BTW 25th of July

This week I have a couple of stuff going on, on my beading table. I've been playing around with different color combinations on some older designs, heh.
I've also began to doodle out a design I'm going to create for a bead embroidery necklace, incorporating that brass collar I bought during spring this year. I'm thinking different shades of pink so far on this one, but we'll see.

Yesterday I also received my order I made last week with Bricolart.com . They have a big summer sale with up to 70% discount till the 31st of July, so I recommend you to take a look :)
I went crazy myself with some Swarovski rivolis; 0.46€ cent for the vitrail light, so I bought about 15 of those. And then a couple of topaz colored and since I love those light siam I bough a couple of those as well. And I've been curious about the "metallic gold iris #462" of the Miyuki seed beads, so I bough some 11/0, 15/0, 11/0 hex, 3mm bugles and tila beads in that color. Darn, they are so beautiful, and the iris effect is beautiful!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Bead Embroidery Earrings

For those who follows me on Twitter and Facebook, I've mentioned that I've been working on a couple of bead embroidery earrings since a few days back.

I've always been a bit scared of creating earrings with bead embroidery... Why? Cause I've been scared of the facts that each pair should be kind of identical. I know, I know... Silly, but sometimes I'm a bit of a symmetrical-perfectionist-freak, lol.
This week I decided to step out of my comfort zone and actually deal with this little "fear" of mine, and after creating the first pair I can honestly not understand what it was I was afraid of. It went so nice and smooth, lol. I dealt with one pair at a time, but in a sequence; bezel one pair and then bezel the second one before moving on to the next part of the design.

For the first pair I made, I created a pair of post earrings, using a 10mm Swarovski pearl, 4mm Swarovski bicones, 11/0 seed beads by Toho.
I kinda like these, cause they don't lay "flat" on the surface but they stick out, giving a lot of texture even if they are pretty simple.

For the second pair I made I decided to use some of those gorgeous 14mm montana blue rivolis by Swarovski that I bought last month. This once, I actually chose to bezel the rivoli with 11/0 Delicas, and I must say that they give a very clean look for the bezel itself. After I added the outer row after the bezel ring I decided to add some shiny blue iris faceted Czech glass beads for the design. I already had decided after the bezel, that I wanted to attach these earrings to a hook, and with that create a fringe for them.
For this pair, there's actually two fringes. If you can see it on the photo, there's a fringe starting from the edging of the joining of the beading foundation and the ultrasuede. And then the second fringe comes from the faceted Czech glass beads.
Besides the rivolis I also used 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads by Toho, 15/0 seed beads by Miyuki, 11/0 Delicas, 4mm firepolished Czech glass beads, 4mm Swarovski bicones, 8mm twisted bugles by Gütermann and nickel-free hooks.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Pendant: Twinlulu

I wanted a little break from my main project and I saw this really adorable pattern yesterday which uses Preciosa Twin Beads on the Facebook fan page of Preciosa. The link lead to a Hungarian blog with the name "EWA's World of Beads" in English. Her blog is partly in English and of course in Hungarian, and she has a lot of different patterns for free on her blog, so for those who want to take a look I recommend you strongly to do so.
About three months ago or so I bought about 20g of four different colors of twin beads to have in my stash for "just-incase-I-will-be-in-the-mood" to play with them and I thought this was an awesome opportunity to play with them a bit more then I already had.
This pendant is called "Twinlulu" and it's really easy to understand; all Ewa's patterns are in diagrams in step by step and nothing is written.
What you'll need are of course twin beads, then you'll also need a 12mm rivoli, 8/0, 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads, 4mm rounds and 4mm bicones.

After I created my first pendant I wanted to try my hands on another, since I had a different color palette in mind that I wanted to try out. The purple one is my first try.
As for the second try... I've been having these gorgeous aqua/gold lined (#284) seed beads from Toho since a while and I wanted to try them out with different colors then the ones I'd tried before.

