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!

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.

Beaded Bead Tips

I’m often asked how do I get my beaded beads so neat so I thought I would do a quick post with some tips. You’ll either need to already know how to make a peyote beaded bead or if you’d like to have a go at making one you can choose from one of eight different size tutorials in the Make It Yourself section of my Etsy shop.

You may be used to starting beads by making a band around the middle, fiddling around with trying to get it to fit and to stay in place. Sound familiar? It’s much easier to start from the holes, increasing to form a cup, popping the bead in and decreasing until you reach the opposite hole. If you’re working without a pattern just keep checking the fit of the bead right from the start, to make sure you’re increasing the right amount.

In my opinion, the best beads to use to make a peyote beaded bead are Miyuki or Toho. These are both Japanese brands and are fairly uniform in size and shape. But the fact that they do vary a little is what can make a great bead!

What I do when I’m working is try to pick up the medium sized beads from the pile. If I come across any that are much fatter or much thinner, I put them to one side in their own little piles. When it’s time to make the 2 bead increase, I head straight for the ‘skinny’ pile and pick up 2 of those. They don’t have to be crazy skinny (I throw those away as they’re so thin they could easily break!) but just thinner than average so that they don’t cause a bump. The same goes for the bead in the next round that goes in between those pairs, I choose a thinner bead if I can.

At the other end of the bead, having slightly thinner beads on the row preceding the decreases will do the same (the beads that are going to be pulled together to form the decrease). After you’ve made your decreases there’s usually a large gap between the beads on the following row. Here’s where the bigger beads you’ve picked out come into play, choose these to go on top of the decreases and they usually fill the gaps quite nicely! Tip: if you have huge huge gaps then you’re probably decreasing too early.

It does take a little time to select the beads as you’re going along but it’s well worth the extra effort when you’re rewarded with a lovely smooth bead!

New Patterns

I’m pleased to say that I’ve got another two new patterns in my Etsy shop! The first is Catwalk, a cat’s paw print design, which I’ve created especially to raise money for the UK’s Cats Protection charity. For every Catwalk pattern sold – even if it’s chosen as a freebie in my 3 for 2 offer – I’ll be donating £2 :)

 

And if you’re a long time reader of my blog you may remember this design from some time ago. I thought it was about time I got it made up into a proper pattern! I’ve also changed the name to Vortex :) You can find both Catwalk and Vortex in the Make It Yourself section of my Etsy shop.

Dear Old Blighty

I originally designed this peyote pattern for one of our challenges on OTTBS last year but I ran out of time and could only manage to work up one of the motifs! With a bit of ingenuity I turned it into a bracelet with lengths of waxed cotton cord, which you can see here on the blog. While the British flag is always popular, with the Queen’s Jubilee fast approaching I thought I would get my skates on and make myself the full version.

The pattern uses three colours (I’ve used funky turquoise here instead of the traditional blue) and because of the geometric design of the flag, I found that once you get going it’s quite intuitive as to where the next bead is going. Saying that I did make some mistakes due to not concentrating so I spent a fair amount of time unpicking and replacing my tattered thread! Even so, it only took me three evenings to make. If you want to fly the British flag and make one of these bracelets for yourself, you can find my Blighty pattern here in my Etsy shop. Don’t forget, all of my tutorials and patterns are permanently 3 for the price of 2 :)

Hello February!

Well I must say, January bombed spectacularly! Due to health and family problems I didn’t manage one post and my crafting went from creating almost daily to almost nil. I also missed the bead fair which I was incredibly disappointed about. But I did achieve one of my goals and that was to post a monthly book review on the OTTBS blog and you can read that review here!

Craftwise, I  made a few bracelets in a new design that I will be posting here very soon. I also made some Follow Your Heart brooches which were a commission from the local wool shop that stocks some of my work. It was nice to do something that I’d made before and didn’t require any designing decisions, making them the perfect thing to create when my mojo has gone awol :)

The earrings are made using my tiny Atom beaded beads and I thought it would be fun to make them ‘mis-matched’. Each pair is made from six different shades in co-ordinated colour schemes. These and bead embroidered Goddess art doll ‘Skadi’ were made at the end of December but it took me some time to get the photos taken! They are available in my Etsy shop.