Bring it on!

Welcome back again, I hope you are here to see the wonderful process of my bead embroidery, or just to see my ramblings - either way, let's crack on!

So the second piece I opted to do is the second largest - we'll work our way down on this project! Less rambles this time around, you know the basics now, more pictures.

You may remember in my previous blog entry I warned against being super careful when beading with bicone crystals - this is why:

The great thing about bead embroidery is that a snapped thread doesn't have to mean working back several rows and reworking, it's easy to tie off and thread in from the back and pick up where you left off. So satisfying!

I also love the spirograph effect that is created on the back of the piece, it is in some ways a shame to cover it up.

Once the base row is completed, we start on the bezel row again:

Don't forget to stitch back round the inner row a few times to bring all of the beads into line for a nice crisp finish, and then stitch on your outer row/s.

Trace your outline on your suede, cut out and stick to the back and stitch the edging! Feel free to secure as much or as little as you feel it needs before doing so - you can see where I've sealed in three places with clear varnish before gluing my backing on here:

Keep it as tidy as you can - I must admit I love looking at the back of my embroidery when it's all finished almost as much as the front, it's just not quite so shiny

Two pieces down... Five to go. Here's what we have so far:

Exciting! And I'm pleased to say that I am now at the point of putting all of the components together so will try to make it back a bit sooner for the next 5 components (all small and you know the drill!) so that I can show you the best b its - the finished article!!

In other news, I've recently agreed a loan on my friend's horse, and I'm ecstatic. I've always wanted to own a horse, and this is likely to be the closest I will get to it - helping out and having freedom to go down to the yard more or less whenever I want and getting all of the benefits without having to front the entirety of the bill! It's a dream come true. Here's Felix - he was a bit hot and bothered yesterday afternoon when we went down to see him. Unfortunately the sheep on the yard had all been herded in to be marked or something so we couldn't bring him in for a bath so I promised him I'll be back to give him one soon!

Isn't he just adorable? He's so docile and I just want to cuddle him!

Until next time :)

Playing catch up

Looks like I logged back onto Blogger at the right time - Lori's blog hop reveal!! If you've never seen the annual blog hop, just click here and prepare to lose a few hours trawling through. Good news though, it has been limited to 200 participants this year, so you should only lose half a day. Here's a peek of one of the pieces Lori made:

It's amazing to look through and see what people make from components they are sent, and looks like a lot of fun. I know what I'll be doing once I have made my imprint on the blogosphere this evening.

It's been a long and complicated couple of months, not an awful lot of beadery has gone on, but I have dabbled a little and finally tackled working with some polymer clay. I've really enjoyed the little bits that I have done so I can safely say that it's something I look forward to working with more. I spent a week off work, signed off by the doctor for stress, and did lots of baking - I have found that my signature dish is triple chocolate brownie, and there's nothing that chills me out more than baking them. Sadly I didn't do as much beading as I had hoped but I have started a 100% from scratch necklace, here's a sneaky preview:

It will be complemented by two handmade round polymer clay beads, the chain is going to be netted in light green frosted beads and I plan to make a polymer clay toggle clasp with leaves on to match it. This will be my very first piece where all components are completely my own, and it's quite exciting for me.

In other news, we've settled into our home and are well and truly mortgaged up, next on the list of expenses is a new car as ours is still consistently dying - if any of you know what might be draining a car battery please feel free to chip in! We're thinking we need to check if any earth cables aren't connecting properly as it's had a new battery, new glow plugs and temperature sensor on the water coolant (or something like that??) but still the battery will die after sitting for a length of time... Oh well, looking at getting a 2-3 year old car on finance so we'll see what happens in Summer.

I'm off to look at the beautiful beaded items that Lori's soup-ers have created! See you there.

Jewellery, events & updates! [lots of images!]

Hi there bloggers!
Another long stint since my last blog post, but I have been busy this time, and I do have things to share. We are now in the final weeks of the house buying, and hope to find out our completion date this week. Our solicitors on both sides are pushing for the end of this month so hopefully we can get in and settled well in time for Christmas.