As for the attachment I decided to make the same for both of them. I gunmetal-plated chain with a magnetic clasp. The same chain looked nice to both of them so ^.^;

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

February Challenge

It's a blue and a green theme this month in the challenge at "Operation Tackle That Bead Stash!" and I decided to create a pair of Swarovski bezeled rivoli earrings.
To get directly to this month's challenge, click here.

I've been wanting to create these specific earrings with a frame like a star around the rivoli for a while, but I haven't really found any tutorials for it, so... I took an afternoon and began sketching it out, and experimenting on how I could make a star-like pattern. After some fiddling and calculating I finally managed to get it right.

When the shape of the star was completed I had to try my way around to attach the flat back stud-earrings behind the rivoli without trusting glue. Of course I used a little bit of glue to keep them in place. After it had dry I began to work on a decreased circular peyote stitch to embed the needle of the flat-back stud-earrings into the beadwork so it would also look nice from behind.


After I completed the backs of each earring I began to add some extra embellishment around them. I decided to use up those gorgeous capri blue 4mm bicone crystals from Preciosa and some of the 15/0 light blue frosted AB seed beads that I had used for the star frame in the center of the earrings.

I also got to use my only thread roll of K.O beading thread. I bought it just to try it out, to see what the differences were compared to Nymo. The only difference I noticed immediately was that the K.O is a bit harder and stiffer than the Nymo. I know some people say that K.O fray a lot less then Nymo, but I couldn't really tell that, it just frayed at the same amount as Nymo, heh. I might buy more of the K.O in the future though, since I actually liked working with it, and the K.O has different kind of colors then the Nymo.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Necklace: Amphitrite

I manage to complete the project I've been working with this week on Friday. I know, I know, I'm a bit slow at posting once in a while.

When I were browsing through Marcia DeCoster's book, "Beaded Opulence", I came across a project named "Etruscan Treasure" on page 61 that gave me the idea for this necklace. At least for the pendant itself.

I'm lacking in a lot of things when it comes to this book (the projects in the book calls for a lot of crystals etc.).

And as you can see I attached a paper bead in the chain, where I ended up writing my initials :)

I decided to use the idea of shaping metal wire into a shape that I would bead around later. The instructions in the book called for metal wire in 14gauge? which I don't have, so I decided on using the 20 gauge wire I have and make two identical shapes, and then wire them together with a 24gauge wire so the wire would keep its shape.

I used 11/0 seed beads to the entire piece in navy blue opaque and in bronze.
I also used a 14mm swarovski rivoli in saphire that I've been having laying around for some time. To attach the rivoli in the center I first made some peyote straps on the left and right side, which I embellished with some moonstone chips together with 15/0 bronze seed beads. To make the rivoli sit even sturdier I sew through the top and the bottom of the pendant with some seed beads to the rivoli.
I also embellished the center just above the bail with some seed beads and dagger and drop beads n bronze to personalize it more.

The chain I made with circular herringbone stitch.

This was a christmas present for my mother in law as well :)

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Ring & Pendant: Meteor

I took myself time to try out some beaded bezels with the swarovski rivolies that I bought last month. It's actually quite fun, and very frustrating, at least when it comes to fitting the rivoli into the bezel itself.

I decided to use both the smoked colored crystals in a set piece. I decided on using those gunmetal colored beads as well, since they are so pretty and also cause the color is in fashion this year.
I ended up making a necklace, using the 14mm rivoli, a few 4mm fire polished glass beads, a few 6mm fire polished glass beads and seed beads in sizes 11/0 and 15/0.

For the necklace I also added a chain which happened to be gunmetal plated - what convenient! I used some jump-rings in sizes 4mm and 6mm in 20 gauge for attaching the pendant to the chain. God, I still love those jump-rings. I just haven't been able to use 'em that much since metal really are expensive at this time.

For the ring I only used the same 4mm fire polished beads as for the pendant. And then for the ring I used herringbone stitch.
Herringbone stitch is actually one of my favorite stitches, since it gets that scaly effect, and when you touch it it just feels like a nice surface.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad