Suite Of Cards

A Bead Buddies Forum member, Tina, set a challenge - named, "Alice In Wonderland".

I have only ever seen the Johnny Depp movie, and the first thing beadable that came to mind was playing cards.

So based on that, I designed and made these little cards in Square stitch.

I then had to look up what order to put them in, and if indeed suites of cards did have an order. There seems to be different orders for different games so this layout is Poker - Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts & Spades.

I strung them with Chinese Crystals, black on one side and red on the other using tigertail and finished with a hook clasp.

Cecile's Wheel

Found this fabulous pattern during a random Google search for something completely different, It is called Cecile's Wheel.

Liked the effect so thought I would have a go.

It works up really quickly, and is easy to pick up.

I did it in a lined pink seed bead with a grey transparent larger seed bead for contrast.

Finished with one of my favourite fastenings, a Peyote Toggle and loop :)

Now I need to stop getting distracted by pretty patterns and get on with some of the long list of stuff I need to be doing !

A Slice of Rainbow

Another of my time-consuming, fiddly, annoying, 'why did I start this', cuffs :)

This time I used a rainbow of colours - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet - and in that order.

I did design a pattern and followed it to begin with, but then I got fed up of trying to work out where I was so after about 3" I freeformed it. This resulted with it being picked back a good few times. In retrospect I should have stuck to the original pattern :)

To fasten I added a large press-stud which is not seen when the cuff is worn, but it also needed something focal for added oomph, so I found a very pretty large green button and added that as decoration.

Now, when you work with Delica beads, which are really very tiny, you should make sure your lighting is as bright as possible, you might notice that there two black beads within the Indigo section, I am really annoyed by them, but not annoyed enough to start again :)

A fiddly twiddly pendant.

Had a colour challenge to complete, in colours I would not normally ever put together, for fear of it looking too "Union Jacky". The colours are Red, Navy, White and Pale Blue.

So I started with a circle of beads in Herringbone Stitch, added a frill and thought it looked a bit boring. I made a second, slightly larger one in Brick Stitch, and again added a frill. Then I sewed them together with a pale blue glass pearl. The nice bit is that they swivel - a pendant you can fiddle with !!

Originally I was going to add this to a netted cuff bracelet, but once I had completed it I thought it would be a little heavy and wouldn't sit right, so an alternative plan was needed.

I decided on using it as a focal piece in a necklace.

The "chain" part is RAW stitch (Right Angle Weave) with a peyote toggle to fasten.

Oh, and here is the netted cuff, I think it is quite nice just on it's own :)

Jasper Cluster Pendant

I made most of this a little while ago, but as is quite usual, never got it finished :)

I started with a cable chain which I chopped up into identical sized pieces, I then took some wire, and threaded some Cat's Eye & Stardust beads on, before looping the ends and using them to link two pieces of chain together.

For the pendant part I took a lovely chunk of Purple Jasper, I pinned it through the centre hole and attached cable chain so it draped down the front of the stone and connected to the underneath of the Jasper, before being allowed to dangle down.

To this I then added some little beaded charm using pins and any bead I could lay my hand on that was in the purple and silver colour range.

Another Unfinished Object - finished ! :)

Duck

This cute little duckie was designed for a challenge, funnily named "DUCKS".

Unfortunately I was a bit tardy and therefore a day or so late to get the piece in to be judged, but I decided she needed to be finished anyway :)

So let me introduce ....... Gertie The Giddy Duck. She is off for a walk in the sun, making sure she has her sunhat on so she doesn't get sunstroke, and of course she has her favourite pink bow around her neck.

Gertie is a brooch, I have sewn a little brooch pin to the back, and she looks so cute just marching across someones jacket.

A session on the torch.

It has been ages since I managed to fire up the torch, there is always something else that needs doing first, but on Saturday I had some time all to myself and thought 'why not...'

The problem was I had bead block, what to make, what colours to use, what shapes to do?

I sat for ages just staring at the flame doing nothing and no ideas were jumping into my head.

Instead, I grabbed the glass that was already hanging about the workbench and made a long tube, added some silver ivory stringer, which was also left over from the last session, and poked and prodded it about before encasing it.

I continued with this mish-mash of designs bead after bead, some I shaped, some I made into nuggets (which photograph really badly, making them just look wonky) and some I pressed with the mashers to flatten.

So I ended up making all these without taking any new glass off the shelf, a good nudge back into beadmaking I think :)

Chevron Bracelets

Following on from my failed Chevron Necklace.... well, I say failed, I actually liked the Chevron pendant part, but it just did not work on the chain I designed for it. I needed to advance the pattern into something else.

This Purple bracelet was already a pendant in the making, I had already made the same section as in the previous pendant, so I turned the pattern around and added another bit, then I extended the sides to make it long enough to fit around a wrist.

The gap in the centre definately needed something, so I added some matching Swarovski Crystals to give a bit of interest.

The clasp is a Peyote tube with Swarovski Crystals on the end, and a loop at the opposite end to fasten.


I chose the colours for this one to go in with the Bead Buddies July Colour Challenge of Purple / Teal / Chocolate, and I think it works really well.

Next I changed the pattern slightly, and instead of having decreasing Chevrons I kept them all identical. I used the same fastening of a beaded toggle and loop. This one was done in Burgundy, Red & Silver.