Here (finally!) is my finished Laura McCabe cuff:

I am so pleased with this, sorry for the shabby photographs! The leather is a joy to wear, it's so soft, and it's so lovely to have been able to make an embroidered piece without having to cover every square millimetre to make it look good. The stone is Willow Creek Jasper, so I was quick to hunt down a stone to make a matching pendant:

Again, apologies for the poor photograph, it looks so much better in the flesh. This is a teardrop Willow Creek Jasper stone, stitched around with my remaining grey/silver delicas and gold size 15 charlottes. Nailheads embellish the left and a 10mm Swarovski flat back crystal sits at the top. The glass nugget at the bottom is one made by Linda from Bead Buddies - you can visit her website here.

It was my mother in law's birthday yesterday, so out came the beadies again, you might remember my blue cluster necklace I made for my mum earlier this year, well she had commented on how lovely that was. She loves all things cupcakes, so I finally found the perfect use for the charity cupcake bead I bought from Laura Sparling quite some time ago as well. This was the final piece:

I was very happy with this one as well, and not only that but it only took about an hour from start to finish, I do love those projects! It's all made with cream/mocha glass pearls and crystal rondelles, topped with a lemon meringue cupcake.

So, in other news, I have recently been re-broadening my horizons, and typically when I have none of the things I need, I really felt the urge to draw. I made a trip out to our local art store, came home equipped with pencils, black pens and a new sketch pad, and this is what happened:

I've been browsing a lot of Zentangles again recently, and it just made me want to draw. Now I can't stop looking at my butterfly. Very chuffed. I also used to frequent DeviantArt, and haven't visited the site for a long time. Today I returned and was looking back on some of my previous work - I really need to get my Illustrator back! I miss playing around with vector art. Don't get me wrong, I was never anything amazing at it, but I used to enjoy the hours spent tweaking and re-colouring images I had created from a photograph. You may or may not be interested, but if you'd like to take a look this is my DeviantArt page. If you do take a look, do leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Well, I will leave you all with a lovely image that met my eyes whilst I was on the phone at work on Thursday evening. I just had to take a picture... or three.

Moving along slowly!

I was so excited today driving to my friend Tracy's, as I drove past our new house, the SOLD sign has now gone up, and when I looked at the website this evening, this picture accompanies the property listing. I've got all sorts of butterflies in my tummy just looking at it - I can't wait!

We have a meeting tomorrow morning with our mortgage advisor, our solicitor's paperwork arrived this morning - hopefully our advisor can go through with that tomorrow as well! I can't believe how quickly this has all happened, it's crazy, but that's just the way of the world of property I guess!

Pictures of my new niece will follow shortly - Leah was born 08/09/11 weighing 7lbs exactly, and she is an exceptionally beautiful little girl. I'm a very proud auntie, and very happy now that my sister in law and Leah are now back home and all well.

Oh, and as this is meant to be a jewellery blog - here's a little something I finished last week!

Birthday makings!

Just a quick post from me this evening, two bracelets for my friend Jackie at work who hits the big 5-0 on Thursday! Bring on the hamper, flowers, balloons, desk confetti and CAKE! Quite a productive evening, I think :o)

Today is a good day

I've had a really fab couple of days, including being drawn to win an adorable new handbag. Big thanks to tinchick over at Bead Buddies! Now it's my turn to put something up to be won... Hmmm...

I also came home today to a little parcel at my door. I opened it up and unwrapped the tissue paper to find another lovely surprise from Carrie - a lush polymer clay heart pendant that I had ogled at earlier this week. I love BB, such fantastic ladies to know!  

We went to visit the mortgage advisor today to find out whether we are on target as we hoped, and great news everyone, we really are! By October we should have our deposit and fees for the lower end of our budget, and by January, we will be able to put in offers on a property at the top end! I am so excited. It's mad how quickly this year has gone, and I know that even though January seems far away, it will be here before I even get chance to think about it.

I am off to update our spreadsheets and budgets, and see how close we are to our first home, and maybe do some beading!

