Beadfeast :home of handmade bead embroidered jewelry

Crystal Chandelier Earring

2013-09-22T11:45:00.000-04:00

One of my coworkers has a bit of a problem with the back of my bead embroidery pieces and no matter how many times I explain to him that this is the way to finish off the back of bead embroidery he still says well why don’t you cover the back of the piece with beads too. It might all be well and possible to cover both sides of a bead embroidery piece (not that I see the point of using up beads for the back of a piece) but in order to address this issue I just decided to give beadweaving a go. Kill to birds with one stone: learn a new technique and have the backs of the work covered in beads so he would stop going on about it! :D

The piece I am covering in this post is not my first attempt at beadweaving a piece together (I started with simpler bezels) but since this piece is made specifically for someone and I have to give it to them tomorrow I decided to write about this one first .
a few weeks ago a colleague of ours from our corporate offices asked me to make her a clear crystal chandelier earring and I said ok. Twenty minutes later she gave me a call and insisted that I should make the chandelier earrings look sexy too! Now I have no idea how to make earrings look sexy so I was a bit stumped at this point and to be honest with you because I had no idea how much she was comfortable paying for the finished piece I didn’t want to go on a crazy bead shopping spree (which I am really good at) and spend loads of money on crystals and beads. So I was very adamant on using whatever I had.

I was lucky to find some swarovski crystals in my stash that I had completely forgot about and put together all my beads in the clear and silver family in front of me and started to play around

I started this piece by bezeling the oval piece first. I do have to say I am really bad at finding out how many beads I need to start with so I went with a Ladder/Brick stitch technique I learned on the bead and button website to start the bezel for this piece which made it a little bit easier to do. It is frustrating getting the stone to sit in the bezel and not move around when you are trying to capture it in the bezel and this is probably why bead embroidery to me is still so much easier to do. At least with bead embroidery your stones don’t keep running away from you every two seconds.

Once the bezel was done I added a row of seed beads around the bezel to allow me to do the decorative edge. Nowhere is where the fun kind of started. I have never used superduo beads before and I was itching to incorporate them somewhere in my work so after each bead that I had added to the outside edge of the bezel I added a silver superduo bead. Once I stepped up to the top hole of the superduos , I started adding faceted silver beads which helped with the extra sparkle I was looking for and then I covered those beads by going around one more time and adding size 15 seed beads to give it a more finished look.

To make the piece in to a chandelier type earring I started adding the bicone drops on each side and the bigger crystal drop in the middle to finish it off. To me this was enough to make the earring pass of as a chandelier earring.
Now bezeling the square swarovski crystal on the top of the piece was a whole different story. I had so many problems with this piece I was ready to throw in the towel. What made it worse was that I was so engrossed in figuring out how to bezel the damn stone that I forgot to make any notes on what I was doing so when it came to bezeling the second stone I had no idea what to do again which made it even more difficult because I had to make sure that the piece matched the first one I had made so that both earrings would look exactly the same. I kept referencing my first piece and in the end I just had to try and make at similar to each other, as it was humanly possible

I have to say both earrings don’t look exactly the same but the discrepancy is so small that it can be overlooked. I have already shown the picture of the piece to the person I have made these for and thank god they liked it cause otherwise I would have had to redo the whole thing .i just hope that they like the piece when the see it in person tomorrow.

Anyway I hope you guys really enjoy this piece too and that it can inspire you guys to make something sexy too: D
Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Dangly Turquoise and Moonglow Earrings

2013-08-11T10:48:00.000-04:00

it feels like it has been a year since I have posted anything on this blog, well had I waited a few months it would have been a year I guess: D

Not good! So bad that even my parents gave up on reminding me to update the blog.it seems that something always takes precedence over doing this and to be honest today is probably the first day in 4 months that I have absolutely nothing to do or think about.

I have been busy with work and I started taking a few beading classes here and there to learn about bead weaving as opposed to bead embroidery which I usually do and I have to say I really enjoy it .my latest obsession is making Cellini spirals but I will talk about them hopefully very soon in a new blog post.

so before I move on to showing my woven pieces I am going to show you one of the last bead embroidered pieces which I actually sold a few months ago as well!

While looking through Etsy I fell upon these golden yellow moonglow squares that I just had to have. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Dangly earrings!

For the earrings I used a teardrop turquoise cabochon as my main focal point and did a simple gold and turquoise bezel. As always to make the piece sparkle I used the smallest size of crystal chains that I had. I had thought of finishing the piece after adding the chain but when I thought about it the piece looked too small and finishing the edge after the chain with any kind of edging would show pieces of the backing, which I don’t like.

I ended up adding a row of stacked turquoise and gold beads to make the piece larges and cover the backing so that when I do the edge you cannot really see any of the lacey’s stiff stuff.

Once the piece was done I did a simple picot edge all the way around and added a loop with size 15 beads in order to be able to add the moonglow stone and the earring hook. And voila the earrings were done!

Brick Stitch Earrings

2013-03-31T11:03:00.000-04:00

I have been trying to find some inspiration for new work for the past month and nothing seems to come into my head. I am officially out of ideas it seems! Not a good thing when your fingers want to make stuff and your mind is blocking the progress. I have been trying to lock down ideas but then I find that I am not able to really make it work and that is frustrating and I guess that is why I have not really been trying to make any bead embroidered pieces.

But in order to not stay completely idle I decided to make some simple brick stitch earrings. I find it I am less inclined to worry about my colour choices and patterns with these pieces and the fact that they are so quick and easy to make, makes creating them very satisfactory which in turn makes me feel a little less useless: D

For these earrings I used round quick links as the base of my brick stitch earrings and then started using a selection of pinks and purple beads in various sizes and finishes to make the beaded earring.

Once I was happy with the pattern and size I finished the piece by going around and doing a picot edge using the same beads I had used in the piece along with some 3mm fire-polish beads that picked up on the pink and purple hues of the beads.

Once I was done with this first one I was ready to start experimenting with shapes and adding different types of beads which lead to somewhat of a more elaborate dangly earring. Which led to my second attempt at making a brick stitch earring where I decided to go for kind of a black and clear chandelier type earring.

I used the same type of quick link I had used in the other pair of earrings and once I had the first couple of rows finished I decided instead of going around using the same size of beads all around to mix it up with a different size of beads just to see what the results would look like.

As with any type of beading, it does get a little bit tricky making beads fit once you use various sizes but the end result looked interesting enough so I kept going.

When I was done with the main beading I added a larger size faceted bead as a focal bead and added a large crystal bead for more sparkle. I then finished the edge with a mixture of stacked and picot edge to clean the piece up.

Classic Turquoise Brooch

2013-02-26T08:25:00.002-05:00

I just got back from spending two glorious weeks in England with my family and friends. After the few weeks I had had at work this was all I needed. To spend time with people I loved and leave all the drama behind.

I spend my two weeks stuffing my face with yummy food and running around London and Brighton in the cold weather wearing two coats on top of each other like a mad woman trying to see all of my friends and family. My whole body hurts from running up and down the tube steps and I feel a little bit sleep deprived but this is the type of pain that comes from having too much fun and that ain’t bad.

I had taken my laptop with me with the aim of updating my blog, but who was I kidding I don’t think I even turned my laptop on once while I was there and that’s a little bit shameful!

For the past few months I have been thinking more and more about making pieces that are more classic looking and wearable and as much as I love doing more elaborate pieces and using art images in my work, I know that I cannot in reality sell those pieces .so I have been aiming at making let’s say more sophisticated pieces that can be sold without any copyright problems and all those sort of things.

