June Moodboard

Welcome to the June moodboard! Trying to decide which colour scheme to choose this month I started thinking about the start of summer and what we'd all really like to see at this time of year - clear blue skies in the day and twinkling silver stars at night! With this in mind I've put together a mosaic of images using blue and silver.

You can use any shades of blue from turquoise and navy to teal and cobalt and you can include the silver as beads or as the findings in your piece - or both - the choice is yours!

As well as colours there are also shapes, textures and materials to inspire you...swirls, circles, dots, metal, buttons and wood.

Clockwise from top-left: otro "joven indie", blue eyeshadow with dotted eyeliner by m.a.c. and coastal scents, Blue [Friday], Silver & Metal Buttons & 1 Silver Finding

Submitting is easy! You can either email your photographs to me at thecrimsonmoon7@gmail.com or you can add them to our Flickr group pool. If you have a website, blog or an online shop that you'd like us to link to your name then please include it with your submission.

What can you make? Anything as long as it's made with beads! Any technique is accepted, from beadweaving and stringing to wire work and bead embroidery. Lampworkers and polymer clay artists are also welcome to submit pieces they've made.

We're happy for you to make something using a pattern from a book, magazine or tutorial but if you do please let us know the designer's name and where it was published, including a link if available, so that we can give full credit.

The deadline for entries is 6pm (GMT) on Thursday June 30th and as usual a prize will be awarded at random to one of our lucky entrants! Sarah is providing the prize this month and it's a kit to make a pair of these fantastic Crysanthemum earrings (although the actual kit will be in a different colour)...



So have yourself a wonderful June and don't be blue...unless it's with beads!

May Moodboard - And the winner is...

We've had an amazing response to May's green moodboard with a record 17 pieces submitted! Thank you so much to everyone who has joined in with us this month and also to all our readers and followers - we couldn't do it without you. Before I show you a round up of all the beautiful beadwork let's have a recap of the mosaic I posted at the beginning of the month...

Top row: green, Ghost Song, my lips are sealed
Middle row: Lime green wall, Pannonian sea, Green on Green
Bottom row: Crests Of Waves, Green Eyes, Green door against green grass

Debbie







Dee





Mandy



Carol



Liz (me)



Eleanor



Gemma



Elisabeth (adapted from a design by Kerrie Slade)



Didy



Kitty Ballistic





Catherine





Sarah



June



Again I'm using Random.org to randomly choose a name from the list and the beader who is in 1st position is...



Congratulations Didy!!! I'll be in touch shortly about your prize.

Well I hope you've all enjoyed this months challenge, don't forget to drop by again tomorrow when I'll be posting the brand new moodboard for June!

Basic Stitch Tutorial - Herringbone Stitch

Last week we showed you how to make a strip of ladder stitch and this week we'll be using that strip as a starting base for herringbone. Herringbone stitch is one of my top three stitches and very easy to do once you learn the technique. I remember the first time I tried this stitch, I was amazed at how the beads lean toward each other so neatly to look almost like knitted stocking stitch.

First of all you need your ladder stitch base which for the purposes of this tutorial should be an even number of columns. I'm starting with a base of 8 columns, 2 beads high. You can start from a single row of beads but the double row is much easier to hold on to when you begin stitching.

With the thread coming out of a bead at the end of the row, pick up 2 beads and sew down through the adjacent bead...



Then sew back up through the next bead...



Pick up 2 more beads and sew down through the next bead, then back up through the next...



Continue in this way until you reach the end of the row. You'll see that the thread ends in the wrong place for starting a new row so you need to make a little maneouver to get the thread into the correct position.

Sew up through the adjacent bead...



and then sew up through the last bead you added...



Continue as before, adding your pairs of beads to the pairs in the previous row and making the turn at the end of each row...







When you've finished your strip of herringbone you'll want to finish off the end so that the beads are joined together rather than separated into pairs. The thread path is exactly the same as ladder stitch.

Sew down through the second bead...



and up through the third...



Sew back down through the second bead again...



and back up through the third...



Continue in this way, stitching each bead to it's neighbours. Finish off by weaving both your threads into the beadwork and trim.



Or rather than trim them, you may want to use the threads to attach a button and loop to make a bracelet as I've done here. For this one I've used hex beads.



And here I've used a blue and green mix of size 11s and attached the strip of herringbone to an aluminium cuff that I first covered with Ultrasuede. A perfect base for this huge button!



Well I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial. There's so much things you can do with this stitch so I hope you'll continue to explore it and wish you many adventures in herringbone!

Pattern Finds - Mad Rings 2 by Heather Collin and a Treat!

Happy Wednesday!

I'm excited to introduce a new feature to OTTBS, Pattern Finds. I love to search the web to find unusual beadwork patterns and tutorials from indie designers and thought that it would be fun to share them here with the hopes that it will inspire us all to try new designs and techniques, use up our bead stash and also promote the designers.

We are kicking the new feature off with a real treat from Heather Collin of Beading Patterns by Heather. The Mad Rings 2 pattern really drew my eye when I was browsing on Etsy! The beautiful, bright colours are bold and modern, the design is intricate and it's one heck of a statement ring! How could I not love it at first sight?

As a special treat for OTTBS readers Heather is offering a discount of 50% on the Mad Rings 2 Pattern! The discount code is TTBS2, thank you so much to Heather for making the 1st Pattern Finds extra special with her generosity!



Isn't it beautiful? Please go visit Heather's shop and have a look at all her beautiful patterns, but please remember that the discount code applies only to the Mad Rings 2 design and not any other patterns in the shop.

I will be starting my ring tonight! I recently bought some peacock style colours of delica's and have been looking for the right pattern for them, I think this will be perfect! There are 5 pages in the pattern which includes 2 designs. The pattern has full colour photograph, diagrams and graphs, step by step instructions and even blank graphs for you to chart your own design! The instructions are very clear and easy to read, though I must say that the diagrams are very good and I will probably go mostly by them.

I'm off to go start my ring! Thank you again to Heather for her generosity!

Update: I have just completed the 1st part of the basic design ring top and have to say how impressed I am! It is a well thought out pattern making the beading actually much easier than it looks and Heather has employed a very clever trick involving coloured headings so that once you have the 1st couple of rows started you just need to look at the colour of the header to see what colour is next. I can't wait to finish this one and move on to the more intricate pattern version!

Happy Beading!

Sarahx

May Moodboard

Our green moodboard has proved to be very popular and this week we have some more gorgeous beadwork to share with you!

Debbie made these wonderful lampwork beads...





Eleanor captured two cabochons with seed beads...



And Gemma created this beautiful hair barrette using firepolish crystals...



We're getting toward the end of the month but there's still plenty of time left to create something for the moodboard, click here for details on how to join in.

Basic Stitch Tutorial - Ladder Stitch

Today's basic stitch tutorial is ladder stitch, which is a very useful technique to learn. Incredibly easy to do, it often forms the basis for many other stitches, including herringbone and brick stitch.

You can work ladder stitch using one or more beads, but for the purpose of this tutorial I'm making a strip that's two beads high (this is sometimes called a two bead stack). If you need to make a strip one bead high, simply pick up one bead at a time instead of two.

Thread your needle with a comfortable length of thread and pick up a stop bead. Leaving about an 8" tail, sew through the stop bead once or twice more being careful not to split the thread. The stop bead is optional but it will help to keep the beads positioned as you work.

Pick up 4 seed beads, slide them down to the stop bead and sew through the first 2 seed beads in the same direction...



Pull the thread snug, positioning the beads so that the two pairs sit side by side and sew back down through the second pair...



Pick up 2 more seed beads and sew down through the adjacent pair of beads...



Sew back up through the pair you just added...



Continue in this way, picking up 2 beads at a time until the strip is as wide as you need.



Don't forget to check back next week when I'll be using this ladder stitch strip as a base for herringbone :)

Wednesday Review - Starlet Earrings Pattern by Liz Reed

Ok beaders, To help out and give Sarah a bit of time to stop and take a breath, I decided to write a review for you all, and as I had only bought Liz's Starlet Earring pattern the other night, I couldn't wait to test it out and make some earrings so we thought it a good idea to review it too.

Now we all know what it's like to buy a PDF pattern, and sometimes wait (for what seems like an age) for it to arrive via email!

Well worry no longer! If you want to buy one of Liz's Patterns www.thecrimsonmoon.etsy.com rest assured it will be with you within a flash (that is assuming she lives by her pc like me hehehe)

Anyhow, let's get down to the nitty gritty of my opinion of the pattern.

First impressions?

Very clear, nice size font, so it's easy to read, beautiful quality pictures and lots of step by step photos so you can tell where your supposed to be each step of the way.

The pattern is only 2 pages long so nice to put back to back and laminate to keep it clean and to hand ;o)

I like Liz's tutorials as she obviously thinks them through before she starts, Liz uses different colours at each stage so we can tell which step we are on by looking at the correct 'figure No' pictures that corresponds to what step we are at.

I think that both beginner beaders and more advanced beaders will enjoy learning a new technique and find Liz's patterns very easy to follow. You can get the beads in the sizes required from anywhere, no fancy or unusual ones that you cannot find.

After all if I can follow them, anyone can! I normally try and make things by looking at the pictures given in the tutorial without reading the instructions first, then mess it up somewhere along the way and have to unpick read and restart hehehe!

All in all a very good tutorial, nice clear instructions and step by step photographs. Great Job!! Well done Liz!

Carol xxx