Raspberry Ripple Bangle

Well, Mummy has certainly outdone herself!  Check this bad boy out:

How gorgeous is that?!  I love the tila beads through the centre and the way the look like stained glass peeping out the rippled edges of the wings.  Those seed bead edges also completely threw me with their perfection!

This outstandingly gorgeous bangle is available in our Etsy Shop here. 

A necklace for Megan

Over Easter, Xander and I went down to South Wales with my other half, Chris, so that I could meet his family.  Whilst we were down there we had an absolutely lovely time.  We visited Swansea and Llanelli and went to have chips on the beach at Mumbles.  It was glorious.

Chris' sister and her husband have three rather beautiful children, one of whom asked me if I would make her a necklace.  She and her Mum had a look through my blog and my Facebook and she really liked the Ombre Cabouchon Necklace that I made a few months back.  She told me that her favourite colour is blue so I knew exactly which stone to use, because what 7 year old girl doesn't like sparkly blue goldstone?!

A simple twisted herringbone rope with silver lined clear and blue iris delicas was the perfect foil - made big enough that she'll be able to wear it when fully grown as well as now. I decided to go against making one of my usual clasps in favour of using a silver magnetic clasp, just in case she got caught on something though.  In the end, I really liked it and didn't think it a design compromise at all!

I posted it to her as soon as I made it and got a lovely telephone call to say thank you and a really pretty picture of her wearing it, which was a real treat. 

My Sister's 40th

Last year my big sister turned 40 (although she looks in her 20s, the cow!).  I decided to make her a little something special for her birthday present.  Something that she could wear to posh parties as a set or earrings for when she wanted to sparkle only a little.

Unfortunately I don't have a better picture than this so I'll have to talk you through what I did.

First of all, my sister is a gorgeous brunette with the most dazzling brown eyes that range from almost amber in some lights, to deep chocolate it others.  She loves gold so I decided that the base colour should be Metallic Earth Batik Gold Iris (DB1010), using purple iris Charlottes as the detail and the stones are Swarovski in Amethyst. 

First I bezelled the stones with the delicas and the charlottes.  Around the large stone I "stitched in the ditch" to add an extra round of peyote and then a simple picot edge with the charlottes before adding a very simple bail and suspending it on what has to be my most perfect herringbone rope ever!

The earrings were simply bezelled and then hung on solid gold ear wires.  No frills around the edge so that she could wear the earrings with anything and so that they didn't distract too much from the large oval stone necklace.


It's simple and understated but I like it and I know she does too.

Ombre Cabouchon Necklace

Real life has kind of taken over recently, in a very wonderful way, which has meant slightly less time to bead.  I'm beginning to get back on the beading wagon, with ideas falling out of my head and onto paper.  Until they get to needle and thread time, I thought I'd show you something I made late last year.

I was given a commission before Christmas to make a simple necklace with a layered onyx cabouchon and a simple ombre chain.

The lady I made it for wanted it as a gift for her Mum and she chose the cab, as well as the colours and the base design.  She wanted the colours to bleed into each other and the clasp had to be beaded as well, as her Mum doesn't do well with any metals.

This is what I was given to work with - she wanted black to be the predominant colour in the chain with just a small bit of white showing either side of the pendant dropper:

My first step was to bead the cab. A nice easy job, but for my own hatred of matte beads - the more you handle them, the less matte they become (oils in skin etc) and they really bugger up the thread!  I'm used to working with quite a lot of thread but have to use much smaller lengths as it frays more due to the rougher bead surface.  The trouble is, matte beads really do lend themselves to many projects, and the matte beads against the highly polished surface of the stone was just beautiful.

Then came the rope itself! We opted for a simple 6 round herringbone rope, not twisted, not lazy, just a simple rope.  This made the bleeding of the colours really work and although you can barely tell that the pinky pale brown turns into silver before heading into white, I really like this for the effect. 

Here you can see the rope width against the cabouchon.  Not too clunky and thick, but not so delicately thin that the cab looks ridiculously chunky!  To be honest, it took a little while (and lots of samples!) to settle on this width because although I liked the eight round rope, it would have been far too chunky for the lady in question.  I also always tend to veer towards the large and chunky rather than the thin and delicate.

