Playing with Soutache

I think it was last year I bought a couple of soutache braids in a few different colors, and I ended up making a pair of earrings that I... Well, lets be honest; I wasn't too happy with them as the braid ended up looking a bit "bulky" and I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to lines and curves; they have to be perfect!
Since then I haven't really been in the mood to play around with soutache. Not because it wasn't fun, but because the lack of tutorials out on the web wasn't many. Nor were there any good books out there for the technique. If there were, I never came across them, even if I poked around and asked other beaders in the different bead groups I'm in on FB.
I've seen that there's a very good book out there now, that got released this month; Soutache by Anneta Valious. I'm probably gonna end up purchasing it when the budget allows me to, heh.

I have no idea what it was that suddenly awoke the interest to play around with soutache again, maybe I needed some variation from what I've been doing? *shrug*
Anyhow, I suddenly remembered that I purchased a wonderful polymer clay cabochon on Etsy by the lovely Alexandra Chereches. Her Etsy shop is opened pretty recently, but she sells a lot of beautiful creations where she incorporates the stunning polymer clay cabochons she makes herself. She also has a few cabochons for sale. You can access her Etsy store by clicking here.
I thought that the cabochons would look very good if I used it with soutache braid so I went and played around with the few colors I have of the braid until I ended up with a result that was pleasing to my own eye.

I'm probably gonna play around some more with soutache, not gonna wait as long as I did last time to pick up the braids tho, but I actually enjoyed working with this technique so there will most likely be more to come :)

Winter - Summer Creations 2013

Since it's been about half a year since my last video, I thought it was time for another one. I think it's fun to make vids. so why not put it together like this, heh.

Enjoy :)

Hair Clip: Siren's Song & Rizo Beads

Yeah, I just couldn't help myself...

I still had the materials out on my bead mat from my previous piece; Necklace: Siren's Song. The materials were really shouting at me inside my head that I should create a hair piece with them, in the similar style as my necklace. I haven't create too many hair pieces, and I ended up choosing to make a hair clip. I kinda had a silhouette in my mind that I wanted to bring to life - using a few of those mother of pearl discs that I included in the necklace.

I liked how the cube beads layered up and gave a lot of shine and a different kind of texture, the way I placed them in the necklace, so I wanted to keep that in the hair clip.

In the necklace I also added those (relative) "new" Rizo beads, just to experiment, and really see what sort of texture they could bring into bead embroidery. I know, the Rizo bead has been around now for at least some months now, but I'm always careful when I buy a new type of bead (don't ask me why, I just am), I mean... Questions starts to pop up in my head: What can I use them in? What colors should I pick? How many grams should I buy? etc. Sometimes I just go on instincts when I buy my beads and sometimes I actually has a plan when in comes to bead colors. I must admit I had exactly the same dilemma when those Twin beads were out last year. I only bought a couple of different colors and some of them I ended up using, some of them I still haven't touched. See were I am going with this?
I've always found it handy to have a big stash and I still do, but what if you would end up getting that question in your head when you're about to buy beads; Will I ever end up using them? I mean, having beads stashed away that you'll never probably gonna use is just taking up unnecessary space.

How about you? Do you sometimes experience dilemma when buying beads? Have you ever given those "Rizo" beads I mentioned a try yet or are you planning to?

Necklace: Siren's Song

Yesterday I managed to finish up my latest necklace piece and get a pretty decent photo of it...

I had been having a vision of a necklace with Turquoises a few months in my head before I actually started working on this piece. My dilemma was that I didn't really have many turquoises in my stash so if I wanted to create this piece I would have to have patience and wait till I could purchase them. One thing I learned when I did my purchase of a load of turquoises in both bead for and as cabochons is that they are one of the most expensive gemstones you can get your hands on - I already knew they were expensive before, but I learned that the polished stones are even more expensive then tumbled stone, hah.

I wanted to try something a little different when I created this necklace. Looking back at some of my previous designs I noticed that I've barely created any piece at all that contained a lot of stop stitch; when I've seen other bead artists creation I've noticed that the stop stitch provides a lot of texture to a piece and that is what I wanted to accomplish.

I also got my hands on some of those new Rizo beads and I wanted to try and see how they would look in bead embroidery if I would just basically stitch them down to the foundation. The result is pretty neat and it definitely created a whole new type of texture, almost like fish scales. Think I need to get my hands on some more of those and in different colors cause they really put me in the mood to experiment a  bit more with 'em.

I also spent some hours at creating myself a new logo I could put on my photos ones they are ready and approved by myself to be put out on the internet, heh. So yeah, I actually had some fun going back to PS to play around and doodle with different ideas and then put them together into something I felt could last for quite some time.
I created two different versions of the logo; the smaller version with less text and then a version that contains a bit more and is bigger.