BTW 25th of July

This week I have a couple of stuff going on, on my beading table. I've been playing around with different color combinations on some older designs, heh.
I've also began to doodle out a design I'm going to create for a bead embroidery necklace, incorporating that brass collar I bought during spring this year. I'm thinking different shades of pink so far on this one, but we'll see.

Yesterday I also received my order I made last week with Bricolart.com . They have a big summer sale with up to 70% discount till the 31st of July, so I recommend you to take a look :)
I went crazy myself with some Swarovski rivolis; 0.46€ cent for the vitrail light, so I bought about 15 of those. And then a couple of topaz colored and since I love those light siam I bough a couple of those as well. And I've been curious about the "metallic gold iris #462" of the Miyuki seed beads, so I bough some 11/0, 15/0, 11/0 hex, 3mm bugles and tila beads in that color. Darn, they are so beautiful, and the iris effect is beautiful!

Necklace: Cascade Coral

I've been wanting to do a cascade styled necklace for a while, but I've always postpone it and started on something else.
Last month I bought about 100g of 11/0 and 9/0 seed beads by Preciosa in coral red color. I wanted to do a cascade necklace using these colors ever since I bought some bamboo coral chip beads, which I knew would be perfect in one of these types of necklaces.
This is also the very first time I've done a chevron chain, which I found to be a very fun stitch. I suppose it's easier if you work with FireLine or Wildfire for this kind of beadwork. I used C-LON thread for this one, since I haven't used it yet and I've bought a couple of spools in different colors, among them a very dark red color that fitted perfectly with the beads. I had to pull a lot on my beadwork to keep the beads in place, that's why I think that a thread like FireLine or Wildfire would be easier to work with.
 I can't say that I really like C-LON. It's no difference in it then with Nymo, in my own opinion; It frays, it gets knots just as much and you have to condition it. At this point I wished I had picked up the red SoNo thread, lol. However I managed to get the job done in the end, even if I had some frustrating moments with the darn C-LON :P

Earrings: Blomma

Lol, sorry for the name on this. I couldn't find out anything better for these simple little ones :d
"Blomma" means "flower" in Swedish, and I incorporated some flowers in these earrings, which I made with circular peyote stitch.

It's been a while since I've done anything with peyote stitch at all, and after completing my "Cuff: Cuteness" yesterday evening, I decided to play around with some very simple stuff today.
The materials I used for this pair are some 11/0 seed beads by Toho and a drop-fringe-bread to add a little dangle to the bottom of the earrings.
I guess they are cute, lol :P

I had some small trouble taking pictures of them though. The milky seed beads are really bright in the light and normally I take my picture on a white background (on my window shelf, lol!) and it was really hard to get a nice picture that would display the beads in a nice way.
These are the moment that makes me reseal that at some point I really need to invest in a light box with different backgrounds, whenever that will be... Bah :D

OTTBS - July Challenge

After slacking off for about two or three months, I decided that I had to join this month's challenge at "Operation Tackle That Beads Stash!".

The theme for this month is to use brown, pink and cream colors into the creation. There's also an extra twist that you can chose to incorporate; flowers.

For my piece I chose to create a thinner bead embroidery cuff. I've been in the mood of using the 19mm thick brass cuffs that I bought since some months ago, and I thought this was perfect. The center piece is a 14mm cat's eye cabochon. The other beads I used are some 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads by Toho, 11/0 Delicas for the bezel of the cabochon, 15/0 seed beads by Miyuki, 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads by Matsuno, brown goldstone chip beads, 3mm bugles by Matsuno, some 8/0 seed beads that I got in a mix. I also chose to incorporate some 6mm Swarovski flowers to add that little extra twist.

A bunch of little bracelets

Okey, I'm aware that I haven't been the most active person, blogging these couple of weeks. My excuse is that I've actually been playing some computer games together with my boyfriend and I had a lot of fun. I'm still playing now on and off when I feel for it, heh :P

Besides that, of course I've been beading as well. I got a request about making a couple of tennis styled bracelet from a friend in Sweden and I've been sitting and playing around with different color combinations now and then to create this bunch.

I think I posted over a year ago, in my previous blog, these tennis bracelets in black/yellow and red/black with Swarovski bicones when I was still really inexperienced in beading. Going back and doing the same thing I did then feels kinda... weird? Also fun. Simply because I can compare how my skills actually have been evolving over a year.
To create this bunch I used different kind of 11/0 seed beads; Matsuno, Miyuki and Toho, whatever colors I thought fitting best together. I mixed one brand with another or the same. For one bracelet, I used 4mm Swarovski bicones. For the other bracelets I used 4mm firepolished Czech glass beads, 4mm glassy pearls by Gütermann.
I might actually make another one that isn't included in the picture. I feel that a blue bracelet actually is missing from the bunch. At the point when I completed the last one, I noticed that I don't have a  single blue 4mm bead at all! So I went out to the town to check out the summer sale to see if I could get my hands on any. And I found a tube in navy blue that I just love.

I'm also gonna point out already now that I'm not gonna be around starting 29th of August to 7th of September. I was so happy yesterday when we actually managed to get to traveling agency and book flight tickets to northern Sweden. I know it's a late time to take a vacation, but it's been almost 3 years since I've been home so it's totally worth it! :)

Bead Embroidery Earrings

For those who follows me on Twitter and Facebook, I've mentioned that I've been working on a couple of bead embroidery earrings since a few days back.

I've always been a bit scared of creating earrings with bead embroidery... Why? Cause I've been scared of the facts that each pair should be kind of identical. I know, I know... Silly, but sometimes I'm a bit of a symmetrical-perfectionist-freak, lol.
This week I decided to step out of my comfort zone and actually deal with this little "fear" of mine, and after creating the first pair I can honestly not understand what it was I was afraid of. It went so nice and smooth, lol. I dealt with one pair at a time, but in a sequence; bezel one pair and then bezel the second one before moving on to the next part of the design.

For the first pair I made, I created a pair of post earrings, using a 10mm Swarovski pearl, 4mm Swarovski bicones, 11/0 seed beads by Toho.
I kinda like these, cause they don't lay "flat" on the surface but they stick out, giving a lot of texture even if they are pretty simple.

For the second pair I made I decided to use some of those gorgeous 14mm montana blue rivolis by Swarovski that I bought last month. This once, I actually chose to bezel the rivoli with 11/0 Delicas, and I must say that they give a very clean look for the bezel itself. After I added the outer row after the bezel ring I decided to add some shiny blue iris faceted Czech glass beads for the design. I already had decided after the bezel, that I wanted to attach these earrings to a hook, and with that create a fringe for them.
For this pair, there's actually two fringes. If you can see it on the photo, there's a fringe starting from the edging of the joining of the beading foundation and the ultrasuede. And then the second fringe comes from the faceted Czech glass beads.
Besides the rivolis I also used 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads by Toho, 15/0 seed beads by Miyuki, 11/0 Delicas, 4mm firepolished Czech glass beads, 4mm Swarovski bicones, 8mm twisted bugles by Gütermann and nickel-free hooks.