Apr 23 2012

British Sellers on Etsy Team Spring Giveaway

Imagine being able to choose 15 shops and being given £10 to spend in each…well it’s not a dream, it’s what you can do if you’re the lucky winner of the British Sellers on Etsy Team Spring Giveaway! There are 33 shops taking part (including mine!) each with a fantastic selection of handmade lovelies. All you have to do is comment with an answer to the question provided and you can have up to 6 more chances to win if you do things like tweet/facebook/blog about the giveaway. You have until Saturday the 28th of April to join in and be in with a chance to win this amazing prize!

Mar 25 2012

Playing With Colours

These Corona beads have proven to be very addictive and I’ve found many new combinations to try! The best thing about them is that they’re quick to make and use regular beads that most of us beaders already have in our stash. I don’t know about you but, there’s nothing worse than being eager to start a new project from a magazine, book or tutorial only to find that one of the main ingredients is a hard to find bead or a vintage component. Each of these beads needs 20 Czech crystals (or Swarovski bicones or even pearls), a small amount of size 11 and size 8 seed beads and a needle & thread. The Corona Bead tutorial is available in my Etsy shop or if you don’t bead, you can find these ready made necklaces in the same place :)

Antheia


Pomona


Fiesta


Dracula


Pandora


Another project I’ve been working on recently has been this small crocheted blanket which I finally finished a few days ago. It’s one giant granny square and took me less than a  month to complete. It’s for my Nan so I chose lovely pastel shades: pinks, lilac, greens, blues, lemons, lilac and white. I was easy going to begin with but it got tricky towards the end as I started to run out of yarn! I’m fairly new to crochet and still learning how much yarn a project takes. As this was a project to use up my leftover yarn I didn’t want to buy more, so I ended up just doing one row for each colour. I’m really pleased with the finished blanket and my Nan loves it :)

Note that this isn’t the project I was working on some time ago. The squares eventually got turned into a poncho for my Mum but it was a bit of a disaster as I joined the squares together on the wrong side. This means that the lovely joining lines are on the inside while the outside shows messy little pips. I’m so embarassed by it that I’ll never show it to anyone! And poor Mum has been ordered to use it to keep her warm around the house but never to wear it beyond the front door!

Mar 14 2012

The Tale of the Crystal Bead

Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted to make a beaded bead. Not just any beaded bead; this girl wanted to make one adorned with crystals. Sparkly, glittering crystals, that caught the light when the bead was worn. One day she decided that this was the day she would design her crystal bead, so she gathered together all her materials and set to work.

Weaving together dozens of tiny seed beads and the precious crystals with her needle & thread, she reached the half way mark. Peeping inside, she was dismayed to realise that her wooden bead was never going to sit very well inside the sparkling shell because of the depth of the crystals. But not one to give up without a fight, she carried on with her weaving, hoping that the beadwork would be stiff enough to support itself.

Alas, it was not to be; the bead was sturdy enough around the equator but at the poles it was incredibly flimsy. She held the bead up and, as if to prove the point to herself, squeezed the ends together. It was at that moment a spark of electricity shot through the air as the Corona Bead was born!

The girl was happy; she had woven her magic.

New Corona Bead tutorial on Etsy.