A wedding!

On Halloween, Chris and I got married.  It was the most wonderful day of my life:

He looked utterly spiffing in his 3 piece tweed suit, and I felt like a princess in my Georgette wedding dress. It could not have been more perfect. I wore pearls in my hair, made by Mummy:

 

 

My bridesmaids wore red satin and I made them a simple necklace and matching earrings using Swarovski Elements in Siam paired with Silver Duracoat Delicas:

My flower girls had silver bracelets with matching Swarovski Hearts dangling, but I forgot to take a photo of them because I'm an idiot!!!

Mummy's necklace was spectacular!  She bought a pattern from BeAdInfinitum called Starburst Galaxy and made it in Swarovski Pearls and made a few adaptations to make it perfectly perfect for the wedding:

How gorgeous is that??!!  She wore it with petrol blue silk and looked amazing!

All in all, we had a wonderful day and it was glorious bringing our craft into it - not least because it saved us plenty of pennies!

Mummy's Night Sky

For Christmas Mummy asked my baby brother for the Night Sky pattern from BeAdInfinitum and he surprised her by buying her the kit. 

She made the weave slightly thinner than the one in the pattern that came with the kit because she really didn't want it to be tied with a ribbon, corset style, because she knew that would just annoy her whilst typing/working etc.

Instead she made a gorgeous little toggle closure that fits perfectly in the holes of the weave.  As she is a complete genius, this means that the bracelet is adjustable and we can share!  Woop! (Not sure whether she realises she's sharing just yet though!)

 In this last picture you can really see the nature of the weave.  It's a subtle play on size and colour contrast and I absolutely love it.

Circle Starburst

I'll be moving house soon so I thought I'd have a bit of a sort through of all my patterns and my beading stash.  I'm off work at the moment with an ear infection (not so much fun when you're deaf!) so now is the perfect time to have a root through and see what I've got.

A long time ago I bought the pattern for the Circle Starburst by the amazing Cindy Holsclaw.  I bought some 6mm Swarovski pendants to make it and then promptly forgot all about it, filing the pattern and stashing the crystals! 

I thought I'd pick up a needle and thread and start making it.  The pattern is pretty simple and if you've made a beaded bead using the Bead Infinitum's Infinity Weave then you're on to a winner!  However, if you're not used to following 3D patterns presented on a 2D plane then get something a lot simpler!  This isn't really a pattern for a beginner.

Here is the beaded bead with wide open spaces.  Quite honestly, I wish I'd had a black support bead because I think this looks lovely!

This is the beaded bead from the triple crystal view:

 All finished, from the five crystal view:

Admittedly, I did simplify the pattern.  In the actual pattern the seed beads come up in small volcano type shapes in between the pendants but I felt that they hid the beautiful Swarovski crystal too much for my taste.  I took off all the volcanoes and adapted the pattern so that the pendants really stick out of the seed bead base.  It makes it look a lot more spiky and a bit more vicious, but that's what I like in jewellery anyways!

To hang it on the silver neck wire, I simply popped an eye pin through the beaded bead, trimmed and turned a loop.

Close up of the beaded bead on the neck wire:

In all, it's quite a nifty little beaded bead that could be used as a base for lots of different variations.  Make sure you have lots of finer needles to hand though - I got through three needles because you have to get into some quite tight spaces!  I think the price is a little steep for what you get - $36 which equates to roughly £22...   But it is pretty.

Hope you like it!

Beaded Beads

Lately I have been playing around with beaded beads.  I thought I'd have a little go and see what I could make that were self supporting but that would also allow you to see the structure of the bead as well.

 I started with the green bead at the back.  It's made with some cheap Indian glass rounds and lots and lots of thread to keep these heavy beads still!  Then I made another using Swarovski faceted rounds.  I'm not much of an orange fan but thought it looked quite cute.

 Then I tried again with some Swarovski pearls.  This one is my favourite by far, possibly because I love the colour!  I threaded this on some plain silver snake chain and turned it into a very simple necklace as a birthday present for one of the girls at work.

Then I moved on to Cindy Holsclaw's rather fabulous Disco Ball beaded bead and I absolutely loved it!

I had loads of leftover bicones in some pretty random colours so I thought I'd see how the Disco Ball beaded bead would translate to them and they really worked!  As you can see, I didn't add the lace overlay so I had to go through each bead quite a few times in order for them to stiffen up.

But then what to do with all these random beaded beads I had made?!

A cute little charm bracelet worked wonders as yet another gift.  Luckily she is a bit of a champion of colour so this was right up her alley!

The Beauty Of BeAdInfinitum

Once again my mind has gone to BeAdInfinitum and their amazing patterns.  My mum and I love making the beaded beads on their website and I thought I'd show a couple of our attempts here.

 This is a much simplified variation of Cindy Holsclaw's Circular Starburst

 Close up of the beaded bead.

