Wednesdays Wear It Or Frog It.

This week I dug through one of my jewellery cases and came up with this spiral rope bracelet. I made this using a size 11 bead soup mix of creams and beige and some cream dancing pearls. I think I wore it once and then put it it the case, never to be seen again until today. Having looked at it again, I think it's a lovely bracelet, just not the right colours for me, I tend to wear cool colours such as purple, teal, black and white. I would certainly make this style of bracelet again in those sorts of colours but this one is not for me! I have a friend who wears lots of browns and natural colours so I will offer it to her. If she doesn't want it, you may well see it frogged at a later date!

Have you dug through the jewellery stash to unearth any lost treasures this week? Please tell us all about them, you can e-mail us at ottbs@hotmail.co.uk .

1st Goal for July Complete! Sarah

Back in June I posted that I wanted to make a statement necklace with some Vintaj components and these lovely white and bronze beads that I rescued from a half made necklace. As I was working the soft colours whispered rather than shouted so I decided against a large statement necklace and instead decided to play to the vintage feel of the components. I started by making some wrapped loop links with the bronze beads and joined them with jump rings, but that wasn't quite right so I made little love knots to join the links instead. I wanted the focus to be at the front so I added pre-made chain to the sides and made a large ruffly flower in circular netting for the focal. I am quite happy with it, but still want to make a statement necklace!

July Goals - Sarah

So, that really organised list of goals that I posted at the beginning of June? Didn't work out so well! In fact I didn't achieve any of them, so I have decided to take it one goal at a time for July as this has worked well for me in previous months.

My 1st goal is to complete the necklace that I started in June with the bronze & white beads and bronze wire. I have done quite a bit of it so this should be easily achievable as July promises to be almost as busy as June. A little teaser for you, I have made my own chain for this and it includes love knots which I just learned to do, I love them.

Keep tackling that bead stash!

Sarahx

June Goals - Sarah.

I thought that I would plan out the whole month's goals at the beginning for a change instead of making it up as I go along.

First up is this batch of lovelies which includes a half done necklace that I am going to frog and reuse the white/bronze Czech glass beads, bronze & white seed beads, Vintaj chain & bird link and brass wire.




I was reading Cindy Gimbrone's post about statement necklaces http://lampworkdiva.blogspot.com/2010/06/handmade-vogue-statement-necklaces.html
and decided that I would like to make one myself, I searched Etsy for some inspiration and decided that I would quite like a vintage look, so I scoured the book/magazine stash and found these, which I will use for further info, although I do want to design my own rather than use a pattern.


For my 2nd goal I have chosen my box of warm coloured delica's ( I have my beads sorted into warm/cool tones by size & type of bead, ooh get me! Can you tell I have way too many?). I want to complete my goal of 5 beaded pendants, so I have 3 left to make.


My 3rd goal, if I can get to it, is to make use of this lovely spiral book, I love spirals and this has some beautiful variations, I may make a bracelet or they have lovely ideas for earrings too.

That's quite a lot, so I'd better get to it!

Look, I can fit the lid on! Sarah

A couple of weeks ago, I was moaning to my friend Lisa that my stash did not seem to be going down at all. She said that I would notice it all at once, I'm glad to say she was right! When I started OTTBS this box would not close, there were probably another 5 takeaway boxes in there. After using up quite a bit, I have been able to merge containers together and now it all fits in! (In the interest of complete disclosure, I must admit that this is not all my stash just the downstairs one! I will tackle the rest when this one is sorted!)

Final May Goal Was A Bust!

I set myself the task of making 5 beadwoven pendants from my 3 boxes of delica's. I knew it wouls be hard but it was an impossible task for me last week! I did manage 2 pendants though, a butterfly and a heart.

5th May Goal Complete - Sarah

I have quite a stash of delica beads that I haven't used in some time and some of them haven't even been opened. Well, we can't have that now can we? Making my Blue Jeans Butterfly for my Folksy summer swap partner reminded me how fabulous they are to work with, so I'm now on a mission to make 5 more beaded pendants with delica's by the end of this month. Yes, that's a lot but I figure I might as well aim high!

While routing through my 3 takeaway containers of delica's (they aren't all completely full, honest, I sort by colour. Of course we aren't mentioning the ones packed away upstairs, out of sight and all that), I came across this pretty mix that I bought in a frenzy when I realised that Hobbycraft in my town sold them. I wanted to take some photo's for the post below and thought these would make a pretty butterfly.
I am doing a craft fair on Saturday and wanted some more butterflies to take with me, I'd like a little grouping of them on my display. So here she is, I think she's pretty but needs some brighter friends to sit alongside her on my table. Watch this space....

An Attempt to Explain How I Construct a Butterfly.

