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.

Double post Thursday - part 1!

It's double post Thursday!

Sorry for missing last night's post, I didn't get back from Tracy's until gone 10pm! Was nice to actually have a night off from work  Anyway, in amongst my clearing up the other day, I came across my photo book of my travels in August 2008 - tune in later, and once we get back from my mother in law's for fish and chips, I'll tell you all about my adventure down under! I will warn you now, it's likely to be even more picture-heavy than normal 

My little roses have started to open now, such a lovely surprise from my lovely hubby 


Ooh and the star is now complete, I just need to decide what I am going to do with it:

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, it's quite cool how different they look if you squeeze them 

I even came home to another little parcel last night which is my new bead backing from America to try out. Can't wait - I have 14 different colours to play with now!
Tune in later bead buddies for a little of Singapore and Dubai, and a lot of cattle ranching in Oz!

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...

BTW

Bead Table Wednesday - I will try to keep this up now that I've started!!

Happy crafting!

Reincarnating the dragon

Hey everyone, I've had a busy beading weekend this week! Makes a change I know. It all started at the beading class on Saturday morning, when we did a new variation on a twisted chain - I immediately knew I wanted it to finish my dragon bracelet and make her into a necklace. It took a bit of trial and error to get it to fasten as I wanted it to, but I'm so pleased with it.

I had originally attached jump rings and a lobster clasp but it showed a little too much - now there's just a jump ring with a beaded toggle clasp and it all goes a lot better. Here's what it looks like together, this is before I put the toggle clasp on though sorry!

I've also been productive and managed to do a temporary repair of one of my sister's necklaces, will have to re-do it when I have some gunmetal/antique bronze wire for a better match.

Have any of you heard about the Little Book of Crafters (LBOC)? It's run by Mimi down in Cornwall, UK and she doesn't charge anything for it. All you need to do is head over to her facebook page for the details. All you have to do is send a few business cards and even a few small samples if you fancy it, and they get put into little packs that are handed out at the craft events that Mimi attends! She's a seriously lovely lady I think. If you want to take part, you need to get your cards/samples posted out to her by April 15th. Have fun!

Santa's coming out

Secret Santa that is. We're finally doing the reveal on Bead Buddies, and here's what I received:

A little treasure trove of goodies - I hope you're all a little bit jealous :)

I really really want to post pictures of what I made but seeing as the buddy I made for hasn't yet posted any or guessed at who made them, I can't! Fingers crossed I will be able to soon though. I'm finding it really hard to guess at who made mine, I'm rubbish at this kind of thing.

Well, intending with all good will to stick to my resolution of finishing my UFBO's, I have started a netted chain to make my beaded pendant (picture to follow) into a lariat necklace. Only problem is that I have elected to do it in size 11's and it's taking a wee while to build up - who'd have known? Ah well, as long as I have enough beads it will be worth it - sneak peek tomorrow if you're lucky.

How are your resolutions going in the early days of 2011?

Closing 2010

I am closing 2010 on a good and positive note, and starting as I mean to go on, and by that I mean this bracelet which was a UFBO until 2 days ago! I originally started this piece out intending to make it into a necklace, but as they are leftover beads from another bracelet I just wasn't going to have enough so have made it into another bracelet instead. Boy does Cellini Spiral take time to build up! All in all though, I'm really quite pleased, and can't wait to get my other UFBO's out.

In other news, I hope you have been following the fabulous Margie and Me competition hosted by Marcie and La Bella Joya - if not, CLICK HERE NOW and view the beautiful pieces that have been submitted, there are still a couple more days of voting. I've put my vote in, but it was very hard!

I have also treated myself to a couple of books having had a flick through them after my friend got them for Christmas - I've been watching them, umming and ahh-ing for a few months now! Can't wait :)

Christmas Cheer!

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you have all had a fantastic and festive day - I've had a great time, and seen plenty of family, it's been lovely catching up. As I may have mentioned, my beloved hubby made me a stocking of beautiful beady goodness. Just in case you'd like a bit of an eyeful, here follow the full stash :)

I also got a lovely surprise in getting Laura McCabe's Embellished Beadweaving book from my sister! The paper was off this little beauty faster than you can say THANK YOU SO MUCH! Now I just need to find more time in the day to be able to do more beading... Any tips would be greatly appreciated. 

So how did you celebrate your Christmas Day?