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. 

Sparkles and Spikes Bangle

In my last post I teased a little...  I said that I'd made something similar but a little more bonkers...

Well here it is:

I call it Sparkles and Spikes and it just makes me laugh every time I look at it because it was such an unbelievable joy to bead! Horns, wings, rivolis suspended in mid-air? Yeah baby, it's got it all!   It's a bit of a bugger to photograph though!

As you can see, I kept the pallette pretty simple, using only silver lined crystal and silver lined smoke delicas to complement the Swarovski rivolis in black diamond.

Starting with a simple MRAW band of 84 units, I increased the plain silver mid section into horns with enough space between them for the rivolis to sit quite happily between them.  Then I turned my attention to the smoky wings and increased them just enough so that , using one of the beads in the bezel as the tip of the wing both top and bottom, the rivoli would hang there, away from the bangle.  I wanted them to be close to the tips of the horns but not quite as far out - mainly to give them a bit of protection but also so that the horns attack first!  Surprisingly, the wings are exactly half the number of rows as the horns, even though they look so very much shorter to me.

The inside of the bangle is nice and smooth on the inside.  It's pretty stiff and solid but squishes down just enough to get it over the hand - phew!

I do hope you like it and that it makes you laugh as much as me!

It is available in my Etsy shop here.

Tangle Of Angles Bangle

Whilst I was off work, apart from the Raven Star Bangle, I also started another bangle. I decided to go way out of my comfort zone and make something out of colours that I personally never wear, silver lined bronze and gold lined cream.

 I call it the Tangle Of Angles Bangle because as I was making it, I decided to really push myself on the number of horns and gave it 14!  The most I'd ever done before that was 12 and my goodness it was such a tangle to bead!  The beadwork decided to be such a tangle that it was an absolute horror to bead and took about four decreasing rounds (and an obliging can!) for it to become round and bangle shaped.

 I also decided to add in an Elegant Guide Round (video) that Kate McKinnon came up with, which I hadn't played with before.  Even though I didn't embellish the EGR in any way, I am a definite convert to this technique and will never stitch in the ditch again!

 After I did one side with the EGR, I just suddenly lost interest.  My stitches had reopened and I just couldn't face doing any more beading for a few weeks so my amazing Mummy finished it off for me. 

 I think that going with the zigzag edges really completes the piece.  I always tend to go with straight edges or wings but I wanted to try something a little more elegant this time, lending itself to the colours (get me trying to do grown up beading!).

It is available in my Etsy Shop

25th Wedding Anniversary

Last August was Mummy and Daddy's 25th wedding anniversary.  They threw a fabulous party in the ballroom at The Ramada Jarvis in Leicester and it was a truly lovely evening. 

To go with a fabulous deep red frock she had made, Mummy designed and made this necklace:

It was made using two drop peyote for the neck straps, peyote flowers and leaves and lovely ladder stitched curls.

Here you can see a close up of the flowers with the small beaded bead centres.

And here you can see the drape of the leaves and the fabulous little curls which dripped into her cleavage and looked rather indulgent!

The main bead colours matched her dress perfectly and with a wide and deep square neckline, the asymmetry really worked well.  She looked amazing and is proud of such an intricate and sentimentally important piece.

In The Beginning...

Well, I'm Cate and I have been making beaded jewellery for the past eleven years.  I started to learn to bead when I was on maternity leave - the only thing that kept the nausea at bay was sitting still and there's only so much television you can watch without going completely insane! My Mum taught me the basics and we've taken one hell of a journey together in the bead weaving world!

I started with the most basic of all basics - a peyote stitched amulet bag.  It was horrible!  However, the beads captured my imagination and I kept trying new combinations of colours and textures that I could make pretty yet simple bracelets.  They were all variations of the same primitive theme, but they kept my fingers busy and kept me sane, whilst also providing rubbish presents for pretty much everyone around me! 

After a few weeks I decided to see what else I could do with these gorgeous little sparkles and slowly learnt how to do brick stitch, netting, square stitch, herringbone, spiral rope and eventually I mastered right angle weave.  I made hundreds of samples, learning all the permutations of these stitches that I could find.  I drew blood with the needles, developed a nice line in thread-worn skin on my fingers and a taste for all things shiny!

Beading has kept me sane yet provided me with a new type of insanity. I have an autistic son so I rarely go out of an evening so creating beaded jewellery has kept me busy throughout those long nights before he learnt that sleeping was a good thing to do!

I have too many favourite bead artists but some of my very favourites include Jean Power, Gwen Fisher & Florence Turnour, Marcia DeCoster, Cindy Holsclaw and Sonoko Nozue (I couldn't find her website but Google her works, they are amazing!).