A few months ago as a thank you gift for a friend of my mom I decided to make a turquoise brooch. I love turquoise and as you have seen if you have looked through my blog, you see that I use them quite often. I needed to make something elegant and not too over the top but I didn’t want it too understated either. That is not me at all.

The turquoise cabochons are beautiful on their own so after doing a simple bezel I just needed something to add a little but of sparkle to the piece and then it would be done.

The swarovski crystal chain that I used is the most beautiful crystal chain that I own, I love this chain so much that it physically hurts me when I cut it up to use. I guess it hurts me because I can’t seem to get it anymore for the price that I got it for. I was lucky though that the lady that sold it to me on Etsy was kind enough to sell me some more from her private stash.

I find that when I use the chain in a piece my work is really done and I don’t feel the need to add more. So once that was added I finished off the piece with a simple picot edge.

My friend wore this brooch over a black dress at wedding and she got quite a few compliments which led to a few people asking me to make one for them and as soon as I get my hands on some of these cabochons I am going to start making more of these brooches to put on my Etsy shop. I hope you guys have enjoyed looking at this piece and I hope you are all doing well!

Evil Eyes

2013-01-30T11:47:00.002-05:00

I know I have been MIA for a while and I tell you why. I had never ever in my entire life ever wanted to work in retail. Not that there is anything wrong with it, I just have bad feet and a bad back which means standing on my feet for a long time is a pain in the bum! Literally! But jobs in fashion are hard to come by and so when the opportunity for the retail job I have now represented itself I jumped at the chance. And as luck would have it we were allowed to sit unless we had customers which worked out absolutely perfectly for me but this past few weeks we had an outpost in another part of the store which meant that we were each standing on out feet for hours on end with no relief.

I think I have mentioned how much I loved my colleagues but this standing around for hours each day was enough to test the boundaries of all our friendship. We were all tired, cranky and mad at our manager for not helping us out .so when we were finally thrown out of the outpost space and had to go back to our little salon in the store we were all so happy we nearly did a little jig.

So with the long hours and the aches and pain behind me I can resume somewhat of a normal life and that in turn means getting some content on this blog.

I have a colleague who is probably one of the funniest people I have met in a long time and he is always telling me the weirdest stories about his life and let me tell you he has lived a life. I keep telling him I should start writing a book about his life so we could get rich and be done with this daily routine.

A while back he told me a story about how he had an evil eye necklace, which was given to him by his mom. Apparently he drove his mom crazy so she would give to him and she kept saying that she would give it to him when he was older so he would be able to take care of it. And lo and behold he got it when he was older and he went and lost it! He said he has been searching for another evil eye piece so when he asked me if I could make him something with an evil eye on it I said sure!

I didn’t want to do any bead embroidery because to be honest I didn’t know how to keep a bead-embroidered piece masculine. So instead I decided to do a thin peyote stitch strap that resembles a watchstrap so it can be a bit more on the masculine side.

I had bought two different colours of delicas because I could not decide which one matched the colour of an evil eye better so of course I ended up making him two sets of bracelets one thin one with the darker delicas that I liked more and for the lighter colour beads he requested a thicker bracelet which I tried to talk him out of because I didn’t think the proportion of the eye that I had to the thickness of the bracelet would work but it was his bracelet in the end anyway so I made him what he wanted!

As far as I know he has worn the thicker bracelet once or twice since I made it for him in early December but the thinner one has always been on him! He says it has given him good luck and I say it is all in his head and it’s probably because he really does seem to believe in the whole evil eye thing!

A couple of days ago he asked me if I could make him an adjustable eye bracelet using some beads he had seen me use on another bracelet. For the life of me I could not understand why someone would need so many eye bracelets but well to each their own. I did tell him that by the time I am done with this job and it’s time for me to move on to a permanent job he would be covered in eyeballs!

For these new bracelets I used blue wax cording which I just ran through the beads. I put a little bit of glue on the end of the cords to make them stiffer and to stop them from unraveling too much when I was pushing them through the beads. I also decided to use these new flat evil eye beads that my mom had sent me in the bracelet, my only issue with them was that they have a little it of glitter around the pupil part of the eye but I was able to find one that had a little bit less glitter that the rest which I didn’t think would look too bad on a man’s bracelet!

All in all I have to say I like these bracelet and I ended up making some for my other colleagues in different colours too but I have to say making beaded pieces be masculine is hard to do. Or at least it is for me! I am still not sure if I was able to produce a masculine piece with these, but I am hoping that these pieces come across as a little bit less girly as my other pieces at least!

Leather,Gold and Turquoise Bracelet

2012-12-25T19:12:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you have all had a wonderful and special day today. I for one took this day to rest and clean up my flat! Here is the thing; I believe I might be the only person in the world that goes to work on their day off because they just enjoy being around the people that they work with. And since today was the only day that no one was going to be at work I had no choice but to sit around the flat and get some of my own work done!

I love my co-workers they are fun, funny and they make me feel less alone in this world and I love spending every single minute that I can with them! So since I have started working at this place I think I have only not gone to work on my off days to hang out maybe just once or twice. But whenever I go for a couple of hours I make sure to take some of my beading to get done over there which for me feels like killing two birds with one stone; not only do I get to have fun but then I am doing something that I love to do on my time off anyway.

So last week when I was there for a visit I had taken this huge 2-inch turquoise stone to do some beading on. My aim was to either turn it into a brooch or a necklace. But as soon as I took the stone out of my bag to start my work my manager asked if the piece was I was working on was for her. To be honest I had already made her something for Christmas with gold and turquoise charms (knowing that she loves anything turquoise) but when she started dropping hints that she wanted the stone I was working on as a bracelet then I just had to do it.

The problem is she has teeny tiny wrists and the only way I could make a bracelet for her without measuring her wrist was to make a bracelet using a bracelet base.

I have seen a lot of these bracelets using bracelet bases but I have never done it and my manager had a very specific design. She wanted a gold bezel on a leather base and nothing else. So something very simple and for those of you who have seen my previous work you know that I do not do subtle. Restraint is not something I exercise much of in my beading!

My other problem was that I only had a few hours to make the bracelet. Our office party was on Saturday and she started telling me about what she wanted on Thursday afternoon so this piece was done rather quickly because I had already decided to make a whole load of muffins and chocolate mousse to take to work on Saturday, thank god I had Friday off so I could get everything done

Doing a bezel is easy and it doesn’t really take me that long. I glued my cabochon onto a faux leather piece, which was all I had and did my rose gold and gold bezel. The main struggle with this bracelet was figuring out how to use the bracelet base and how to bead around it and I didn’t find it that easy to do.

I bought a bracelet base from Michael’s that had a flatter top, which was somewhat perfect for the huge turquoise stone because it gave it more of a flat base to sit on. The only thing with the bracelet base was that it was not a solid bracelet base so in order to stop the filigree pattern that the bracelet had from showing through once the leather was glued onto it I also used a layer of Lacy’s stiff stuff so that the pattern of the bracelet would stay hidden.

I glued the leather with the beaded turquoise stone on to the bracelet and trimmed around it, I cut another piece of leather and glued it to the inside of the bracelet and trimmed that as well .if I had time I would have waited a while for the glue to dry off before starting to finish the edge but I just had to get it done so I could wrap it and go to bed, so I set out finishing the edge. The one thing about working with the faux leather that I didn’t like was that the stitches were very visible and that doesn’t sit well with me. Since making this bracelet I have made another one for myself, which is a little bit different, and I have use Ultrasuede in that one and the stitching is not visible at all and I love that. I will share pictures of that bracelet in another post having said that I think I need to do more stuff with leather backing so that I could get comfortable with and make my stitching on leather nicer and neater. If any of you guys have used a bracelet base and know of an easier way to trim and finish the edge please let me know, I really need some help in that area!

