:

Polymer clay rainbow face cabochon

and:

Polymer clay rose cabochons


There are MORE of these handmade cabochons in my shop, so please go on over and take a peek!

Thanks for reading!
Meg

New listings!!

I was very busy today and made lots of cabochons. And not just any cabochons: FUN and interesting and UNUSUALLY SHAPED cabochons. I like polymer clay. :D

So the first is this pair of feet

<<<<<<<<<<-------------------------

SHOP LINK: http://www.etsy.com/listing/87899781/pair-of-feet-cabochons?ref=pr_shop

Made from pink pearl polymer clay

And the next is this set of 2 heads/faces

-------------------------->>>>>

SHOP LINK: http://www.etsy.com/listing/87900072/dont-lose-your-head-polymer-clay-head?ref=v1_other_1

I suppose they're more "faces" than "heads" because they're missing half the skull. But oh well.

And there are more coming at a later date! I have made quite a few, but they're not finished yet. When they are, I will share them. :)

Thanks for reading this and looking at my new creations!

Meg