Clair asked how I construct my butterfly pendant, so I thought I would put together a quick and dirty explanation. I have got a lot on and don't really have time for anything more detailed at the moment.

First of all you will need 4 equally sized brick stitch diamonds, here's a link to a tutorial if you want one, http://www.beadwrangler.com/samplers/brickstitch2/making_brickstitch_samples2.html

Then lay them out in pairs with 1 edge of each diamond flush against the other.

Thread a needle through one of the tails and go down through the 1st edge bead of diamond 1, then up through the 1st edge bead of diamond 2 and back down the 1st edge bead of diamond 1, continue like this until you have the 2 edges sewn together.

Repeat for the other pair of diamonds. Then lay 2 of the bottom edges of each pair together and attach as above. Clear as mud? Hope these pics help!

Birthday Gifts Part 1.

I'll have to do this in two parts as my camera ran out of battery before I could download the monster of a necklace that I made for my friend Lisa. These are the pieces that I made for her sister Claire, Claire wanted earrings or rings, so I raided my stash and made her a few pretties. I will only post the things made from stash here the others will be on April Is Forever.

I bought these gorgeous turquoise ceramic flowers at the Chepstow Bead Fair in January but have been a bit stuck on how to use them, a simple circle of seed beads made with Beadalon and a crimp bead were the perfect solution.

Claire wears a lot of green, so I paired 4mm peridot and 3mm olive swarovski's and made this pretty raw/peyote ring and made a matching pair of earrings, again using a simple bead wire circle with a wire wrapped dangle.

I'm glad to say that she liked all of them!

1st May Goal Picture & The Promise of Things to Come - Sarah

You'll note that I titled this post the 1st picture of May and not just the 1st completed goal. That's because I have been feverishly beading birthday presents and swap gifts which are all super-secret and it's been really hard to note post here and show you what I've made and used from my stash!

This is my most recent stash busting project, I have a hoard of delica beads that I have not used for ages and I thought it was about time that I did, they are far too beautiful to languish in my bead box, only o be taken out to be admired on occasion. I have been on a nature kick lately and started making tiny butterfly pendants in 1 colour of size 11's but thought how pretty several shades would be. I also had a few problems with the holes of the 11's filling with thread, so the delica's are perfect for this project. So here I have a beautiful pendant which I have called Blue Jeans Butterfly to remind me that Summer is just around the corner.

The birthday gifts are being delivered tomorrow, so I can update you on them then.

3rd & 4th April Goals.

I know I haven't posted much this month as I have had a lot on but it has been a good month for stashbusting the seed beads, I used up about 100 grams! Woohoo! Still can't fit everything in my craft boxes though. Here are 2 corkscrew spiral necklaces that I made with 2 tubes of size 8 beads for each. I used up all the beads in the tubes for both, I love it when that happens!

Apart from the Bead Stash....

I also have a ridiculous amount of beading magazines and books. I get Bead & Button, Beadwork, BeadStyle, Bead Unique and Bead every issue and occasionally pick up other mags if something catches my eye. I also have a lot of books, I can't take a photo as they are packed away while we decorate. I rarely make anything from a mag these days but do frequently spend an evening going back over them for inspiration, so I do feel that I use them regularly and so they are worth buying. I did recently destash quite a few BeadStyle magazines to my work friend Sam, who is thinking of starting to make jewellery (yay, another convert!) and I plan to give some to another colleague whose mum wants to take up the hobby.

I look through my books less often so I feel that I should really try to make more use of them. I think that this weekend I will try to find some time to look through the books and make a list of 5 projects to do some stashbusting with in the next 3 months. I will list them here and track my progress. Hopefully this approach will mean that I use up a lot of beads and make proper use of my beading library.

Do you have any beading books that you don't feel you make proper use of?

Sarahx

March Goal 1 (Sarah) - Progress

My 1st project for goal 1 is complete! That's the wonderful thing about working with size 8's you can really zip along. I alternated between add 1 outer set with an accent bead and 1 outer set with 5 size 8's. I used just over half of the tube of size 8's but very few of the bead mix. So I have now started on the 2nd project and have threaded all the remaining beads onto headpins. Looks like there will be a lot of wrapped loops in my near future!

March Goal 1 (Sarah)

My 1st goal this month is to use up one of the many tubes of purple beads (these are 8's) and this 50g bag of bead mix that was a bit of a mistake buy, there aren't really enough of each bead for the usual things that I make. My plan is to make a simple spiral stitch bracelet with the 8's as the core and randomly using the accent beads on the spiral. That probably won't use them all so I also have some leftover silver plated chain and headpins that I will use up the rest with to make a charm bracelet, which I have never made before!