Getting the rope even on both sides, but still random looking was an absolute nightmare! Not a very good picture below, you can see the warped square found in Geometric Beadwork by Jean Power that I used to hang the cabouchon.  Because we only wanted a small amount of white beads to peep out either side on the rope, I thought Jean's ingenious design was the way forward.

And then we moved to the clasp.  The loop is a simple peyote circle that I beaded and then joined the herringbone rope to and the toggle has a loop that loops through the continuous herringbone loop on the other end of the rope.  I prefer to make my beaded clasps like this rather than a simple loop and toggle (or bigger bead) joined by a few beads because it makes them look a little more interesting and a touch more finished.

The completed piece:

I know the lady's Mum liked it Christmas morning and I hope you do too!  It's very different from all the geometric work I've been doing recently.

Red Many-Horn

As you will know if you read my blog, Kate McKinnon is curating a new book called Contemporary Geometric Beadwork (buy it here) that is a sister to Jean Power's absolutely incredible Geometric Beadwork (yes, I will be talking about that in my next post!) 

Kate has invited beaders all over the world, of all abilities, to get inspiration from the pictures she's posting and has given people who have pre-ordered heads up on various techniques and designs and then send her pictures for the book/eBook/website/facebook.  After seeing the Horned Melon by Kate I was fizzing with inspiration and absolutely itching to do a rendition in shades of red.

I started with the M-RAW bangle base that Kate gave pre-orders and decided that I would have seven horns to start with.

As the horns got bigger and bigger, the cuff just wanted to twist and bend and fall down into odd squares.  This, for me was utterly exciting because I didn't know how far these structures could be pushed before they became unfeasable...

After 25 rows on one side of the horn, I was worried about whether I would have enough silver lined red delicas rather than being worried that the horns would become unstable.  I'm quite a tight beader and definitely think 50 rows per horn side is achievable, if a little impractical for a cuff!

I started to decrease but for the first few rows, the cuff showed absolutely no signs of behaving and turning into an actual cuff rather than a beaded 'form'!

However, a few more rows and a little manipulation and the cuff started to take shape.  

I made the opening of the cuff 14 beads larger on this side by decreasing down 24 rows rather than 25 as I knew that it would end up being quite a large cuff and that a bit of forearm would need to be accommodated!  There's nothing worse than a gorgeous cuff that only skeletons can wear because it's too small!

In this picture you can see that I'm beginning to add a row of RAW so that the cuff is symmetric:

And then I started to make some wings using colour lined chocolate cherry delicas.  Well, at least when I started they were going to be wings!

In this picture you can see that I made the darker red wings/horn beginnings start their shape right in the centre between the large horn.  This is because the original idea was to make two sides of wings and join them at the point row in the same way as I did the Pink Pinstripe Ruffle Cuff...

But they wanted to be horns as well!  These horns are 14 rows per side (I think!), so that they don't stick out as much as the bright red horns.

I edged the opening with two rows of the silver lined red to give it a bit of a more polished finish.  And then  started again on the other side...

All finished!  Please excuse the rather rubbish pictures - I took them the evening I finished it and it was about 11 o' clock at night! 

All in all, it is a truly vicious cuff that makes me think of warrior queens and Japanese anime characters and superheroes all in one!  I love how BIG it is and how spiky it is and above all, I love the colours.

UPDATE: Someone asked in the comments what this cuff looks like on.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture of me wearing it but I do have a picture of my son, Xander, wearing it!  Yes, it clashes with his top but he said he felt like a superhero so I let him wear it for a bit :)

Paula's Chakra Necklace

So I took a small break from beading after the momentous piece that is the Heroine Necklace to let my fingers recover and my hands stop being claws!

I was commissioned to make a Chakra Necklace from Rob to Paula, Xander's masseuse.  Xander has been going to see her every other week for the past couple of years and her massage is amazing.  She is absolutely astounding and specialises in soothing massage for kids with all sorts of disabilities, not just autism.  Her patience is amazing and Xander sleeps brilliantly after each session.  Over the years we've become friends and often have dinner together.  Rob decided he wanted something beautiful for her birthday and asked me to make a piece that I would not make again so that it was completely unique to Paula.  He wanted to incorporate chakra colours so that it had meaning for her and the base colour to be a muted copper or bronze.

