Bracelet: Bugle Blocks

For this bracelet I used a pattern that can be found in "Beading Across America".

The pattern is designed by June Huber and mainly consists of bugle beads in two different sizes and 15/0 seed beads.

I had to change the pattern a tad bit so it would get adapted to what I had laying around.
The pattern calls for 3mm and 8mm bugle beads. I didn't have any 8mm bugles (heck I don't even know where to get my hands on 8mm'ers), so I replaced them with 6mm bugles instead.
What you also need is 8/0 seed beads that goes inside the bigger bugle units. Since I changed the size of my longer bugles I had to replace the 8/0's with 9/0's else they  would be too big to sit nicely in place.

I chose to make my piece in black and red since for me it's more personal (my favorite colors are black and red when together). I've also been thinking about making a neck piece or something using this kind of technique since I really enjoyed doing this piece. It is also a way of using bugle beads which I don't do so very often - the fear of a cut off thread will always be there ever since it happened the first time, lol.

Bracelet: Frost Flower

Finally managed to get my fingers out of my ass and tidy up my room, and make it look like a working studio where I can make and design my jewelries.
It's still not 100% completed cause I still need some more furniture to get it as I've imagined :)

At the moment it's 100% possible to work there tho. I got this awesome tool case (or mini tool shelf) from my father-in-law just for the reason so I could store findings, tools, beads etc.

I also received my beads which I got as a present from my lovely bf. I had been longing for this since a while, since I've been having in mind what designs I want to fulfill using the beads I've ordered and now with the awesome work space it's like a dreamland! :D (need to get my hands on a radio tho, it's dead silence like on a graveyard lol).

So, the very first thing I made this Saturday was a little bracelet which kinda speaks "snow" or "winter" about it. It was the idea kinda. The moment I saw the silver lined crystal seed beads I ordered I thought they reminded me of ice. Pure ice.
I also intended on adding simple little leaves in, like fringe, which you can see on the photos. I used double spiral rope stitch to make the base itself of the bracelet, and embellished it with leaf fringes, frosted cube beads with an AB finish, and some 6/0 crystal beads also with an AB finish.
The clasp is only made out of beads. And I made the button using an 8mm glass bead, and then I used circular brick stitch. Instead of making the button only white, I had this image in my head; when it get really cold in northern Sweden you can see this pale pink and light blue colors in the sky. That is what I kinda wanted to embed in the piece.

Collar: Anubis & Book: Beaded Collars

Finally I manage to actually continue on this piece that I had begun since some while ago. I kinda saw it in front of me, and had already imagine how I wanted it, but didn't really know how to quite finish it off after I made the base that would go snug around the neck.

After I read the book Beaded Collars by Julia S. Pretl I managed to figure out how I could increase the collar so it would fall down from the neck onto the shoulders without having kinks - A perfect pass form in other words!
For anyone that is interested in learning some very basic techniques about beaded collars, I highly recommend reading this book. It gives a lot of tips on designs and also on the mathematical system on how to make beaded collars.

I used simple ladders stitch for my piece and some netting for the center part of the collar. I made the toggle clasp using peyote stitch.
The beads I used were 11/0 seed beads in purple matte iris, 40-50 gram 7mm twisted bugles in purple iris, two 4mm purple glass beads for the toggle clasp and some 11/0 galvanized gold seed beads.

Rainbow Shock

I bought this rainbow color mix of 11/0 seed beads around last year from Beadaholique. I decided that I wanted to use it, but I wanted to make the colors actually fade from one another towards the other. Yeh, I also had to add a few extra colors to the mix so it would look a lot softer then it did at first.

Since the color mix already was mixed, I decided to do the annoying work of sorting the colors from it. Phew, thank god for tweezers.

To make the base of the bracelet I used the Russian rope stitch, and then I fringed it. I made the toggle-clasp bigger then ordinary, simply cause I wanted to, and cause I've always made them smaller and it would make a nice contrasting effect (taste thing really).

It was actually the very first time I tried on making the Russian rope, but I found it rather fun, AND annoying, lol. I had to constantly keep my thread tight at all times; I think that must be because I'm using Nymo. Might be easier with FireLine or Wildfire, but duno, my more expensive thread is out of stock and tbh I'm one of those folks that actually likes Nymo.