I finished the bracelet around 1am and went to work the next day at around 7:30, suffice to say I was beat but the look on her face when she opened and saw the bracelet was all worth it.

So anyway I hope you guys enjoyed looking through the pictures of this bracelet too and hope you have had a wonderful Christmas!

Black Spiked Bracelet

2012-12-15T19:26:00.003-05:00

HI friends!

I feel like its been ages since I had a free moment to update my blog, well to be honest it has been a while and my mom keeps reminding me that I haven’t put anything on my blog which makes me feel bad but I have been crazy busy. So today I decided to bring in my laptop to work and use my lunch hour to update my blog.

I have been trying to bead any chance I get and since starting this job I have gotten a few orders from my colleagues but this bracelet I am writing about is a one of the last pieces I finished just before hurricane sandy.

A week or so before sandy I discovered this amazing bead shop in NJ called Blanche’s bead store. The store seemed very small from the outside but omg when you pass the threshold and walk in you are transported into bead heaven. Needless to say I went nuts in the store and bought way more than I had anticipated. But one thing I was very chuffed to find was these sew on spikes I had been looking for, for some time and they had them in quite a few different colours. I also ended up buying these metal hex cut beads that looked somewhat like very small Czech beads.

I knew I had to make something with the spikes as soon as I got home, so I went through all the pictures I had made into cabs and chose this one painting by Oleg Dou which I though was perfect.

Sometimes I find working with different finishes of silver a bit challenging. It seems that sometimes different finishes and colours can be either too dull or too shiny and they don’t necessarily look good sitting next to each other but I soldiered on until I was somewhat happy with how things were working.

I used my maleficent bracelet as an inspiration for the beadwork on this piece and once I got into the swing of things I started changing it around a bit so it wouldn’t look too similar to the other bracelet.

One thing I have to mention is that the spikes get stuck on everything so just sewing them on is not actually enough because they turn over when the get caught, so I ended up putting some glue on the bottom of the spikes to they would stay put!

Pink Bollywood Inspired Earrings!

2012-11-25T20:42:00.000-05:00

Today was my day off from work which means I have been up since 9am running around trying to clean up the flat and run errands, suffice to say that today was crazier and busier than my days at work so I thought I’d finish off the day by writing about one of the crazier pieces I have done.

Crazy in the sense that I am not a pink lover, I have never been but I had such an urge to do a pink piece that it took me by surprise. I think it was because I had been looking at Indian saris and watching Hindi songs on Youtube for some fabric research I am doing, that I got overexcited by all the colours and sparkles and pink saris that I just had to make something upbeat.

One of the songs that I looked at is called “nainon mein sapna” from a movie called Himmatwala. I have not seen the film but all the colours in the world seem to make an appearance in this song. All the jewelry, the colours and sparkles, the song and dance is enough to overload the senses but I cannot help but feel cheerful when watching this clip and these earrings where somewhat inspired by the colours, fabrics and jewelry in this song and these outfits in particular.

I was surprise to see that I had pink beads in my stash. Not only that, I had the same pink beads in both size 8/0 and 11/0 which was a welcome surprise. Since this is bollywood inspired I went with the biggest crystal cabochon that I had which were this 30mm teardrop shaped sew on swarovski crystals that my mom had got me a while back.

For me the colours in this piece were crazy enough that I just didn’t feel comfortable doing much when in came to the design which is ironic since this was the perfect opportunity to go completely bonkers on the design since it was inspired by all the flash of bollywood but I just couldn’t bring myself to go too crazy.

I think it was fun stepping out of comfort zone but this is not something I think I can do all the time. Even though I am glad I did it I cannot imagine doing another piece this bright, at least not for a while! hope you guys have had a lovely , fun-filled weekend !!

Black Wings Bracelet

2012-11-14T21:15:00.000-05:00

I have been so busy this week work and I have to admit I love it, I love that feeling of having some sort of purpose but it seems like I can only do one thing at a time and I have really been neglecting my home life and my social life. Also I am so tired by the time I get home that I have been going to bed at around ten. I have always been a night owl, going to bed at let’s say 5 am is nothing new to me, I find it easier to work during the night, less distractions and all that but now I cannot wait to crawl into bed!

So lately in my beadwork I have been more and more into tightening my colour palette and not using every single bead I possess in every piece. I know I tend to get a little bit overboard with my bead usage. So I set out to only use three colours with this bracelet: red, gold and black. Also for backing I used black Ultrasuede tacked onto Lacy’s stiff stuff.

I really liked the way that the hex cut beads looked in my last bracelet and since I have a huge package of those I decided to use those beads as the main body of my piece.

As always I started with my bezel and then moved on to the wing portion, which I had already mapped out on my backing. In order to get the piece as symmetrical as possible I did one side first and then moved on to the other so I could make everything match. So the number of beaded lined on each side is the same.

I was really happy with how things were looking after the first couple of black rows but I wondered if the piece would look very flat by using only black. So I decided to incorporate different types of stones in the same colour palette. Luckily I had just enough red fire polished beads to finish this bracelet off .so I decided to use them to separate the black sections.

I also didn’t want to use any other cabs but then I decided I needed to. The red cabs that I used are Mexican opals in dragon breath. I loved the colours of these. They are a nice red but in a certain light they look somewhat blue but when I glued them on my backing, which was black, they completely lost their appeal. But since I didn’t have any other cab that would have worked I decided to draw around the cab and cut the Ultrasuede up so that I could glue these cabs on to the Lacy’s stiff stuff. Once the cabs were glued onto a white background they got their blue tint back. I am just glad that the whole thing worked otherwise I would have had to undo all the work and start all over again.

I kind of only noticed the red lights on the model’s face when I was done with the piece, it kind of looked like the red cab underneath it was the cause of all the red lights on her face and I really liked that.

Once the body was done I decided to not add any decorative edge as I thought the piece looked fine as it was and the good thing with a decorative edge is that it can be added whenever, so if at a later time I think it needs it I can go back and do that without any problems. To finish off I added a gold clasp to the bracelet and it was all done.

The Angel Bracelet

2012-11-07T23:31:00.000-05:00

To say that this week has been the most bizarre week of my entire year would be an understatement! First off I really thought I had lost my mind this past week; I went a little bit stupid without electricity! So much so that I vouched to go and visit Thomas Edison’s grave once my power came back on and to my surprise I found out that his grave is somewhere in New Jersey, this whole thing cannot be a coincidence! So when the weather is better I would need to go and pay my respect because as of Monday my electricity has been back on!

On Sunday night I went to bed after putting on as much clothing on as I could and snuggled under my two heavy-duty duvets! As I was tossing and turning trying to get warm enough so I would fall asleep I heard a weird noise! I think it sounded weird because I hadn’t heard that noise in nearly 10 days. The air conditioning was making noises; I jumped out of bed in a daze and turned the lights on! OH MY GOD!! POWER! I went in to the living room turned my TV and computer on and everything was working, you should have seen me I was standing in the middle of the room flooded by artificial light and I was completely gob smacked, my mouth opening and closing like a fish! Then five minutes later the power went out again and I was ready to burst out crying but I thought that would be silly so I went back to bed! And then two minutes later the power came back up again and then went out again, and the pattern went on for a couple of hours but I am so so so glad that the power is back on and everything feels so normal! To top off such an amazing day I got a call to say that I was hired at this place that I had applied for a job and that I could start the next day!

So I think I have been like somewhat of a headless chicken this past week with all the different problems with what happened here in New Jersey and I have been trying to adapt to this new schedule that I am on so I feel I have really neglected my blog.but we will blame sandy for that!

