Bead Embroidery Earrings V

I've been a bit busy lately and haven't really had too much time to either bead or blog. I just found out that my mom is coming over in May and will stay with us for about 15 days before she travels back to Sweden again.
We're also starting to plan a bit more things around the house, for instant... We're finally getting shelves on the walls on the second floor which I'm very, very happy about.
We're probably not even gonna travel up to Sweden this year, as we'll be focusing more on getting the house in order etc.

While I've been working on a few different beading projects, I've also finished up a pair of bead embroidery earrings that I had a bit of fun with.
I kept them pretty simple, a basic silhouette. I kinda fell in love with the colors white and garnet red when I was playing around with some red garnet cabochons I have stashed away, so I decided to pair them up with the opal finished beads by Miyuki. Then I added some extra sparkle with some Swarovski crysal bicones in a garnet red color.

Bead Embroidery Earrings IV

I started these earrings a few days ago, after I figured out the silhouette I wanted to work with. It was pretty simple, I wanted the little acrylic flower cabochons to be the base for the posts, as I wanted to create a pair of post earrings.

That is the only thing I had planned out with these, the flower shape around the 14mm Swarovski rivoli just came up by an accident when I was playing around with different beads, placing them out around the rivoli. What I ended up with was placing out the mint/green dyed freshwater pearls, that I felt were perfect in my design, around the rivoli, and the irregular shapes of the freshwater pearls made the shape into a simple flower one.

I normally don't work with these colors together, but I felt that the turquoise really complimented the paradasha colored rivoli and the light coral acrylic flower cabochons so well I couldn't resist but to use them.
The rivolis I bezelled with 11/0 delicas and 15/0 seed beads by Toho. The light coral seed beads are Czech glass seeds by Preciosa and they worked out wonderful in the design.

Spike Earrings

A few months ago I purchased a couple of spike beads in different sizes and colors, just in case I would come up with something to do with 'em. And lets face it, I just love a bit of dangerous looking pieces, especially with spikes, lol.
I've been planning on incorporating them in various bead embroidery projects, I've just put it on ice for now until the bead embroidery piece I'm working on now is finished.

This afternoon, I decided that I wanted to play around and experiment, and possible come up with my own, very simple pattern using spike beads.
I took notes as I moved on and found a style that I liked. I also decided to make a second pair of earrings using the same pattern, just different colors, heh.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna release the pattern, or just keep it to myself, or on whatever platform I would release it on, we'll see :)

Simply Seeds {Peyote Star Earrrings}

Yeah, I've been on an earrings making spree this week whenever I've been feeling it. This time I made three pair of earrings from Beadwork Magazine, the June/July 2012 issue. I thought this design was so cute and yet so very simple. They are made with circular peyote stitch and the design is by Barbara Richard.

Also I'm going to add that this might be the very final post I make here on my blog before I go on vacation to Sweden. Me and my boyfriend are departing from Brussels next week, on Wednesday the 29th of August. We're going to be back the 7th of September, so there's most likely not going to be much posting, since I also decided not to take my laptop with me :)
My bf also got his hands on a camcorder last week, so I'm gonna have fun recording our trip and I might show some stuff, heh.
We're going to almost as far north you can get, and then we're going closer to the Norwegian border to look at the national park near Abisko together with my grandparents. My bf hasn't really seen the true nature of Sweden yet, the big woods and the high mountains as last time he was there we were at the north-eastern coast :)

If I don't post anything more this week, I'm wishing everyone a fabulous summer, even though it's almost over, I hope that everyone had a wonderful summer ♥

Bugle Core Earrings

Last week I bought a copy of Bead&Button Magazine, June 2012 issue 109 since I got recommended to get that magazine if I would want an easy tutorial about Bead Embroidery with Soutache braids.
While reading this wonderful magazine (I have to point out that this is the very first time I've gotten myself a copy of Bead&Button, cause of the simple reason that I haven't been able to find a way to purchase the magazine digitally.) I came across a really easy but also fabulous tutorials which incorporated 3mm bugle beads, 1.5mm cube beads, 11/0 cylinders, 15/0 seed beads and 4mm bicones, designed by Barbara Klann.
The techniques used are basically circular peyote and herringbone stitch.