This is what I came up with:

I used 12mm Swarovski rivolis in Siam, Padparadscha, Sahara, Emerald, Sapphire, Heliotrope and Tanzanite and set them using 3mm bronze firepolished rounds, bronze 15s and Matte Metallic Dark Bronze delicas, adapting a technique used by Sabine Lippert in her book Beaded Fantasies.

Here you can see a close up of the stones and their settings:

In this photo you can see the reverse of the rivolis and just about make out Sabine's very clever way of bezelling so that the stones are safe in their little cocoons but the front shows as much of the colour and sparkle as possible.  The bezels look pretty and show off much more of the stone than the usual peyote bezel that I use and are blooming quick to make - most of the time!  Getting the stone to sit in and close the netted back up is quite fiddly, especially seeing as the netted flaps want to leap open when adding the row of 15s round the centre!  I'm pretty certain that this is more to do with my tension rather than the design - I'm a very tight beadweaver and like to keep everything quite stiff so that I know nothing will slip out!

As I was making the herringbone rope I decided that it looked really odd with both sides plain herringbone so every 20 rows I inserted a couple of the 3mm firepolished rounds with a couple of the 15s either side but only on one side.  I think this slight alteration in the rope gave the necklace a little more balance than if it had been plain both sides.

The side with the stones is completely plain and just a simple 4-bead herringbone rope.

Rob's coming to pick it up today and I really hope Paula likes it when she opens it on Tuesday.

Golden lariat

So I've clearly not been around much over the past month.  I've been quite busy and haven't been able to bead as much as I'd like, mainly because I had to go into hospital to have two of my wisdom teeth out.  Quite frankly the break was lovely and it was absolutely delicious to have a few hours of down time in the hospital!  Luckily they did it as a day patient and under general anaesthetic so I mainly spent the morning reading a book and chilling out and then the afternoon asleep!  Hurrah!  Mummy was an absolute star and looked after Xander, but because I was quite pants and sleepy afterwards, he was a little unsettled - autistic kids and their rigid routines eh?!  Daddy also bought me ice cream and that was fantastic! 

Anyways, I recently had a commission from a lady at Mummy's work to make a long lariat in gold  That's the only brief I had - that it was a lariat and that it was gold!  I immediately thought of Gustav Klimt and his skilled use of gold, especially in his portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the Tree Of Life (which incidentally, I have a print of in my hallway!).  I knew that there was no way I could replicate his panache in a lariat so I decided to go back to the basics and try and use his mosaic aspect of different hues of gold.

This is the result:

In this close-up you can see how many shades of gold I used.  I think I must have used pretty much every hue and finish of gold seed bead there is!

And at the bottom of the lariat, to give it some weight, I used lots of gold and amber glass beads with some goldstone thrown in as well to give it some sparkle.

Unfortunately, I'm not a major fan of gold.  I don't really know why but it just doesn't feel as comfortable for me.  I much prefer the coolness and understatement of silvers and steels, gold just feels too blingy to me!  So there you have it, not my favourite piece by a long way but I understand the lady who wanted it was thrilled to bits with it.

Mummy's Medallion

Another of Mummy's pieces for this post!

A few months ago, Mummy and I decided to take a bit of a road trip up to The Bead Shop in Nottingham.  I needed some of the 27mm Swarovski rivolis and a couple of cosmic squares for my beading lesson and couldn't wait for the postage, Mummy wanted some drop beads to make Ayshe by the fabulous Sabine Lippert, so I took a day off work and we drove up together.  

I picked up what I needed and Mummy picked up the drop beads that she needed.  Unfortunately they were Indian drops so weren't quite uniform or perfect enough for the Ayshe pattern, which was a shame.  However, on went her Thinking Cap and she came up with this design:

I love how it makes me think of a Bollywood Saturday Night Fever!  The colours are fab and it really looks superb on. 

 Here you can see that Mummy used a bail thought up by the ever-fabulous Jean Power, and see that the herringbone rope is chequered.

And here you can see how Mummy beaded the pendant.  Goodness knows what her bead path is in this (in fact I'm not even sure Mummy knows!) but this little blighter is very sturdy and really holds it's shape as well as staying perfectly disc-like.  Very talented Mummy!