I made this piece a month or so ago. I had been drawing a lot of patterns that resembled wings and I had been trying to experiment with different curves and shapes. Also I had been meaning to work with these hex cut type beads that I have had for a really long time!
Since the shape reminded me of wings I went with grey/clear palette although one of the hex cut beads seems to have a purple tint to it but I still think the colours work together well.

I have also been wanting to do a full row of bugle beads around a piece but I haven’t been able to get them to sit right. Every time I tried I got really weird gaps and I don’t like gaps but I was determined to try it out and maybe because I used a smaller size bugle beads (3mm in this case) the gaps were not too bad and I could get the bugles as close together as possible while following a tight curve around the centre cabochon. I also used the same bugle beads for the edge finish to give the bracelet more of an angelic/feather/ ray of light type of feel in keeping with the theme I was going for.

It feels great being back on the blog and being able to post about beading again and I hope you have enjoyed this piece! I also hope that it would stop snowing now, I have work tomorrow and I really don’t enjoy driving in the snow! Good night everyone!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

OVAL WHITE CABOCHON
20x15 CAT’S EYE GRAY CABOCHON
SILVER TEARDROP GEMSTONE BY RECOLLECTION
5MM HEMATITE RONDEL STONE BEADS
2MM CRYSTAL CHAIN
3MM GUNMETAL BUGLE BEADS
MATSUNO SILVER HEX 2-CUT BEADS SIZE 11/0
MATSUNO SILVER-LINED TRANSPARENT PURPLE HEX 2-CUT BEADS SIZE 11/0
SILVER LINED DARK GRAY SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 SB1563
SILVER SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
ANTIQUE SILVER PERMANENT GALVANIZED SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 SB2600
SILVER LINED CRYSTAL SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
DBS 0251
SILVER LINED PALES GRAY SEED BEADS size 15/0 sb3399
METALLIC DARK SILVER SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0 SB3197
CLASP
GRAY ULTRASUEDE
LACY’S STIFF STUFF
FIRELINE 0.006” IN CLEAR

the hurricane

2012-11-05T01:20:00.000-05:00

a whole week without electricity is enough to drive me crazy and all this time I thought I was made of tougher stuff.
I decided to just stay home yesterday and by 4 in the afternoon The flat had gotten too dark to do any beading! I decided to light up every candle i had . To be honest it did give the flat a nice ambiance and i enjoyed it for about ten minutes until i settled to read a book and the flickering light gave me such headache that I decided to go to bed at 10 , something I have not done in years but what else could I do? Also all the candle fumes had made me look like i had fallen down the chimney . It was very amusing my whole face was covered in soot . Who knew that candles could do that?
All through the night i dreamt of the power being back on . The one dream i remember is me opening the fridge door and seeing its light turning on!! But alas no electricity this morning either and even worse my phone had died. So this morning I set out to just drive around while my phone got charged in the car. I went to the apple store and used their iPhone docks, searched high and low around my area for size D batteries for my flashlight but no one had any left.
By 6 it had gotten too dark and since most of the traffic lights are not working i decided the best thing to do was to head home. On the way back i decided to go to Michael's and get a pack of those flameless candles . I don't think continuous candle smoke inhalation would have been any good for me.and I am glad i did cause i ended up buying a table lamp that was battery operated! Hurray
Now here is the part that maybe years from now i will find amusing but today just frustrated me:as i was driving towards my flat i started noticing houses with their lights on.oh my god !could this be??? I drove nearer and nearer to my flat and still there were lights. A bubble of happiness formed in my chest. My building complex is made of two adjoining complexes . Both have the same name and sit back to back but they are not internally connected . So when i drove past the back flats and saw that they had power i was ready to burst from happiness! Even the flats opposite my complex had power!
I think you can guess where i am going with this ! As i turned into my building complex i was engulfed in such total darkness that it took my breath away!
I am really amazed at how much I rely on modern conveniences and how lost i feel without them! I sometimes struggle to see how we used to live without a mobile phone , and phones are quite a new thing by comparison ,I could not even begin to comprehend life without electricity! I
All day i kept thinking that in all those Jane Austen novels when the were having balls and dances at night , they were probably doing it in the darkness because i cannot begin to fathom how many candles were needed to light up those huge ballrooms!! because i had about 22 candles in my small living room and i was still struggling to see anything in front of me?
oh boy! I think i really have lost my marbles a little bit sitting in this dark cold flat!
If any of you are on the west coast and went through this hurricane I hope you are all safe!

Vintage Green Earrings

2012-10-28T20:38:00.000-04:00

When I first decided to do bead embroidery it was all because of a video on Youtube by Beadaholique. I didn’t know anything about bead embroidery even though I had done a lot of just random beading at my fashion jobs .i really didn’t have a clue where to start so I went ahead and bought the stuff that was mentioned in their video plus some vintage German cabochons that they had on their website. I loved the German cabs I got from there specially the green and purple ones I had purchased. Since they only had a limited number of cabs left and these were vintage stones I decided to go ahead and buy out the rest of the green and purple cabs that they had in stock. i am so glad I did because they haven’t restocked these cabs again and I haven’t been able to find them anywhere even though I have been looking constantly.

Out of the two cabochons I would have to say that the green one that I have used in this piece is my favorite but I had the hardest time matching any colour bead to it.

The cabochon has a unique teal/turquoise colour and I have quite a few different beads that fall in that category but none of them looked anything special next to the cabochon. None of them added anything to the piece and I thought maybe I was going about this the wrong way.

The cab has a nice shine and effect to it and the beads I was testing around it, all had different shiny effects on them and so maybe that was the problem. Too many different finishes were clashing with each other. I went with a matte finish bead in the end that was close enough to the main colour of the cab.

I think the matte effect of the bead helps in that they make the main cabochon stand out even more. But I needed to use another type or colour of bead to make the piece more dimensional and interesting and none of the blues and teals were doing that so I decided to see if metal colours would work.

I don’t have an innate way with colour and matching colours is my main headache when it comes to any type of designing whether it is beadwork or if it is fashion design work. So after doing little samples with gold/silver and bronze, I settled with bronze and loved how the piece turned out.

For the edge I did the all too popular picot edge but I really though the piece deserved a little bit more so I decided to experiment with filling out the space between the size 11/0 beads of the picot edge.

I was going for a rounded effect at first. I found out that adding four size 15/0 seed beads between each size 11/0 beads would just lie flat .in the next step I added five which I found with a little but of manipulation would make these pointy shapes and I was really excited about so I scraped the idea of having round loops around the earrings and went with this pointy edge.

I was going to keep these earrings for myself but I decided to list them on Etsy and I was glad and really surprised when they got sold. Good thing is I still have a few more of the main cabs left so I can make more of these if I ever wanted to!:D

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

VINTAGE GERMAN CABOCHONS
15x15mm SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL STONE
MATTE TRANSPARENT MINT GREEN RAINBOW SEED BEADS SIZE 8/0
METALLIC GOLD SEED BEADS SIZE 8/0
MATTE TRANSPARENT DARK SEA GREEN IRIS SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
DARK METALLIC BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
METALLIC LIGHT BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
10mm SURGICAL STEEL FLAT GLUE ON EARRING POST
LACY’S STIFF STUFF
GREY ULTRASUEDE
FIRELINE THREAD 0.006 IN CLEAR
E-6000

Crystal Skull Brooch

2012-10-23T20:47:00.000-04:00

A friend of my mom had asked me to make a turquoise necklace and earring set for her and yesterday while I was there showing her the samples of the things I had made for her and she asked me why I liked skulls so much. I have thought about this so much, because I don’t like anything gory, or scary but I keep getting asked why I like things with skulls on them and I really have no answer for it.