Of course I had to try out this one, they looked so cute in the magazine and I got pretty eager in making my own interpretation of this design.
I decided to work with pretty dark color (can't blame me, that's me; me and dark colors, lol). The bugles I used are in a violet color and are by Miyuki. Now I didn't have any 1.5mm cubes but I had 1.8mm ones from Matsuno, so yeah... only one way to find out if those will work! They did work :3
For my dangle (the design by Barbara is a bit different) I used a cubic zircon tear-drop crystal in amethyst, and I also added a 4mm Swarovski bicone in the same jet color for the ones I used in the center of the piece.

Bead Embroidery Earrings III

In one of my previous posts, I showcased a couple of cabochons and beads I've made with polymer clay, on a color line pattern.
I decided to take some time off from my main project to actually complete the pair of bead embroidery earrings I had planned for the tear drop cabochons I made. I'd actually already glued the cabochons to the foundation since I made them, lol. I though this was needed, heh.

I already had a plan for these cabochons, and the idea was to use white beads with different kind of surface finishes to them, to make the colorful cabochons "pop". In my own opinion, I think I succeeded and I'm very happy with the final result of them.
I bezelled the cabochon using peyote stitch, with 11/0 seed beads by Matsuno in opaque white with an AB finish. For the final rows of peyote I used 15/0 seed beads by Miyuki in white opal. Then to add some sparkle, I used 4mm firepolished Czech glass beads with an AB finish. The 3mm bugles I used are by Myuki with  a pearl effect finish on the surface.

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

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.

Earrings:Ouran

Yesterday I was playing around with circular peyote stitch and some 8mm "round" wooden beads that I bought last week. 

About half a year ago I made a couple of earrings with circular peyote stitch, and then covered 8mm round glass beads with it.
The wooden beads I got last week aren't really 100% round, but they are a little flat on each side of the hole, which gave me a little bit of a problem...

I used the same pattern I did half a year ago. What I did then was to make two separate halves of circular peyote stitch and then joined them together around the 8mm round bead. However, when I tried to do the same thing on these wooden ones, it didn't really work out. First of all; the pieces of the circular peyote stitch were too small and wouldn't cover the wooden one so I had to add one more row to each one of the circles.
Well, they fitted around the wooden bead, however their form wasn't really round anymore. Instead they ended up looking like pillows.

Even if I didn't get entirely what I wanted, I kinda ended up liking the shape of these little cute pillows and decided to go through with the plan of making a pair of earrings.

The beads I used are 11/0 seed beads by Toho and 6mm Swarovski bicones, to give the earrings some more shape rather then a flat little "pillow" dangling down the ear tip.

Earrings: Astrid

I spent part of my afternoon (after doing some shores around the house) to again, play with this really cute beaded bead, which is made with using peanut beads (or farfalle) and some Miyuki fringe beads.
The pattern for the beaded bead (popcorn bead) is created by "The Beading Butterfly" and can be accessed for free here.

 After making a matching pair I tried one of them out together with some other beads on a head-pin, to see if I could get some simple earring design out of it.
I thought they looked just lovely together with some acrylic/plastic oval beads that I've been having in my stash since a while. At first, when I made the wrapped-loop I first attached the head-pin directly to the ear-hook but I didn't like how it looked like, so I decided to play around with some chain and experimented how it looked like with different amounts of chain links and found out that three looked the best.

I actually liked the somewhat classic/retro look of the earrings so I decided to make another pair with the remaining acrylic/plastic beads I had. Well, I had five but I have no idea at the moment what to do with the last - that will teach me to buy uneven amounts when they are sold per piece, lol.