Happy crafting everyone

Charity starts at home

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. 
Mohandas Gandhi

As promised, here I am, and I have even made a start on my star! I'm not sure about the colours yet, but I'm thinking about having it as a 'Fire & Ice' kind of thing, and doing a blue version as well. I'd like to make matching earring stars but it all depends how far my black delicas go  It's a little hard to see in the pictures but there are actually 3 different coloured reds - am just not 100% yet about the bright red centre lines. 

You can see in the first picture, I also managed to have a beady accident - when I moved the bead mat the beadies all went everywhere!

I don't know if you've heard of Pinterest, but I'm addicted to it at the moment. I can't help but just browse aimlessly through everyone's pins. I keep getting great ideas for decorating the house from it, there are so many pretties. If you've not tried it, pop over and have a look - can't promise you'll get away too quickly once you start though 

I can't wait to see all of the pieces that come in for the Disaster Emergency Committee collaboration, this is why I love Bead Buddies - the sense of community here is the best, and I love the fact that we can all do what we love to try and help others. I think I may be able to persuade my friends to help out too, so we could have two more donations.

We had a lovely barbeque at my parents house today, and we even made it away with some of the scrummy chicken and a couple of sausages. Scrummy - mixed chicken salad for dinner tomorrow, followed by a lemon cupcake. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm trying to make a proper start on eating a bit better, so I've stocked up on snack-a-jack snack bags for those mid-morning food cravings, nectarines, and cucumber to go with my houmous. I have registered on the Activia website to check out their meal plans, and they look pretty good. Whilst we were shopping though, I had a look at the Activia yoghurts, and was surprised to find that all of the pots including the snack pots have the sweetener aspartame in! I'm pretty gutted as aspartame not only gives me bad headaches - I used to get migraines when I was younger - but it is just really not good for you anyway. Just goes to show, unless you check everything, you really never know what you're eating...

Last weeks!

A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for
Anonymous

It was my sister in law's baby shower today - only a few weeks to go now! Amongst the games we played, I caught one on video which was using a cocktail stick in your mouth to hook little tiny dummies out of a bowl of rice... Me and my SIL tied with 5 each in 30 seconds. You can watch it if you click here. Funny  My mother in law tried a new cupcake recipe for today's party, a lemon flavour and they were so scrummy! I even managed to bring a few home, though whether I'll get to eat any of them is another matter 

Every Saturday, I have to be up and out of bed to move the car as it's always either on a single yellow line or in a 1 hour parking space. Today, I went to visit my dad, and have a catch up. We spent an hour taking my passenger car door to pieces as the lock on it has been very temperamental all week, and now doesn't unlock remotely at all - even the inside door handle wouldn't open it on two occasions this week. The aim was to see if there was a loose connection on the solenoid, and having taken the door apart, with lots of screw types, we found that the solenoid is actually under aNOTHER panel which is riveted on. Perhaps that can wait for another day then... For now I will hope that it just unlocks from the inside, as the only solenoid replacements I have found are in excess of £40! Madness. May just have to pop in at the scrapyard some time. My dad has also said he will get the front wing re-sprayed for my birthday/Christmas present (I said when we got the car that I wanted to get it re-sprayed/replaced as it's the only bit of rust on the whole car, and it has now started to spread) - so I'm pretty chuffed. I love my car ... Most of the time anyway. Once we were done with my car, we took my mum's Mazda out for a spin with the roof down - got to get the use whilst we can, right?! We took a little drive out to the countryside and into a local farm to get some nice fresh meat for a BBQ tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it, nobody else is coming, it's a test run for a bigger BBQ in a couple of weeks, but we got garlic butter chicken breast, rosemary and garlic chicken breast, and smokey BBQ chicken breast, minted lamb steak, and various sausages including Bramley (with a hint of apple) and lamb sausages with rosemary and garlic - are you sensing a pattern yet? We like garlic. Alot 

I did get some more poo news today, my grandpa was taken into hospital this week with heart problems. He has been released now, and my dad went to see him this afternoon, so I'm just waiting for an update which I will probably get tomorrow.