I really don’t know why I like them so much. All I know is that I liked skulls way before I started worshipping anything Alexander McQueen makes with skulls. I find it a little odd that my family and friends prod me this much about my love of skulls saying weird things are but you are so normal why would you like skulls, as if people that like skulls are in someway abnormal! But I have stopped trying to explain why I like things with skulls on them. I think it’s a same as someone liking pastel florals. I don’t like floral patterns in general (unless they are very sharp and modern which is rare but it happens) but then I wouldn’t go around and say “seriously what do you see in florals, florals are frumpy!

But it’s a matter of opinion and taste and we are all entitled to them. But for this piece I had an agenda. I had been thinking about how feasible it was to make a bead embroidered piece while incorporating small cutouts in the process.

For this piece I went with an image by Tom Bagshaw titled “Lucky 13”. The beading design mimics the flourish that is drawn underneath the skull. I did a couple of sketches to get the placement and the sizing of the curlicue design right so that when the beading was being done it would look continuous.

I also had to plan out the size of the cut-outs to keep them to a size big enough where I could go in with scissors and make the cuts and have it make the impact I want as well as for it to be small enough to be cohesive with the piece.

As you can see it is doable but I did find it difficult to cut into the piece and be aware not to cut any of the threads. I took my time cleaning the edges and getting as close as I could to the edges when I was making the inside cuts.

Once it was done I drew the outline on my Ultrasuede so I could make the cuts before gluing the suede to my piece which made things a lot easier and only had to do a little it of touch ups to get just right.

To clean up the edges I went around the piece with size 11/0 seed beads but I used size 15/0 for the edges of the cutouts. I did a crazy stacked edging on the top part and if that wasn’t enough I went with a dangly Swarovski crystal on the bottom.

Even though I know skulls are not really something most of you guys are into, I still hope you enjoyed the piece! :D

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

35mm CLEAR GLASS DOME
3mm AMETHYST ROUND FACETED GLASS BEADS FROM BEAD GALLERY
3x5 PALE TRANSPARENT AMETHYST FACETED RONDELLE GLASS BEADS
3MM CLEAR AB FACETED GLASS BEADS FROM THE BEAD GALLERY
SMOKEY AMETHYST SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
DYED SMOKEY OPAL SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
MATTE OPAQUE MAUVE DELICA BEADS SIZE 11/0
SILVER LINED PURPLE HEX 2-CUT BEADS
SILVER LINED CLEAR HEX2-CUT BEADS
MATTE TRANSPARENT LIGHT BROWN AB
TRANSPARENT GOLD AMETHYST SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
METALLIC VIOLET SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
LACY’S STIFF STUFF
1.5-INCH BASE METAL PIN BACK
GREY ULTRASUEDE
FIRELINE THREAD 0.006 IN CLEAR
E-6000

Sparkly Turquoise Earrings

2012-10-20T21:30:00.000-04:00

Ahhhh what better way to spend a Saturday evening than sitting down and watching My Fair Lady? As I am writing this, poor little Eliza is trying to pronounce words beginning with H and setting fire to things! What joy.

My favorite part of the movie has to be the embassy ball with that amazing crystal necklace! Which brings me to today’s little beaded piece, which is a mixture of turquoise and crystals.

The idea for this came from my turquoise bracelet which I had made a long while ago. I was really happy with how the beads and crystals worked together so I decided to make a pair of earrings to go with the piece.

I didn’t have any more of the green crystal pieces I had used on the bracelet so for these earrings I substituted them with a pair of turquoise cabochons and for the bottom part of the earring I used a larger swarovski crystal stud earrings which I cut the backs off in order to use as the focal component.

Hope you guys are having a wonderful weekend and If anyone is interested in these earrings they are available on my Etsy.

LIST OF MATERIALS USED

▪ 15mm Round Glass Cabochon – Turquoise

▪ SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL STUDS

▪ SILVER LINED OPAL BLUE/GREEN SEED BEADS SIZE 6/0

▪ TRANSPARENT MEDIUM SEA GREEN AB SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0

▪ TRANSPARENT OLIVE BRONZE LUSTER SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 SB2518

▪ METALLIC DARK OLIVE GREEN SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0 SB3451

▪ 4MM GLASS FACETED BEADS IN PARROT FROM THE BEAD GALLERY

▪ TRANSPARENT GOLD AMETHYST SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0

▪ 10mm SURGICAL STEEL FLAT GLUE ON EARRING POST

▪ LACY’S STIFF STUFF

▪ GREY ULTRASUEDE

▪ FIRELINE THREAD 0.006 IN CLEAR

▪ E-6000

Emancipation Brooch

2012-10-17T22:44:00.000-04:00

I have been so tired lately and I blame the squirrels!!

So a week or so ago I started hearing these really weird sound echoing all around me which turned out to be some squirrels that have made themselves feel right at home just on my bedroom ceiling and are partying up there all night long, every night. good for them but not good for me!!

My eyes are closing as I am writing this but I decided to write a small post for two reasons: first, I don’t really like to ignore the blog specially now since it’s a brand new blog and it’s a baby and needs more attention and secondly I was told off by my mom for not having updated the blog for 3 days!! Now I don’t know about you but I loathe disappointing my mom more than anyone else!

This is a small brooch I worked on a while ago when I had absolutely no idea what to do. I kept wanting to come up with elaborate, grand designs and I couldn’t get a solid idea going so I went to the other end of the spectrum by going completely simple.

And apparently when I go simple I go really simple. I used an image from Natalie Shau called “ Released Time” and grey and red painting and hence the grey and red beadwork.the painting is breathtaking and I really suggest you visit her website to get a better sense of how beautiful and detailed her work is

The design as you see is as simple as it gets, the only new thing about this piece is the edge finish in which I used drop beads which give a fun effect and I wonder why I haven’t used this type of finishing on any other piece since! Hope you guys enjoyed this piece even though it’s rather plain and simple!!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

Lady with Dark Hair Pearl Necklace

2012-10-14T19:42:00.002-04:00

Can you believe the weekend is over? I spent the whole of Saturday waiting for a package that never arrived and then after doing my weekly shopping I decided to go through my scrapbooking supplies and see what I could get rid off. Suffice it to say that by the time I looked through just half the stuff I had I was a little bit ashamed of myself for spending that much money on things that I don’t use. I love paper but I am no scrapbooker .I think I need to find a way of selling all the dies and punches and stamps I have accumulated in the past year. There is no point in them just sitting in drawers.

But before the weekend is over I want to at least get one post finished in order to achieve one positive thing. So this post is about one of my earlier pieces, which means it was done roughly 4-5 months ago when I was in my resin cabochon-making phase.

There are a few setbacks to these resin cabochons. First of all it takes a long time for them to get made and you never know if the finished product is going to come out perfect (without pesky air bubbles or watermarks) until it is all done and over. Another thing that can go wrong with the cabochons is the thickness of it.

For my pieces I used to do a thin layer, put the picture in let it cure for 12 hours and then add a layer of black. But after a couple of uses my molds became a bit lopsided so some of the cabochons were thicker on one side and thinner on the other even though I tried to get it as level as possible. This means that when it comes to bezeling the piece it would look weird. And no matter how much I sanded the piece I could never get it completely even which is why I ultimately switched to clear domes.

This resin cabochon was made using a painting by Harrison Fisher titled “lady with dark hair”. The cab that I had made was too thick so I had to come up with a way of covering the sides and at this point I was only doing stacked bezeling and hadn’t learnt the how to do peyote stitch bezel .so after the initial two stacked rows I decided to add the one thing I go to when I can’t find a bead that works: pearls.