Earrings: Eye

I found this tutorial on YouTube about some beaded earrings, not too long ago by BeadsFriends or Sarubest. She has a lot of different craft tutorial about beading and also about polymer clay, so I recommend you to take a look at her channel :)

These pair of earrings are made basically with circular brick stitch around a 12mm pearl/bead. For mine I used 12mm Swarovski pearl in Maroon, 4mm round Czech glass beads in bronze, 4mm jet black Swarovski bicones, 11/0 seed beads by Miyuki and Toho, 15/0 seed beads from Miyuki and 3mm bugle beads by Miyuki also.
The tutorial is in two parts, first on how to make the center itself, and then there's a separate tutorial on how to do the points.
I really like how they turned out with the points, they almost look like eyes in my opinion :)

Since they are pretty dark, the pair I made I decided to attach gunmetal plated earring-hooks for these, and I think they look just right - you can't see it that well on the picture, I think.

Earrings: Victorian Twist

I just had to use (almost) the very last Tila beads in the antique rose color I had, and make something out of them. And yeh, a pair of earrings!

I began sketching out and planning, experimenting a couple of times to get exactly what I wanted. I decided already that I wanted to use the same colors and the same beads I used for the Victorian Twist Bracelet I made yesterday, I just had to think how on earth I would be able to put it together so it would look nice, without looking too messy.
At the end I think I managed to execute it perfectly and I'm very happy with the result. The transparent hyacinth beads really are light catchers and just looks stunning when the light hits 'em.

I knew that I also wanted to incorporate those cute little heart beads to the earrings as well, and lucky for me, there was a space in the attachment of the loop where I could add a wrapped loop of a head-pin with the heart together with some seed beads of the same color scheme.

I'm not really sure how big they are; maybe the center (think circle-like) of a woman's palm. Sorry, I don't know what I did with my ruler, it will probably pop up soonish, lol.

I'm currently working on a tutorial for this earring, which I'm going to add later :)

February Challenge

It's a blue and a green theme this month in the challenge at "Operation Tackle That Bead Stash!" and I decided to create a pair of Swarovski bezeled rivoli earrings.
To get directly to this month's challenge, click here.

I've been wanting to create these specific earrings with a frame like a star around the rivoli for a while, but I haven't really found any tutorials for it, so... I took an afternoon and began sketching it out, and experimenting on how I could make a star-like pattern. After some fiddling and calculating I finally managed to get it right.

When the shape of the star was completed I had to try my way around to attach the flat back stud-earrings behind the rivoli without trusting glue. Of course I used a little bit of glue to keep them in place. After it had dry I began to work on a decreased circular peyote stitch to embed the needle of the flat-back stud-earrings into the beadwork so it would also look nice from behind.


After I completed the backs of each earring I began to add some extra embellishment around them. I decided to use up those gorgeous capri blue 4mm bicone crystals from Preciosa and some of the 15/0 light blue frosted AB seed beads that I had used for the star frame in the center of the earrings.

I also got to use my only thread roll of K.O beading thread. I bought it just to try it out, to see what the differences were compared to Nymo. The only difference I noticed immediately was that the K.O is a bit harder and stiffer than the Nymo. I know some people say that K.O fray a lot less then Nymo, but I couldn't really tell that, it just frayed at the same amount as Nymo, heh. I might buy more of the K.O in the future though, since I actually liked working with it, and the K.O has different kind of colors then the Nymo.

CRAW earrings - Cubes

Okey, So I just had to do this...

I had been staring at the blue bugle beads I had laying on my bead mat together with some seed beads in peach, and I just couldn't get the color palette out of my head.

Yesterday I decided to make a pair of earrings using this combination. They ended up as little cubes made in one unit of cubic right angle weave.
I used a two needle technique to make them though, and instead of normal thread I used nylon since it gave the cube a stiff feeling. I tried Nymo earlier but the result was just too loose and the cube didn't really stay to the shape I wanted it to.

Earrings: UFO's

I just couldn't resist buying this lovely satellite beaded pattern by Heather Collins from her ArtFire store some days ago. I found them just looking so adorable!

While I was already working with black and white beads I decided to make a pair of these and see what else I can make of 'em. I ended up making a pair of cute earrings which actually reminds me of UFO's, kinda.
I added the beaded beads together with a black and white 8mm glass bead and a head-pin, which I made a wire wrapped loop of to finish of it off before attaching ear-hooks.

