Saturday 28 May 2011

Doubling up

This title takes me back to my student days and a summer job where I was tasked with doubling up, where all I did for a whole shift was placing one piece of bread dough on top of the other and squashed them together. In the case below I have taken one peyote flower and put it on top of another to create a more firmer and structured flower compared to the single flowers in my last post.

Creamy Peyote Flower

Mandy from Beads for Brains:365 asked me a couple of questions so I thought I would provide some more detail about these pieces for those interested. The peyote flowers are quite floppy but if you make another layer off set from the first layer this helps to make the piece more structured.

The flower above is made using light cream nymo thread and Ivory Cream Ceylon 11/0 Toho Seed Beads from beadservice for the base flower and size 15 silver lined opalesque jonquil beads (which I bought quite some time ago) from Fusion Beads for the inner flower. The base flower spans 30mm at its widest whilst the inner spans 20mm.

Finishing the flower with a central pearl or crystal would help keep its shape and if the petals have a tendancy to flip up or fold over just use a few well placed stitches to fix the inner layer to the base layer (clear thread would be better for making these more invisible).

Friday 27 May 2011

Pinky Peyote Floral

I've been dipping into Liz Thornton & Jill Devons book The Beaders Floral once again. I love this book especially the peyote flowers they are so dainty and easy to make. The one below is done using toho size 15 seed beads in matt pastel pink from Robins Beads.

Pink Peyote Flower

I was so happy with this one I decided to make a few more in a range of pinky peachy colours and using size 11 matsuno seed beads (these beads have been sat unused for some time so where they came from... your guess is good as mine).

Peachy Peyote Flowers

I plan to make a few more for my master plan, which I hope to share soon once completed.

Sunday 22 May 2011

Greens


My favourite blog is Operation Tackle That Bead Stash it is full of information and inspiration for bead mad people like myself. Each month they have a mood board and invite all to create something inspired by the colour and the images they provide. May's mood board is shades of green. This month I am working towards participating as I struggle with green as I seem to have quite a few green beads which I never use.

On viewing the mood board one of the images struck a chord with me. I have some lovely green czech seed beads from my local bead shop.

Green Seed Beads

One of my favourite bead weaving techniques is 3D Right Angle Weave (RAW). The bracelet below is one of my 3D triumphs which I love the feel of as the crosses are so sturdy so different to how the material type feel you get when weaving a flat sheet of RAW.

Two Tone Gold Cross Bracelet

And here is the work in progress I haven't done much so hopefully I will complete it before the end of the month.

Green Block