I went through the size 15/0 beads and came out ever 8 beads to add a 2mm pearl stacked with a size 15/seed bead. Once I had gone all around the piece I only had to go through one of the size 15/0 beads on top of a pearl and start adding size 15/0 beads to close the gap between the beads and form a bezel around the cabochon.

After I was done with the main piece I made two other smaller pieces to match the main piece and I just had to connect everything together. I made a simple chain with the beads and pearls that I had used in the main pieces and attached a spring clasp. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to attach clasps back then and you can see that I have gone around the loop of the clasp with thread a few times to secure it on and I don’t like that I can see the thread .so next time I go back home to visit my parents I have take this necklace from my mom and fix the clasp issues.

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

2mm WHITE PEARLS
3mm WHITE PEARLS
5mm WHITE PEARLS
18mm JET BLACK ROUND CABOCHONS
GOLD SAUCER SHAPED RIBBED SPACER BEADS
TEARDROP VINTAGE PEARL
2mm BROWN GOLDSTONE BEADS
METALLIC KHAKI BROWN SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
METALLIC BROWN SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
METALLIC LIGHT BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
ANTIQUE COPPER SPRING CLASP

Amethyst Purple and Crystal Earring

2012-10-11T21:05:00.001-04:00

I don’t know why but lately I have been really into making earrings. I think it’s probably because they are quicker to make and I am less afraid to use colour in smaller pieces than I in bigger pieces. To be honest I am not sure. I was never much of an earring wearer to begin with. I am more of a bracelet and ring person but I am not sure if a bead-embroidered ring would work.

When I was putting together pieces that I could use in earrings I came across these wonderful faceted square Swarovski crystals that my mom had sent me. The good thing about them was that they didn’t have any holes for sewing through in them, bad thing about them was that they had a faceted back and I was bit iffy about using them.

So the challenge for this piece was gluing the faceted piece to the backing. I had read in the dimensional embroidery book that the way to use these types of stones was to use some sort of air-dry clay under them to make some sort of a setting. I was a little apprehensive to be honest about how to actually do it but after doing more research and finding no other method I decided to just give it a try.

The book says to use air-dry clay and the only type that I found on the day that I went to Michaels was the Martha Stewart’s crafter clay, which is very puffy and kind of reminds me of marshmallows. I made small balls and put the stone on top of the clay ball and pushed it down onto a flat surface to make the setting that the gem would sit in and trimmed the excess clay. Once the clay was dry I checked to see if it was actually stuck to the gem and I found that I could easily peel it back. the thing is that once the bezel was done , the gem would have been completely encased in the beads and would not have fallen out but just to be on the safe side I decided to glue the stone to the setting and then sanded them a little so that the setting would be as thin as possible and then glued it on to my backing.

Once that whole section was done then it was off to doing the bezel work and the beadwork. For these earrings I went with a gold and bronze palette to compliment the vintage purple cabochons.

The thing with beaded earring as I found out is that they are very lightweight. I usually don’t wear earrings because after a while my ears start throbbing but I have been really comfortable with the beaded earrings that I have made for myself. I think it is probably because there is no metal setting involved in making the earrings, which makes the pieces very light and hence comfortable to wear.

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

18x25mm VINTAGE GERMAN GLASS AMETHYST PURPLE CABOCHONS
15x15 mm SQUARE SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL
2.5mm APOLLO GOLD CZECH FIREPOLISH BEADS FP2611
2mm GOLDSTONE BEADS
3mm GOLDSTONE BEADS
DARK PURPLISH BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
GOLD SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
GOLD METAL SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
10mm SURGICAL STEEL FLAT GLUE ON EARRING POST
FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN SMOKE GREY
LACY’S STIFF STUFF
BLACK ULTRASUEDE
E-6000 GLUE
CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

Sailor Girl

2012-10-08T22:16:00.001-04:00

I would like to start off by saying that this piece turned out to a bane of my beading existence. I had wanted to do something with this painting from Mary Jane Ansell for a while and I thought it would work perfectly with the swarovski crystal chains that I had ordered. This piece is from her “The beauty of the Hours” series and is titled “Girl in a cocked hat”

I glued the piece on the backing and did the initial bezel. I decided to do a row around the bezel with the navy blue beads I had used in the bezel to make the crystal chain pop a little bit more. And then did another row with the same beads after I had sewed on the crystal chain. So far so good.

I started this piece right after I had done my Maleficent bracelet so I was pumped. That piece had come together so nicely that I wanted to replicate that experience. That’s when I decided to turn this piece into a bracelet.

Since I had planned this piece as a brooch I had glued it to a small piece of backing which meant that the bracelet would have to be made of separate pieces. But that was ok. I drew out the shape I wanted the sides to look like and went looking for stones, cabochons and other beads to use in the piece. And I had nothing. Well I mean I had stuff but nothing that would go with this piece.

So I went online in search of blue stones. I found some blue opal stones on the website where I had purchased the crystal chains so I thought they would be a good a choice. While I was at it I went on my favorite website for buying seed beads to get some that might help the process along.

So at this point I couldn’t really go any further with the piece. I had to wait until I had all my pieces so I could start up again. Leaving a piece half finished is never a good idea. I lose my train of thought and my groove and it’s always a little hard to get back into that exact same frame of mind to finish up a piece. But I had no choice, I moved onto doing other pieces.

A week or so passed and I got my packages but I really wasn’t feeling it so I didn’t go back to the piece. But the fact that it was unfinished kept nagging me so I gave in and decided to just finish the piece and be done with it.

I glued on the blue opal stones I had purchased for this piece and started doing the same bezel as I had done around main focal image. It took me a couple of tries to get an even number around the piece in order to get the bezel done but I finally got there. I followed the same pattern as the main image and added the pearl and goldstone.

This is as far as I had planned but when I put the pieces next to each other it was so obvious that the piece would not fit around my wrist. So I had to add more.

Initially I thought I’d do a row of bugle beads all around the piece. I had seen it done and I though how hard can it be, the answer was very hard. I just could not get the beads to sit right, there were unsightly gaps and they just look weird . So I thought why not just use seed beads. But on second inspection I found out that I had run out of the navy blue seed beads I had used in the piece.

Argghhhhhhhhhhhh!! This is the point at which I started thinking this piece just does not want to get made!

The right thing would have been to order the blue beads but I was just really frustrated with the piece at this point and I didn’t want to have to wait another week or so for beads. I decided to use what I had instead.

Once the few rows were added I was thinking surely it will fit at this point. But alas it was not to be. So I started adding other elements. I mean at this point I just had to laugh and go with it. Ok maybe had I planned things better or if this pattern was what I had in mind I would have been ok with it but since I had to keep adding and adding things just to make this bracelet reach the 7.5 inches I needed for it to fit around my wrist, everything felt like an afterthought.

I cut the pieces out finished the edges and connected them together. And wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing still didn’t fit!!

I mean the process I went to through to finish this piece was so ridiculous that it makes me laugh. I have done enough beading now, not to have to repeat these basic stuff over and over again to get it right but with this piece I had to rework every element over and over just to get it somewhat right!

All in all I am at peace with this bracelet, its not one of my favorites but I don’t hate it now as much as I did when I was making it. But I am sure glad it’s done

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

Blue Goldstone Earrings

2012-10-07T01:35:00.001-04:00

True to form I managed to waste my whole Saturday, I had so many plans. I think it’s because I heard back from one of the jobs I had interviewed for and I was told that I was overqualified which is the most bizarre explanation for not giving someone a job ever in my opinion! After reading the email in a half asleep state this morning I decided to take a portion of the day and wallow. I mean no one should start their Saturday with this type of email. So I moped about for a while going through the 7 stages of grief but apparently It took more than a few hours to get over the news because I suddenly looked at the clock and its now nearly 1:30 in the morning. Nooooo!!