Fade Necklace

As my muse seems to have returned from an astonishingly long holiday I have been putting pencil to paper and needle and Nymo to beads!

Last weekend Mummy and I went to the Beadworker's Guild Bead Bazaar and spent an absolute fortune between us.  It was so inspiring to see people wandering about wearing the most fabulous creations.  I wore my Pyramids Cuff and received lots of compliments on it.  I also saw a few really amazing kits, but at £40 they were a bit too expensive for me (although not as expensive as the Sylvia Fairhurst kit Mummy liked - a whopping £73!).

I bought some rather lovely Swarovski rivolis and this is what I made with them:

I stuck with simple (yet again!) and bezelled three Swarovski rivolis; one 27mm, one 18mm and one 14mm.  I used Delica DB925 Sparkling Grey for the starting 3 rows of peyote stitch and then switched to Delica DBS041 Silver Lined Crystal 15's for the next two rows.

You can just see the Sparkling Grey in this photo.

For the rope I decided to try something that I've often seen, but never done before.  I beaded a six bead round herringbone rope and started with the sparkling grey and then faded into Delica DBC0041 Silver Lined Crystal for the front portion of the rope and then back again.

It faded in quite well I thought.  It's not as good as I've seen done elsewhere, but I'm reasonably pleased as it was my first go.

Very proud teacher!

This evening was Kathy's last lesson until we start up again in September and I just wanted to post to say how proud of her I am!

When Kathy first came to me about 6 months ago she'd done a bit of stringing and had attended a couple of day courses where she learned to bezel a rivoli and add a plain bail to loop onto a necklace.  She'd bought hundreds of beads, books and patterns but for some reason couldn't follow them.  Since then we have learned lots of different stitches (including flat peyote!) and I said that she should find a piece that she liked but wouldn't usually dare to attempt.  I wanted her to find something that she aspired to but didn't quite feel ready for.  She went straight to Creating Crystal Jewellery with Swarovski by Laura McCabe as she's quite the magpie!  She chose a piece that was made with a rivoli and some cosmic squares but she didn't like the spiral rope.  For some reason she really dislikes the look of spiral rope so we started on the pendant and once that was done, we would look at which kind of rope she would like instead.

Here's the pendant:

She used a volcano rivoli with volcano and light vitrail cosmic squares.  She started to add the picot round the secondary squares but decided that she didn't like them and wanted it to get plainer the further away from the rivoli so that your eyes are drawn in and then out again.  At first she really worried about deviating from the pattern but I said that it was excellent that she felt she could personalise it - it is an important step in learning how to design jewellery for yourself after all!  (As an aside - the charlottes are actually a pale  AB metallic green but look white because I was using my phone camera and no natural light!)

After much thinking of all the ropes we had learned, she decided to plump for twisted herringbone, a wise choice I thought!  She did remarkably well and started off two ropes in a lesson and finished them as her homework.  Today, in our last lesson until September, she did a loop and toggle closure and made sure all her ends we securely woven away and cut off.

Here's the full finished necklace:

Didn't she do fabulously?!  I can't quite explain how proud of her I am, she has come such a long way in her grasp of different stitches, changing from one stitch to another and most importantly, the importance of tension!

I asked her what she was looking at doing come Autumn, and she's asked me to find a pattern made of lots of components so she can do homework.  I have a design brewing in the back of my brain that I think she will like - it's lots and lots of little circles (inspired by Jean Power's Freeform Cuff but as a necklace, asymmetric and using lots of different types of circles, mainly in peyote but with the odd sparkly rivoli) so I shall let it brew a little longer and then do a few rough sketches before putting needle and thread to beads!  Luckily I have 3 months to make and then write up instructions after photographing it and sending her a picture! 

And yes, this is an hurrah as it seems my muse is back too!  Wooop!

Fluorite Cab

For Christmas this year my darling bratlet bought me some cabochon for bezelling.  His favourite colour is green, so he bought me two green ones and then a fluorite one and a tiger's eye - I am a very lucky Mummy indeed!  They're all 40x30mm and really pretty.  So this week I decided to bezel the fluorite one.

