My version of "Blue Star" bracelet.

Phew! It's been really, really warm over here for the past weeks. We've had over 40°C during this weekend, else it has ranged from 30-35°C, and inland like I live here in north-central Belgium, there is barely any wind, or no wind at all. So yeh, the weather hasn't really given much inspiration for many things, besides laying down and die, lol.
However, a couple of days ago I found this really cute and also free pattern which incorporates twin beads. I wanted to have a try just to take part of my mind away from this heat-wave.

The pattern can be found here. The pattern is pretty simple and uses twin beads and 11/0 seed beads and is worked in a circular peyote stitch.
For my version I went with some lighter pink shades, since I wanted to use up some of the very last bit of the twin beads in the pink pearly color that I have. Then I added some 11/0 seed beads by Miyuki in light rose pink and rose pink alabaster to kinda keep the shine.
To add something a little bit more personal, I made my own hook-clasp for this bracelet, and imo it looks kinda neat o lol.

Pendant: Twinlulu

I wanted a little break from my main project and I saw this really adorable pattern yesterday which uses Preciosa Twin Beads on the Facebook fan page of Preciosa. The link lead to a Hungarian blog with the name "EWA's World of Beads" in English. Her blog is partly in English and of course in Hungarian, and she has a lot of different patterns for free on her blog, so for those who want to take a look I recommend you strongly to do so.
About three months ago or so I bought about 20g of four different colors of twin beads to have in my stash for "just-incase-I-will-be-in-the-mood" to play with them and I thought this was an awesome opportunity to play with them a bit more then I already had.
This pendant is called "Twinlulu" and it's really easy to understand; all Ewa's patterns are in diagrams in step by step and nothing is written.
What you'll need are of course twin beads, then you'll also need a 12mm rivoli, 8/0, 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads, 4mm rounds and 4mm bicones.

After I created my first pendant I wanted to try my hands on another, since I had a different color palette in mind that I wanted to try out. The purple one is my first try.
As for the second try... I've been having these gorgeous aqua/gold lined (#284) seed beads from Toho since a while and I wanted to try them out with different colors then the ones I'd tried before.

As for the attachment I decided to make the same for both of them. I gunmetal-plated chain with a magnetic clasp. The same chain looked nice to both of them so ^.^;

Necklace: In the Style of Romance

I've been in the mood for quite a while to put those twin beads I bought two months ago to some action, but of course I wanted to finish up my main project first. I found this tutorial about a necklace/bracelet I wanted to try on Preciosa Ornela's own website for free, so I decided to give it a shot since I really liked the design of it. The tutorial can be accessed directly here.


 It's mostly reading with not any graphs at all to be honest, but it's a very easy and understandable tutorial. It's a two needle technique which first is only about stringing on all the main beads on each side of the thread. The tutorial also tells how many beads you'll need for making a necklace (choker length) and a bracelet.

Besides the twin beads I also used 11/0 Czech seed beads. The tutorial however calls for 10/0 Czech seed beads, but I haven't even been able to find size 10/0 from Czech beads anywhere so I just switched 'em out for 11/0's.

For the attachment I decided to add a small piece of a chain together with a lobster clasp. I also decided to add a 4mm round Swarovski bead for weight.

Twin for Free

I received my free 10 gram of Twin Beads from Preciosa this week, and they were just stunning and so cute! lol.

When I saw this offering they made I just thought "hey! free beads, must be worth trying to sign up for this" heh. They offer this to everyone that likes their Facebook page and uses the application to get a personal code to get 10 gram of free twin beads :)

I have always been a bit curious about these beads, ever since I heard that they were launched, but I haven't really seen any of my suppliers carry it until a week ago; Perles & Co. in France added some to their online store this week and I can't wait to order up some beads again. And the most awesome thing is, is that they sell them per 20 gram instead of 10 :)

Anyway.
The color I received of my free beads are purple iris. I thought that was great, cause I have about 100g of purple iris matte beads in my stash, so I decided to work together with those.
I didn't do anything complicated, as 10 gram isn't that much to move around. I wanted to try out peyote stitch with these, or even herringbone but I ended up making a very simple right angle weave bracelet/cuff.
For the last part of the bracelet I added a final row with the 11/0's and some 4mm purple glass beads that I pulled tightly together, to give a ruffled effect to the top and the bottom of the bracelet/cuff to give a fabric feeling to it. For the closure I used an acrylic button that fitted perfectly with the rest of the bracelet/cuff :)

At this point I had actually used up pretty much all of my twin beads, only 15 remained, lol. I felt that I didn't really want to store them away some where since it's such a small amount to be bothered with in the future, so I began on a circular peyote stitch, so see what it could evolve into. After two rows, using 10 beads I added 5 of the same 4mm purple glass pearls I used for the bracelet, and then I used latter stitch to attach the last five twins on top of the 5 twins that already where in the circle. Then I went through the top holes of the new twins and joined them together in a circle and formed an odd beaded bead, lol.
I ended up using some very thin silver-plated chain that I had laying around. Then a head-pin and two of the same 4mm glass pearls again together with this beaded bead and I made a wrapped loop :P
A delicate little necklace is what came out of the very last twins, lol.