As it's my last week of being AOTM, I am going to make a concerted effort to be here for every remaining day - I apologise for being an infrequent blogger! I recently purchased Jean Power's Geometric Stars pattern and my aim is to have made at least one before the end of the month for you guys to see. They just look so cool  


Be back tomorrow! In the meantime, please take a minute to think about the people mercilessly killed in Oslo, and those in China who have been killed in a collision between two trains.

Procrastination - Day 2

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday
Don Marquis

Did I mention that I'm quite good at procrastinating? I intended to start writing at 8pm. I do blame Sylvia though, she has got me addicted to coin push on my iPhone.

However, aside from crawling around on the floor of the summerhouse picking up stray delicas (Sylvia's beading tray took a bit of a tumble...) I have had a fairly productive day. Here is the progress of my little beaded box:


I've only had to undo it twice because I can't stand to have a single bead wrong in this project, it's like my little baby at the moment  - for the first time, decreasing in peyote has really 'clicked', and I have had my EUREKA moment at last.

This weekend I also have to make time to mount and post my giveaway flower from my blogspot blog - anyone who took an interest in the bead stash challenge will know that I put in my wooden hearts that I had been staring at for well over 2 years. I had no idea what I was going to make with them, and now I don't have enough to make enough of these dear flowers.

I was reading my blogroll earlier, and found a really cool challenge that took place last week over at Art Bead Scene - if you're stuck for inspiration, I think you should give it a go. It was called the Muffin Tin Challenge. All you have to do is pull out a muffin/cupcake baking tray, sit with your beady stash, and put a few bits together that you intend to make into a piece. They go into the first muffin hole. Then you repeat to fill up all the holes in the tin, sit down with your tools, and put them all together! You can have a look at what everyone came up with from here http://artbeadscene.blogspot.com/2011/06/muffin-tin-jewelry-challenge-winner.html So much pretty stuff, you'll be sucked in!

I couldn't find a muffin tin at my mother in law's house - most unexpected considering how many cupcakes she makes - so I settled for silicone cupcake cases, and I made 4 pairs of earrings. The best bit is sitting going through your beads, pairing them up and going from there. I wish I had taken pictures, but I totally forgot. Sparkly beads and findings in brightly coloured cases, they were pretty even before they were made up (see, that's the procrastinating part of my brain telling me I didn't need to go any further!) I've got loads of bits I want to try and use, so I'm going to try this to get started on some stashbusting. I'll try to remember to take photos of those though.

It's Music in the Park in Ipswich tomorrow, which is great as our flat is right opposite the park - we get to wander in and out as we please all day, and no smelly portaloos! I think I've had my fill of those for at least another year after Download Fest. The last time I went to Music in the Park, I spent about a week looking like a lobster, with constant itching on my back where it had burned; note to self - not again? Even if it's decidedly overcast at 10am, I am going to be slathering on the factor 30. Unlike Jim (hubster) who morphs into a Portuguese look-a-like in the summer months, it appears that my skin has opted to torture me into remaining pale. I remember when Jim was temping at a place where there were a number of Portuguese guys also working there, they started talking to him in the lingo. Needless to say, that conversation didn't last long, but he did somehow end up learning various Polishswearwords from one of the other guys!

Tropical winner!

Waheyyy and the winner of my first bloggy giveaway (as randomly selected by my bead buddy Sylvia) is Kate at Tropical Blonde!

Congratulations Kate, pop me an e-mail or comment here as to how you would like your summer flower finished :o)

It's been lovely to invite new followers, and I have exciting news, I am going to be much more active in blogging land throughout July - watch this space as I have been asked to step in and reveal all as Bead Buddies Artist of the Month. Scary? Yes. Exciting? Very! I just hope I can find enough interesting things to talk about for a whole month. Better start thinking early.

Just as scary and exciting, my bead buds here and I are doing our very first craft fair on Saturday - and just to put the pressure on, we only found out/decided to do it TODAY! Eek! Should be a good chance to get some experience at least, and it's nice and local. Hopefully we can learn lots and come up with a proper table layout for future events. Nothing like being thrown in at the deep end!

Well, I need to get on with fretting about how little jewellery I have to sell - just as well I have two great friends two do this with.

Happy crafting!