Phoenix Collar

Well, with my bonus from work, I invested in some "kit", including some of the delica palette boxes from Spellbound Beads. I'd had an idea for this necklace jotted down in my notebook for a while, and I'd made the lampwork bead a while back too. I wrapped the bead in copper wire and finally decidede to use it!
I designed the whole necklace from start to finish, and I made a note of how I did it, as I have another focal in lovely meditteranean colours that I want to use in a similar necklace!

By the end of day 2, this is how it was shaping up:

You can just about see the original idea scribbled on the page!

And after three days solid, here is the finished article:

I'm rather pleased with how it turned out, and I already know how I'm going to evolve the design with other added "elements". Watch this space!

A Lava-ly time!

I have been making quite a few beads lately, and have re-visited an old friend in the lava beads. I enjoy making them, there is no need for them to all be the same size or pattern, they are just organic pebbles really! The first neclace here is the second one I made actually. I made the clasp from heavy gaugue copper wire which has been hammered and wrapped (and prompted a custom order for sterling ones, yay!). There are some swarovski bicones and some snakeskin jasper beads in here too, and the spacers between the round beads are new for me as well, round flat peyote stitch. The necklace is a whopping 85cm from clasp to clasp, plus the pendant is an extra 7cm.

This one I made with a 2 hole bead, made with my button mandrel. That clasp is mine too!

Finally here are the earrings I made for Mum for Mother's day. Thank goodness she liked them!

The Devil Wears Denim!

I had a go at St Petersburg chain stitch, single and double, and this was the result! It was an experiment really, I wanted to make something that looked like it had almost been zipped together, and I felt the stitch might achieve this look. Not quite, but I am still pleased with the result. It's given me some ideas too, which can only be a good thing, don't you think? ;-)

The fab focal was a birthday pressie from my Frit Happens friend Shahlaa.

OMG!! I MADE BEADS!!

I finally got myself some equipment to create my own lampwork beads! I have always admired what lampworkers can achieve with molten glass, but the craft has been prohibitively expensive, until now! I will have to save up for a kiln ( £600, that's gonna take a while! ) before I can sell anything, as the beads have to be annealed, that is they need to be cooled down really slowly so they don't shatter when worn as jewellery. So for now I can only practise getting shape, size and colour right. Anyway, here are some of my first offerings. I made the larger beads on the earrings (top right), the clear bead and the flower bead at the bottom, the white speckled beads and the two unstrung beads. I had a blast, but I ran out of gas for my torch, so I can't do anymore for a while. How we suffer for our art! I will be setting up an Etsy shop soon to sell some of my jewellery, the proceeds of which will go towards feeding my new glass addiction!

I was playing around, putting colours together, and the pink and green reminded me of a watermelon! I love watermelon, it's so refreshing and sweet and colourful. I can see me creating a range called "Tutti Frutti" or something!

I have had these silver coloured beads in my stash for over 20 years! Does that make them vintage? It is nice to be able to do something with them after all this time, I think these neclaces have a Medieval look to them.

The bead is the thing here. I really loved the colours of these beads, so I have simply strung and knotted three together. Foiled Indian glass can be so pretty!

Comic Relief Prizes

I got my hands on some bead sets which I had coveted for a while, and these are the first two necklaces I made from those sets. I gave these as prizes in a raffle for Comic Relief. The pendants were made by threading the first bead then knotting at the mid point lengthways. I then passed both ends of the thread through the second bead, so that they crossed in the middle. Knotted at the mid point again and so on. I don't think they are too bad for a first attempt in 20 years!