I might have wasted my whole day but I am not going to waste my night so I have decided to write up a quick post.

A while back I shared pictures of a piece I had made which I had yet to finish. You can see the original post here.

I finally decided it was time to do something with the piece and even though I had originally made the pieces for gloves, in the end I decided it would be best to make them into earrings.

I used crafters ultimate glue to glue the piece to Ultrasuede making sure to glue a couple of millimeters away from the edge. This is so that the needle could go through the backing and the Ultrasuede easier but if you decide to do this and get glue to the edge don’t worry the needle still goes through, it might need a little bit more coaxing at times but it will go through,

I was thinking of doing a clean edge around the piece but since I had used bigger beads in my last row of beading I thought that doing a clean edge might look a little bit weird so I opted to do a sunshine edge and do a basic picot edge to finish the piece off.

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

10mm SURGICAL STEEL GLUE ON EARRING POSTS

FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN SMOKE GREY

BLACK ULTRASUEDE

CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

Gold Sparkly Earrings

2012-10-03T15:16:00.000-04:00

One of my proudest moments in the bead embroidery journey was when I finished my first bracelet. I just kept thinking that making a whole beaded bracelet was going to be such a huge ordeal and what if I don’t like the piece and what if I can’t do it and all that. It is funny that I am always one of those people who tells everyone to try something and if it doesn’t work out they will know for sure but I seem to not want to take my own advice. I mean giving advice is so much easier than taking it , right!

But I am glad I started making bracelets and its ironic that the reason that I like making bracelets now is the exact reason why I avoided them in the first place. Now I like having to spend time on a piece for more than a day or so, because the process is calming and it gives me time to think and plan new pieces in my head. Also because there is more space to fill out with beads I get to experiment more with different techniques and shapes, which I normally don’t do on smaller pieces. And sometimes when I am experimenting with the patterns on a bracelet I get inspiration for other pieces.

That is exactly what happened when I was done making the Golden Cicada bracelet. I loved the sides of that bracelet and when I was looking at it I thought why don’t I just turn that shape into earrings.

Good thing was that I still had enough of the material to make a pair of earrings and because I had already made that pattern once the pieces came together all too quickly.

For me these type of projects are the stuff I like to do when I am not inspired to make anything new but I still don’t want to sit around and twiddle my thumb. The pattern is already there I know what beads I am going to use so I don’t have to sit around for hours trying to decide which beads would work well together which is my main obstacle when planning my pieces

But having worked with this pattern twice now and liking how it turns out I know now that if I were to change the colours and use different beads it would still give me something unique. That’s the beauty of a good pattern and a pattern you like to work with!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

14x10 FACETED CRYSTAL AB
7MM GLASS BASED PEARL
3MM WHITE PEARLS
3MM SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL AB CHAIN
6MM CRYSTAL AB SWAROVSKI MARGUERITES
FROSTED TRANSPARENT WHITE SEED BEADS SIZE 8/0
TRANSPARENT SILVER-LINED GOLD DELICA BEADS SIZE 10/0
24KT GOLD FINISHED SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
GOLD METAL ROUND SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
CREAM LUSTRE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
24KT GOLD PLATED EARRING HOOKS
LACY’S STIFF STUFF
BLACK ULTRASUEDE
FIRELINE 0.006 IN CLEAR
E-6000 GLUE
CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

Gold and Pearl Cameo Shoe Clips

2012-09-30T23:00:00.002-04:00

I had a really exciting Friday! About two weeks or so ago I decided to put up some of my stuff on Etsy for sale and one of the pieces (the blue dichroic glass brooch from my last post) got sold on Thursday and needless to say I was chuffed to bits! I love Etsy and I buy a lot of things on there but I never ever thought one of my things would actually sell on there! So I have been pumped all weekend running around the flat organizing pieces, planning new things, photographing some stuff and all that good stuff and I think I worked myself into a little frenzy cause now I am utterly exhausted and I haven’t even done much!:D

So as I am sat here watching practically every show that is premiering here on TV this evening I thought I would write a short post about one of my older pieces, the last of the three set of shoe clips that I made for my mom.

If you guys remember my the Crown of Ms.V brooch then this set of shoe clips will look familiar to you. My mom loved that brooch so when she purchased these cameos I decided to turn them into shoe clips for here following the exact same pattern as the brooch but upside down meaning that the crown part was on the bottom of the piece instead of the top. I don’t think I was following any sense of logic when decided to invert the pattern, I think I just wanted to see what it would look like!

My mom loved the clips, but then again she would love anything with pearls on it, but she told me that she has used it a couple of times at parties which makes me excited that she is getting some use out of them!

On another rather random note, ( since I am writing this on a sunday evening but posting it monday morning )I am so excited for the season premier of Revenge this evening, only because this is the first time I am actually getting to see a series on its actual premiere date. Back in the UK series tend to be shown rather a couple of months later than they premiere over here and I am always a season or so behind anyway. but lately I have been catching up on all my series and I have been thinking of doing a series of pieces based on the characters from the TV shows. I have a character in mind from the American horror story, I think it will turn out cool but we will see. Hope everyone had a nice weekend! If you read this let me, which shows, you are looking forward to watching this season ?

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

Blue Dichroic Glass Brooch

2012-09-27T14:56:00.003-04:00

Is it just me or has time started to fly super duper fast lately! it feels like this month whooshed passed me and it totally took me by surprise! As a whole September was a bit of a disappointment. I had plans to go back home and spent September emptying up my bank account in the bead stores of London and lounging the rest of it in Brighton with my cousin, but alas plans change and I am stuck in New Jersey! To get my mind off of things I am thinking of actually going to see a play up in New York called Grace with Paul Rudd and maybe just maybe get some retail therapy done in the bead stores of NYC!

But I digress. As I am sat here watching a marathon of Castle on TV I thought I would write about the piece that has been the main image on my page since I first started this blog about a month or so ago!

Most of the bead embroidery pieces I see are done around stone cabochons but as I have mentioned before I just haven’t been able to find nice cabochons and the ones that I seem to like are ridiculously expensive and that’s why I like making my own ones with art images. But a few months back again on one of my outings to Michaels I found these dichroic pendants which I thought would make a nice focal cabs for my beading. I bought a round one and an oval one, I would have got more but I didn’t know how hard it would be to get the bails off the cabs. The bail on the oval cabochon came off pretty easily, the one on this round one not so much. After a lot of huffing and puffing I managed to get the bail off without damaging the piece, which was a relief.

The good thing about a focal stone like this for me was that no matter what colour bead I chose to do around it would have complimented the plethora of colours that are visible in the dichroic glass in some way or another

Once the bezel was done I started adding other cabochons, the teardrop cabochons are actually jewel sticker pieces from recollection that I found in the scrapbooking section of Michaels.

