Two Necklaces and my BOTB 14 is done!

After I completed my Battle of the Beadsmith piece I decided that I wanted to take a little breather from anything bead related, but only for a short moment, really.
I managed to get my hands on a wonderful model who was willing to pose wearing my piece, so I'm really, really happy with the end result and with the photos of course. I sent the mail to Steven (the person who is taking care of the "battle" arrangements etc.) and everything is in order. Now all of us just have to wait till we are allowed to show the photos, which happens after they're up on the FB group of BOTB. I'm really excited and curious what everyone else have created and I'm so looking forward to see all the pieces!

Enough of that! :)

I managed to complete two necklaces after I finished my battle piece and I wanted to share them with you...

A couple of weeks ago, in April, I decided to take a little short break from my battle piece and play around with some polymer clay and I ended up making a violet. Violets are one of my favorite flower. I think it has to do with the facts that my grandmother had a very small spot in her garden were she had planted some seeds a long time ago, and each summer they would pop up and bloom with a wonderful, vibrant violet color with yellow accents. I remember that I never picked them, but instead I used to lay down on the grass right next to them, smell them and just look at them.

I ended up linking the violet I made in clay so much I decided to make a rather simple necklace of it. I didn't want to take away too much focus from the flower so I used a lot of black matte seed beads with some iridescent green Swarovski crystals.

The second necklace I began to make after one day from when I completed my battle piece. The plan was to make this necklace for my mother on Mother's Day. Of course it was one week later (last Sunday of May in Sweden) than the day when I managed to complete it and send it with the post. But at least she got something, heh... Well, everyone in my family knew I was gonna be a bit absent and work on my battle piece as I told them so...
The necklace I made for my mom is a very huge difference from what I normally do. I rarely work with suck opaque colors when it comes to beads, but as the focal piece is that tiger/cat cab (which I also made with polymer clay), the colors looked so good together with the tiger.
Speaking of the tiger... or cat... Yes, I made it as well with polymer clay. I wanted to make something a bit more personal for my mother and I had asked her a couple of weeks ahead what animal she likes and her answer was tiger or lion. So I decided to try my hands more at sculpting and made the focal myself. I'm not sure how others see it, but to me, the "tiger" looks like a hybrid between a tiger and a cat. Maybe the eyes? *shrug* Always something to work on in the future, none the less :)

I'm also gonna mention that the beaded chain on both piece are inspired by Nancy Dale's "Wrap-bracelet"  technique, which appears in one of the early numbers of "Digital Beading Magazine Australia".

BTW - 28th of November 2012

I have been a little bit occupied these two weeks, where I haven't ended up making a single post since the last one.
The holidays are getting even closer, and I'm starting to feel it even, for each day that passes by.
I haven't been beading too much, if I should be honest. I suppose I ended up with one of those annoying creative blocks :)
I also ran out of two bead colors, which are essential for my "Marie Antoinette" necklace. I had to put that one aside until they would arrive in the mail, which they did yesterday :D

Well, while I've been waiting for those beads to arrive, I've actually been playing around with some bead stitches and flower patterns - reading "The Beaded Garden" by Diane Fitzgerald, to get some basics back into my head.
Short story; I ended up trying her way of creating beaded roses, and it went better then I expected. After mastering it, instead of just leaving the finished flower, I decided to create a little brooch of it. And I ended up adding two netted leaves to accompany the rose.
I actually had so fun experimenting with different sizes on the netted leaves, I ended up making a pair of earrings with two of 'em.

I haven't been posting any updates lately on my "Marie Antoinette" necklace, I apologize for that, and here's a picture of how far I am on it now :)

Netted Bracelet

Yesterday I decided to play a bit with beaded netting. I wanted to create a simpler bracelet using this technique.
It's not really that hard, the most of the work actually is to do some mathematics, depending on whgat sort of netting you want. I stuck to the most basic one; three beads. Which meant that I had to pick up an amount of beads that are divisional by 4. The most simple way to be honest is just to pick up 4 beads at a time until you have the desired length you want, plus about 2.5cm (1"), and then add additional 3 beads again before you go back through the beads strung and begin on the netting.

Since fall is approaching I decided to work with red beads. The bracelet is in a transparent red color with an iris finish to 'em.
When the bracelet was done, before I'd attached the clasp I felt that it was a little bit too simple. I know, "less is more" as they say. But I got this feeling when I looked at it that is really needed something a little extra. So earlier today, I sat down and began to play around with circular netting, until I got this little rose like flower that I really like. And then it was just to measure where the center of the bracelet was, and then attach it :)

Cuff: Emerald Dream

I know, it's been almost two weeks since I blogged last. But I have an excuse, lol. Last month Mass Effect 3 came out and I've been waiting for it for over a year, so I've been a gaming nerd for the past two weeks, lol, sue me =P

Of course I've been beading on and off when I've been in the mood. I've been working on the project I posted last time, the bead embroidery cuff, and now it is finally done, mwahahaha! Lol.
Actually it was a very fun project to work with, and I think it turned out very nicely for being my very first bead embroidery cuff. Of course I'll make more in the future, since I really enjoyed it and I have a couple of more designs in my head for something similar :)

As I mentioned in my earlier post I decided to use three of my handmade polymer clay cabochons that I made about a month ago. After I glued them on I was first a bit worried on how the tear drop cabs would react when I would began to bend the whole thing to with onto the cuff, but it turned out very well, better then expected.

Since the cabs are in an emerald color (name is "emerald" on the clay) I decided to use 11/0 Miyuki emerald seed beads with a frosted AB finish as the main beads. I also had some emerald frosted AB long magatamas laying around so I incorporated them as well together with some 9/0 Czech galvanized seed beads.
Besides the polymer clay cabs I also added four acrylic flower cabochons and two flat backs. The flowers are in light coral and I decided to add them to get some more contrast into the piece.
In the end I also decided to add some gorgeous, green twisted bugle beads that I had laying around.

I wanted to add a picture on how the piece looked like after I was done with the embroidery. I was really happy with the result on how it ended up looking on the backside, since I know that it's important also to have a good looking backside, even if you're going to cover it up with backing. As always I use Lacy's Stiff Stuff for the foundation and Ultrasuede for the backing, but in the future I might even try to out Ultrasuede as the foundation as well, since I've been curious about that. The reason why I haven't yet is cause I find the Stiff Stuff stiffer to work on while embroidering then Ultrasuede.
But one day! Lol :)

Hair Barrette: Yellow Daffodil

Okey, so I couldn't help myself and I had to make this; a beaded Daffodil. A bit early for Easter I know but... I wanted to! lol

I saw this pattern in "The Beaded Garden" by Diane Fritzgerald about making a beaded daffodil and I just had to try it out. The flower is really just built up from brick stitch and herringbone stitch, and then the parts are joined together.

I purchased a pair of hair barrettes about two weeks ago and I knew I wanted to attach this beaded flower to them, after all... What girl doesn't like flowers in her hair? I know I do, lol. Even better with beaded flowers then real once since they won't die, heh :p

When I decided on how I wanted to attach the flower to the barrette I added a head-pin in the hole of the barrette and then through the space in the center of the flower.
I wasn't satisfied at this point though, I thought it looked a bit too naked with the flower alone, so I googled up pictures as references to see how the leaves of a daffodil looks like and created my own brick stitch base based from that :)
 Of course I had to use glue to make it sit in place, stuck on the hair barrette, I'm not too much of a fan of gluing and gluing but... I didn't really see how else I could solve it. With the head-pin alone, after I had wrapped a loop it would still spin around and I guess the only way to fix that was using glue. If anyone has a greater idea I would love to hear them so I could use them for future project :)