Flowers In The Attic (Or In My Bead Stash!)

On a rare sunny afternoon last week I had a lovely time sitting in the garden making these glass flower book thongs. These were the first book thong designs that I ever made but for reasons known only to the bead gods I abandonded them in favour of the beadwoven variety.

Having a little rest from beadweaving I thought it would be fun to do some simple wire wrapping, so armed with a bag of thonging, pretty glass flowers and my trusty box of Swarovki crystals I set to work. I only intended to make two or three but before I knew it I’d made ten!

Two have already sold but the rest are on my website and I’m adding them daily to my Etsy shop. If you see a mini and would like one made into a regular size (or the other way around!) then please contact me : )

Flower Power

Most of the things I create are the result of a make-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of process and I thought it would be fun to share one of those processes with you today. I crocheted a little flower using some of the gorgeous organic Welsh wools that I bought in the new wool shop last week and wanted to bead a flower to go on the top. So I picked out some cream beads and designed a very simple flower using a peyote base with some loops for the petals…

Hmm. It looks ok but the petals lack definition and the whole flower is a little floppy. What if I added some round crystals to the centre of the loops and joined the petals together at their bases? Oh yeah, that looks nice…

At this point I was quite satisfied with my little flower design but the way it’s made is a bit round-the-houses and so I figured a way to make the process simpler with less thread paths. It was when I was trying out the new thread path that I decided to add little ‘pips’ to the middle. Not sure where I was going there, maybe I could add a second row of petals? But I decided to add some beads in between them and join them into a circle. Wow, that looks just the right size for an 8mm crystal…

I’m really pleased with the finished flower! It’s not really what I had intended to create at the start but then I don’t think anything ever is. Hopefully you’ll see them both as part of a finished piece. Maybe a brooch, could be a pendant, or what about a ring? To be honest I have no idea…

The Adventures of the Peacock Brooch

Regular readers of my blog will know that I like to combine materials in my work and for some time I’ve been thinking of ways to incorporate crochet/knitting somehow. You may think that this brooch was completely planned to do this but in fact I designed it backwards! It started off with a little beaded flower I was making in the colours of our August Moodboard on Operation Tackle That Beadstash and me wondering what I could do with it.

The usual ideas like make another and turn them into earrings went through my head and then I thought…hmm, wouldn’t that look nice with a crochet flower behind it! As luck would have it, I had a little ball of Robin variegated yarn in the exact same colours. After sitting the beadwork on top of the crocheted flower, it looked nice but a little bit floppy so I came up with the idea of putting it on top of felt flower. This would not only give it an extra layer but would also add some much needed stability. It was at that point I decided it was going to be a brooch.

Then came the blanket stitch edging. Would you believe I had to Google this? I hadn’t blanket stitched since I was a little girl! I don’t know whether it was the lack of practice or just the thread I was using but after about an inch or so it looked dreadful. So I unpicked it and, remembering the bead-edged fabric earrings I’ve been making recently, added a layer of purple seed beads. The final touch is a little crystal at the centre. It’s a shame the camera has refused to pick out the green in this, it looks mostly blue. But I’m not blue, I love the finished brooch! : ) You can find it on my website and here in my Etsy shop.

Welcome to my garden

Well some snippets of it anyway! I haven’t been up to all that much as I’ve had a stomach bug so I thought I would share a few photos with you today, all taken on a quiet wander around the garden yesterday.

First are some blossoms on my Golden Delicious apple tree. No apples yet, I only planted it about five years ago so I expect I’ve got a long wait for some fruit!

More blossoms near the top, I love the effect the sun has had on this photo!

All the cherry blossom has gone now on my little Morello cherry tree…but look…cherries!

This is a tiny Horse Chestnut tree, about a foot high, grown from a conker picked up in the local park which is just yards away. It’s lovely to sit in the garden and look up at these towering 100+ year old trees knowing that we have one of their little babies!

Grapevine just starting to sprout. I have no idea what variety these are apart from the fact that they’re not edible! By the end of the season there’ll be over a hundred bunches of deep red grapes, which my Dad will turn into wine…

Some very weathered ornaments…

And what garden would be complete without a sleeping cat? Actually it just looks like he’s sleeping. In fact he’s ‘hiding’ in the heather patiently waiting for me to walk by so that he can jump out and ‘scare’ me  ;)

And here’s a collection of beautiful photos that match the heather perfectly! I’m always excited to find an item of mine in an Etsy treasury, and honoured that someone has chosen it out of the millions of handcrafted items on the site. Thank you Mortira for including my Pink Revolver pendant in this gorgeous Magenta treasury!

Cherry Blossom

We’re having some wonderful sunshine here in South Wales at the moment, let’s hope it lasts a little while longer! At the moment we’re doing some work on the garden and this is the perfect weather for it. The overgrown areas at the bottom of the garden have been bugging me for years so I’m pleased that we’re finally tackling them. The one area is going to be grassed to join the lawn and around the greenhouse will have a layer of gravel. It’ll be great not to be pulling weeds up every five minutes - leaving more time for beading ; )

I took a few photos of my little Morello cherry tree this morning. Only a few days ago it had bare branches and now look at it…

Last book thongs

I’ve got a lot of new projects to make a start on so these are going to be the last book thongs from me for a while. Aww, don’t all cry at once! They’re a mixure of different colours and beads and all of them can be found in my Etsy shop.