I am thinking that maybe with the oval dichroic glass that I got I could make the same type of beading but make it into a headband. I have never made head pieces before so it might be a nice challenge!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

1.5-INCH DICHROIC GLASS CABOCHON
TEAR DROP FACETED GEMSTONES FROM RECOLLECTIONS
7mm DARK BLUE GLASS OPAL CABOCHONS
3mm PURPLE IRIS CZECH FIRE POLISHED BEADS
OPAQUE COBALT AB SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
METALLIC VERIEGATED MIDNIGHT BLUE SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
SILVER LINED GREY AB SEED BEEDS SIZE 11/0
GREEN LINED TRANSPARENT SAPPHIRE ROUND SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
MEATALLIC OPAQUE PINE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
LACY'S STIFF STUFF
BLACK ULTRASUEDE
1.5-INCH BASE METAL PIN BACK
E-6000 GLUE

Ms.Pemberton Brooch

2012-09-23T17:27:00.000-04:00

I love the days when I get home and I see packages by the door and you know those packages contain something you really really need!!! I finally got my threads and I have become a beading machine.
All the planning I did last week has really helped move things along. I had done all the sketching, I had chosen which cabochons would go with which design. I had even listed beads I wanted to use on the pieces.

For the first piece I am using another Lori Earley drawing and this one is called “Ms.Pemberton” .how regal is that!
I went with a sapphire blue and black theme. I did a stacked bezel around the focal image and then did a row of alternating faceted glass beads and swarovski pearls.

I wanted the next rows of beading to snake around all the new cabochon and larger beads that I was adding and that needed a little bit of planning as the inside row of beads becomes the outside row when it snakes around the smaller cabochons so in order to get it right I did both the blue/sapphire row and the black row at the same time.

I also used a Copic marker to darken the top two beads a little bit since they were transparent and against the backing they were looking more sky blue than sapphire blue. Colouring the backing and the backs of the beads helped make it a darker colour.

To finish off the piece I went for a free form stacked edge followed by a drop formation on the bottom.

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

30x40 OVAL CLEAR GLASS CABOCHON
9mm ROUND OPAL GLASS CABOCHON
BLACK SWAROVSKI BICONES
3MM SWAROVSKI PEARLS IN PETROL
3x4mm SAPPHIRE IRIS FACETED GLASS RONDELLE BEADS
4x6 PALE BLUE FACETED GLASS RONDELLE BEADS
3MM PALE BLUE FACETED GLASS BEADS
3mm SAPPHIRE IRIS FACETED GLASS BEADS
GREEN LINED TRANSPARENT SAPPHIRE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
OPAQUE BLACK SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
LACY'S STIFF STUFF
BLACK ULTRASUEDE
1.5-INCH BASE METAL PIN BACK
E-6000 GLUE

Queen of Hearts Brooch

2012-09-21T21:17:00.001-04:00

Last week a weird thing happened to me! I ran out of thread! It is so weird for me to let this happen cause nightly beading is like my ritual so how I did not see that I was totally out of my favorite fireline thread is completely beyond me. So in order to not be completely useless I sat down the other day and decided to plan out some pieces while awaiting the arrival of the threads.I started by drawing some sketches out for some new brooches but in the end I couldn’t help myself so I decided to start a piece anyway and use the wildfire thread that I have.

For the piece I went with another Natalie Shau cover art for the Cradle of Filth. The picture is of a woman in royal regalia holding what looks like a human heart! Nice huh!!

I too cue from the colours in the paintings so I went with dark red and gold and using an assortment of different crystals. Michaels had 50%off all the bead gallery crystal which means that I obviously went a little nuts in there and ended up leaving with a whole bunch of beads which are now all piled up on my desk but it also means that I now have a good collection of red beads.

I am always amazed at how a subtle colour difference or a finish of a bead can effect a piece so much.

The way I had planned this piece was to have a hole on top and have a dangling bead hanging in the space but I when I cut around the piece, the top part was just too thin and it made more sense to cut into the piece and try to connect them again with the dangling bead when the piece was finished.Because the top parts of the piece were so thin I did sandwich a piece of thick cardstock between the backing and the Ultrasuede to give the piece more stability.

Once all that was done I finished the edge of the piece with a sunshine edge. The small inside corners were a little tough to do but I am glad that it was doable. I finished off the piece with a pinkish/red Toho teardrop crystal bead which was the only thing I had in my stash and up close it actually doesn’t look as pink as it does in the photo, but maybe I should put in an order for a red swarovski crystal next time I am going to order things

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

35mm ROUND GLASS CABOCHON
10mm FACETED TEARDROP PINK/RED BEAD BY TOHO
10mm BLACK FACETED SEW ON GEM
3mm DARK RUBY FACETED GLASS BEADS
3x5mm RED FACETED RONDELLE GLASS BEADS
SILVER LINED DARK PINK SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
GOLD SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
GARNET LINED RUBY AB SIZE 11/0
SILVER LINED GARNET SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
GOLD COLOURED METAL SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
METALLIC BURGUNDY BROWN SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
WILDFIRE THREAD IN BLACK
LACY'S STIFF STUFF
BLACK ULTRASUEDE
1.5-INCH BASE METAL PIN BACK
E-6000 GLUE

Maleficent Bracelet

2012-09-15T17:47:00.000-04:00

Disney sure knows how to do a villain properly, especially female villains! They are all so beautiful, regal and well villainy!!!

I love maleficent and out of the older Disney movies sleeping beauty is my favorite , my all time favorite is the little mermaid but that’s a different story! So I was very surprised to read that the sleeping beauty was one of the least successful Disney movies!

When I first saw the series of work done by Tom Bagshaw inspired by the Disney villains I was instantly in love.The painting inspired by Maleficent is called “Evil Intent” and I really wanted to do something special with it and since my first exercise with a fully beaded bracelet went really well I decided that this was going to be another bracelet piece.

I glued on my cabochon onto black Ultrasuede that I had roughly stitched to Lacy’s stiff stuff and started to do the bezel work around the piece. I work really quickly when I feel secure in my colour choices and the pieces that I do that are darker tend to go a lot smoother and faster since I tend to second guess my choices less when it comes to using darker colours.

I was sure of a few things in this piece: I really wanted to use crystal chains, and I really wanted to use these new nail head beads that I had just ordered off Etsy.

After I was done with the beading around the focal point I went on a little scavenger hunt for the next pieces. After laying down a couple of different pieces onto the piece I finally went with two large round cabochon and two smaller blue goldstone cabochons.

Once all the beading was done I checked to see if the piece would fit around my wrist. But it was way too small. I didn’t want to add anymore stones cause I thought it would an overkill to have yet another type of stone added to the work and I didn’t have anything that was smaller that the blue goldstone cabochon that would go with the piece. So after a little bit of thought I went with more of the nail heads to get the length I needed for the piece to fit my wrist.

Once the piece was done I glued it on to another piece of Ultrasuede and cleaned up the edges by doing a sunshine edge. I have to say that sewing through the 3 layers of Ultrasuede and Lacy’s stiff stuff really does a number on the fingertips! To finish off I went with a simple tube bar clasp for closure.

I have to say that I have done a couple of pieces that I like but this is the one piece I have done up to now that I am really proud of. I had this bracelet on when I had to go for a doctor’s visit and I found it intriguing that one of the nurses that worked there though the piece was scary. Now I don’t see the piece as anything remotely scary as she put it but she was wearing hello kitty scrubs so I am guessing that out sensibilities fall on different ends of the spectrum. So what do you guys think ,is this piece scary!!!!?

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

30x40 CLEAR GLASS DOME CABOCHON

20mm BLACK CAT’S EYE ROUND CABOCHON

10mm BLUE GOLDSTONE ROUND CABOCHON

DARK SILVER TAUPE NAILHEAD BEADS

4mm HEMATITE FIRE POLISHED GLASS BEADS

3MM VITRAIL FIRE POLISHED GLASS BEADS

3MM CHROME FIRE POLISHED GLASS BEADS

2MM RHINESTONES CHAIN CRYSTAL AB

HEMATITE GREY CZECH SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0

METALLIC SILVER SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0

GUNMETAL DELICA BEADS SIZE 11/0