As you can see, I also added some fluorite 8mm beads throughout the herringbone cord and used the 15s to frame them.

The clasp was a nightmare to do because I didn't want to just put a bead on the end, nor did I want a traditional toggle so instead I made up a beaded bead using three of the 8mm beads.

View from the top

Side view

All in all, it's very simple but I'm pleased because although the dark iris beads do darken the cab significantly, they also bring out the deep purple veins in the fluorite.

Some Old Favourites

I'm not much of an overly decorative beader, although I am trying to really give it some pizzazz!  I seem to prefer really large statement pieces that use shape or colour as their main punch, rather than intricate and delicate embellishment.  However, I adore beadwork that is tightly packed with elegant and rhythmic embellishment, I just never seem to do any of it myself!

This is one of my favourite cabs that I've beaded.  On the first go I absolutely smothered the bezel with crystals and delica embellishment but found that the beauty of the huge quartz palmstone was getting lost in the maze of sparkles.  The stone is 7cm x 5cm and all it really needed was a plain delica bezel and a lazy herringbone rope to suspend it from.    It is extraordinarily simple in beading terms, but the sheer size of it gives it one hell of an impact!

Again, this necklace is really simple in beading terms - all it is is peyote circles linked together with the outside final two rows on each circle a lighter purple than the centre.  I like the necklace but I wish I'd done the first two inner rows a darker purple to give it more depth, rather than just relying on the repetition of the shapes...

And here we have another simple looped necklace.  This one is long (opera length) but wrapped round the bust twice.  The links are made in straightforward herringbone rope in black and gunmetal seed beads.  What gives it texture is that the black beads are size 15 and the gunmetal are size 11.  Also the links are smaller at the back of the neck and get bigger down the front - not hugely, but enough to give it a bit of interest.

This is another of my pieces that relies on impact rather than embellishment!  It started off as a bracelet but the beaded beads were so big that I had to turn it into a necklace!  I admit to going a little bit mad with colour on this one but it was a gift for one of the most colourful ladies in my life!  We were raised as sisters, even though she is actually my aunt and we have always been opposite sides of the same coin: I am dark, she is blonde; I am a tomboy where she is utterly girly.  We always joke that I always wear black because she wears all my colours for me!  She has a knack of being able to throw the most amazingly random colours together and link them with a third and have it work so I thought I'd make her something absolutely crazy in colour.  Needless to say, she absolutely loved it!

I am going to try and get into the habit of beading more intricate pieces, I really am!

Teaching Beading

I love teaching people to bead and really enjoy seeing their confidence grow and their design style emerge alongside their increased technical ability.  I feel a mixture of pride and sadness when they no longer need me any more; sadness because I enjoy getting to know them and our conversations (sometimes they're more like therapy sessions!) whilst beading, and pride because they no longer need me!  I am really lucky that my students keep in contact with me and they will often pop round for a cuppa and an evening of beading together.
 
Every Tuesday I teach a lovely lady called Kathy beading.  She is relatively new to it but tries very hard and has come on in leaps and bounds over the two months I have taught her.

She came to me after having taken a few day classes and had bought swathes of beads but could not follow patterns very easily, nor was her tension very good.  The first thing I taught her was a different way of holding her beadwork so that she could maintain tension (and nagged her an awful lot about it too!) and then we moved on to various stitches.  So far I have taught her all the basic permutations of herringbone stitch - especially herringbone rope and twisted herringbone rope, right angle weave and we have done a few simple beaded beads, both supported and unsupported. 

Last lesson she was telling me about a friend of hers who us undergoing a second bout of chemotherapy for breast cancer so I suggested we make something for her to cheer her up a little.  Kathy talked about how this lady's faith was really important to her so we had a little brainstorm and decided to make a very simple cross in right angle weave.

This is the basic pattern I came up with.  An extraordinarily simple right angle weave cross in two layers and then joined along the edges as she struggled with cubic RAW, then stiffened with seed beads around the edge.

Kathy chose to do hers in shades of deep red to put on a simple rope of strung garnets.

The other side is a slightly lighter shade of red and she has to add the seed bead edging for her homework to stiffen it up.

I hope she is proud of herself for doing this and that it not only cheers her friend up, but that it brings her solace whilst she's undergoing the chemo.