A simple beaded bead using a variation on the Infinity Weave done in nothing but clear glass rounds and strung on a chiffon ribbon.  It's so simple and clean and shows what an excellent eye my mum has!

 This is a variation of the Ring Nebula that we both love to bead!

As you can see, the bead sizes have been altered significantly, subsequently altering the net bead count.  I know it's not Steampunk, but the colours remind me of the whole Steampunk movement.  

Finally we have the rather spectacular Balloon Box, which I absolutely love.  It's a bugger of a beaded bead to make though as the drop beads really want to go inside as you're making it, but my goodness it works well when they sit outside the box!

Wedding Jewellery

The summer just gone one of my staff got married and she asked me to make her wedding jewellery, as well as gifts for the bridesmaids.  We sat together and drew up some ideas and she had a good root through my finished pieces pile so she could get some ideas as well.  She had four bridesmaids, each wearing a different colour of the same dress apart from the head bridesmaid (which was her Gran!).

This is what I made for the bride to match her bouquet.  It's a slightly enlarged Ring Nebula made with Swarovski Indicolite faceted rounds and tiny size 15 beads.

I simply popped it on a silver chain with a silver heart clasp for her.

For the bridesmaids I made simple beaded beads with large Swarovski faceted rounds and the used different colours for the lace overlay.  My exceptional Mum came up with the pattern for this beaded bead and it is completely self-supporting.

Here you can really see the deep ruby overlay.

And this one in teal.

For the Gran maid of honour, she wanted me to make another of the Ring Nebulas as a brooch:

This time I used Light Amethyst Swarovski faceted rounds.

It was wonderful making wedding jewellery and I was so happy to be a small part of making her wedding day be what she wanted it to be.  All of the bridesmaids spoke to me afterwards and said how much they loved their jewellery and one of the girls commissioned me to make a few pieces for her.  Luckily she has quite bold taste so I really was able to let rip for her!

I made this asymmetric double spiral princess length rope with scores of firepolished beads and Swarovski crystals, as well as aventurine and amethyst chips for her.

In this view you can really see the spiral and how the colours peep out of the monochromatic bead soup soup.  It is definitely not a stitch for beginners!  It took quite a few stop and starts for me to get into the flow but once I got the rhythm of the stitch, it grew really fast .

This summer I have been asked by another of my colleagues to make her wedding jewellery.  I can't wait to see what she has in mind!  I'm hoping it'll be something really opulent and over the top! or maybe something refined but quite the statement like this:

This was another piece of wedding jewellery made by my Mum.  She is so delicate in her work and is everything I strive to be.  She is a huge inspiration to me and I hope one day I will be as good as she is.

More Time Machine

I decided that I really ought to make up a Time Machine with all the fancy swags and drop embellishments.  Here's the fruit of my labour:

And the view from the top:

Time Machine

I have spent most of the day beading the Time Machine pattern.

I decided to have a practice run with the cheaper beads and got them all out ready:

Then I got started!  This is with the end caps done (and a perfect time to break for a nice cup of tea)

Side view:

Then I got started on all the lace overlay, swags and embellishments:

It was a bit fiddly and it's okay...  Just a bit too fussy for my tastes I think.

I decided to have another go, but this time make some variations to the lace overlay and make it a little simpler:

(The pound coin is there for size reference)
Still not sure about it, I don't think I like the 4mm crystals round the centre...

That's better!  Much happier with this version.  I know it's not quite as impressive as the ones on the BeAdInfinitum Website but I think you can see the Swarovski crystals better and that makes me happy.  So happy in fact that I beaded another straight away!

Now I'm going to take my claw fingers and have a bath whilst I think about how I'm going to show them off to their best advantage on a necklace...

Time Machine Supplies

At Christmas, my lovely chaps (Staff 1, Staff 2 and Staff 3) clubbed together to buy me a pattern from BeAdInfinitum. 

I had been hankering after the Time Machine instructions for a while and chatted about it a while back when I ordered some other patterns from there and they must have remembered because I had no idea that's what they were going to buy me!  How spoilt am I?!

I decided to be a little bit courageous with the palette for this phenomenal beaded bead - usually I stick to the monochromatic or choose a colour and various hues - and choose colours that I would never usually use.  I mooched around Google Images for a while, checking out colours that go well together and in the end, took the bull by both horns (and my card by it's plastic!) and bought this lot:

As you can see, I stayed a little conservative with the Blue Carnival firepolished crystals but the rest of it is pretty much out of my comfort zone, especially the gold!

These are some Swarovski Opaque Turquoise Rounds with the galvanised gold beads I'll be doing some of the lace work on the Time Machine.  This is a colour set I would definitely not choose for myself but after seeing the same combination here, I just couldn't resist!

I am really looking forward to starting to bead this this weekend.  Mum and I will be beading it at the same time (she's a prolific beader too) so that we can help each other through the more complex steps of the pattern.

I'll let you know how it goes...