"Child of Night" up on Ebay

I decided to take a leap of faith and put up the necklace "Child of Night" on Ebay yesterday.
If anyone is interested just follow this link -> http://www.benl.ebay.be/itm/231263013567?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649 :)

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".

BOTB 2014 "Sneaky Peak"

So yeah, I'm participating for this years "Battle of the Beadsmith" and I've been very, very busy working away on my piece and I haven't really done much else so that's the clear reason to why I haven't been updating :)

Decided to share this little "sneaky peak" photo that I shared on instagram and FB about a week ago. Yes, the photo is blurred out on purpose and then I've been playing with the color filter etc. just to tease since a lot of battlers do these "tease" photos every year since the beginning of the competition, heh.

About a week too late, but I'm wishing everyone a Happy Easter in this post :)

Polymer Clay, Bangle Obsession and BOTB 2014

I thought I would make a little quick update on what I've recently been up to... :)

So yeah, I caught the polymer clay bug really big time these last two weeks, and I've been a bit obsessed with making a couple of bangles which I'm sharing in this post.
I've been wanting to create polymer clay bangles for quite some time, but the thing that has always kept me at bay from it was that I didn't have any bangle bases to work with - they cost about 3-5 euros depending on where I buy them from and what sizes I want.
So what made me finally create bangles?
Simple.
I'm a member of a couple of different beading and polymer clay groups on FB and one of the polymer clay groups, which mostly focuses on sharing tutorials (free or those that costs moneh), a lovely lady shared her way on how to make bangle bases from scraps of clay. Yes, I decided to take pretty much all the scrap clay I had put a side and ended up creating a couple of different ones in rather unregular sizes - I only eyed them, I didn't measure them to 100% accurate, which wasn't needed anyway as the shapes ended up looking great.

Due to my recent, greater journey into polymer clay I've been thinking about creating another blog which only would put focus on my polymer clay creations. I'm just wondering if I should make the blog now, or wait till after this years vacation to Sweden, we'll see.

This year I'm also very happy to announce that I'm participating in "Battle of the Beadsmith 2014", and there about two weeks left until I finally can begin my battle piece.
Gosh, I'm actually starting to get nervous as I really hope I can keep up with the time (have two months, but you never know!).
I finally have somewhat of an idea what I want to create and I really hope I can stick with the plan and that it will turn out as I want it to *crosses fingers*.

Bead Embroidery Fractal Necklace II

So, yeap! I made another necklace using two of the fractal cabochons I created a couple of weeks ago. I decided to use two, since well, they are the same fractal I just decided to render them with different color scheme when I created them in Apophysis.
The fractals are placed against a black background so I decided to stick to black pretty much throughout when it came to my bead choices. I just decided to use some similar colored beads here and there + the fringe to give it a little extra something.

When it came to the fringe, I didn't want something too basic, so I decided to make a few strips in peyote, herringbone, spiral stitch and raw. It was fun doing the fringe like that as I could just play around with each one of the shapes in the fringe one at a time until I got something I ended up liking.