Earrings: Simplicity

Okey, so on New Years Eve I wanted earrings to go with the rest of the red jewelry piece I wore so I quickly wrapped this cute little pair together, using circular peyote stitch for the first rows, adding a picot fringe to make 'em look like snow stars (or whatever the real english word would be for those).

I used 6/0 seed beads and 11/0 seed beads to make these.

I'll probably make ,ore of these in different colors in the future since they are so simple to make and goes rather fast :)

Earrings: Berries

I spent last night surfing around and tried to get a pattern over a beaded bead that includes peanut breads and some Myuki fringe drop beads.

Finally I found what I were looking for on DeviantArt. These little beaded cuties are called popcorn beads and are made with right angle weave.
To get to the tutorial click here.

What I did when I had created two of these lil' cuties was that I picked out two dark blue 8mm czech firepolished glass bead, two 4mm pink bicones, two gold-plated head-pins, a pair of gold-plated jump-rings and a pair of gold-plated earhooks.

Then I assembled each of the loose pieces until I had one pair of cute little earrings.

Earrings: Russian Leaves

I finally got my hands out of my pockets and gave the Russian leaves a try, since I've been enchanted by the stitch since quite a while.
To try it I always had a pair of earrings in my mind to kick it off, and then take it a step further to create a bigger piece.

The stitch is basically diagonal peyote stitch. I found the pattern however at MyLovelyBeads, the graphs are tho is Russian (I think) but it's very easy to understand how to work the stitch :)

I've been having a tube of 10g 9/0 hex beads in store for quite a while, and I didn't know what to do with 'em, cause 10g ain't really that much to work with. Of course I could just have done these with 11/0 seed beads, but you get a really shinier and light catching effect when using hex beads and I thought that woudl be more flattering for a pair of earrings like these.

8mm Beaded Bead

When I were surfing around on my favorite beading blogs earlier yesterday I came across a link leading to a Hungarian blog named Gyöngyikék; no idea what it means tho...

It features an article about beaded beads, and she made a really nice pattern on how to peyote stitch around an 8mm beads using 11/0's. I thought that since I have quite a few 8mm'ers laying around, and since I love making beaded beads, I just had to try this out.
I also have been trying to find a guide or something, which explain how to do beaded beads with 11/0's instead of 15/0's, so this was perrrrfect ^.^

In the article is also a graph, which you just can copy and paste in a graphic program (or print out), and then create your own pattern following the graph.

After I made my first one, I felt that it would fit as a really cute pair of earrings, so I made a second one, with the same design as the first one. And then I also made two other pairs.






I read on the blog were I found the link ( Bead For Brains: 365 -> link to the article here) to this Hungarian blog that, not only the blogger, but also a lot of readers had the problem where the last four beads wouldn't close snug properly.

I tried a solution, to see if I could avoid this problem myself; I peyote stitched each one of the circular halves separately, adding one row more for the other half. I then used a headpin (just to keep en eye where the hole in the 8mm bead was), then I put the center of the first half trough the pin, then added the 8mm, and finally the last half. Then I joined the halves together, pulling tightly through the joining - and cleverly avoided getting any ugly gaps.

 

August Moodboard

Whoo hoo!

I finished up the piece I wanted to make for this month's moodboard challenge by Operation Tackle That Bead Stash!. Finally I manage to finish it up early since my piece for July was a bit slow. I never managed to get time for finish it up; most of my time goes to the kittens at the moment.

Anyway. I really, really, REALLY liked the color scheme that she picked for August; green, purple and turquoise. I find the combination really original, and I actually had a couple of seed beads and some pearl laying around that would fit very nicely together.

I wanted to take my peyote sculpturing a bit further then to only making squares and triangles, so I had a look in the book Shaped Beadwork, written by Diane Fitzgerald, to get some tips and inspiration. One shaped I really wanted to try out was the tear drop shape, and so I created these two earrings, and then later a slightly bigger pendant in the same style.
I already decided before I finished the shapes that I wanted to use the 6mm glass pearls as an embellishment in the middle of the tear drop, and so I did =P

I added another 6mm pearl inside each one of the earrings to make 'em "bump" up and keep the 3D-like-shape. I added some soft plastic paper inside of the pendant to achieve the same effect.