Pink Bollywood Inspired Earrings!

Today was my day off from work which means I have been up since 9am running around trying to clean up the flat and run errands, suffice to say that today was crazier and busier than my days at work so I thought I’d finish off the day by writing about one of the crazier pieces I have done.

Crazy in the sense that I am not a pink lover, I have never been but I had such an urge to do a pink piece that it took me by surprise. I think it was because I had been looking at Indian saris and watching Hindi songs on Youtube for some fabric research I am doing, that I got overexcited by all the colours and sparkles and pink saris that I just had to make something upbeat.

One of the songs that I looked at is called “nainon mein sapna” from a movie called Himmatwala. I have not seen the film but all the colours in the world seem to make an appearance in this song. All the jewelry, the colours and sparkles, the song and dance is enough to overload the senses but I cannot help but feel cheerful when watching this clip and these earrings where somewhat inspired by the colours, fabrics and jewelry in this song and these outfits in particular.

I was surprise to see that I had pink beads in my stash. Not only that, I had the same pink beads in both size 8/0 and 11/0 which was a welcome surprise. Since this is bollywood inspired I went with the biggest crystal cabochon that I had which were this 30mm teardrop shaped sew on swarovski crystals that my mom had got me a while back.

For me the colours in this piece were crazy enough that I just didn’t feel comfortable doing much when in came to the design which is ironic since this was the perfect opportunity to go completely bonkers on the design since it was inspired by all the flash of bollywood but I just couldn’t bring myself to go too crazy.

I think it was fun stepping out of comfort zone but this is not something I think I can do all the time. Even though I am glad I did it I cannot imagine doing another piece this bright, at least not for a while! hope you guys have had a lovely , fun-filled weekend !!

---

Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Black Wings Bracelet

I have been so busy this week work and I have to admit I love it, I love that feeling of having some sort of purpose but it seems like I can only do one thing at a time and I have really been neglecting my home life and my social life. Also I am so tired by the time I get home that I have been going to bed at around ten. I have always been a night owl, going to bed at let’s say  5 am is nothing new to me, I find it easier to work during the night, less distractions and all that but now I cannot wait to crawl into bed!

So lately in my beadwork I have been more and more into tightening my colour palette and not using every single bead I possess in every piece. I know I tend to get a little bit overboard with my bead usage. So I set out to only use three colours with this bracelet: red, gold and black. Also for backing I used black Ultrasuede tacked onto Lacy’s stiff stuff.

I really liked the way that the hex cut beads looked in my last bracelet and since I have a huge package of those I decided to use those beads as the main body of my piece.

As always I started with my bezel and then moved on to the wing portion, which I had already mapped out on my backing. In order to get the piece as symmetrical as possible I did one side first and then moved on to the other so I could make everything match. So the number of beaded lined on each side is the same.

I was really happy with how things were looking after the first couple of black rows but I wondered if the piece would look very flat by using only black. So I decided to incorporate different types of stones in the same colour palette. Luckily I had just enough red fire polished beads to finish this bracelet off .so I decided to use them to separate the black sections.

I also didn’t want to use any other cabs but then I decided I needed to. The red cabs that I used are Mexican opals in dragon breath. I loved the colours of these. They are a nice red but in a certain light they look somewhat blue but when I glued them on my backing, which was black, they completely lost their appeal. But since I didn’t have any other cab that would have worked I decided to draw around the cab and cut the Ultrasuede up so that I could glue these cabs on to the Lacy’s stiff stuff. Once the cabs were glued onto a white background they got their blue tint back. I am just glad that the whole thing worked otherwise I would have had to undo all the work and start all over again.

I kind of only noticed the red lights on the model’s face when I was done with the piece, it kind of looked like the red cab underneath it was the cause of all the red lights on her face and I really liked that.

 

Once the body was done I decided to not add any decorative edge as I thought the piece looked fine as it was and the good thing with a decorative edge is that it can be added whenever, so if at a later time I think it needs it I can go back and do that without any problems. To finish off I added a gold clasp to the bracelet and it was all done.

 

• List of Materials Used:
• 5mm MEXICAN OPALS IN DRAGON BREATH
• 4mm RUBY FIRE POLISHED GLASS BEADS 
• 2.5mm RUBY FIRE POLISHED GLASS BEADS 
• BLACK HEX 2-CUT BEADS
• TRANSPARENT DARK RED SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• SILVER LINED MAHOGANY SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• GOLD METAL SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 
• OPAQUE BLACK SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• SILVER LINED MATTE DARK RUBY SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 
• SILVER LINED DARK PINK SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 
• GOLD COLOURED METAL SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0 
• SILVER LINED GARNET SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
• FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN SMOKE GREY
• LACY’S STIFF STUFF
•  BLACK ULTRASUEDE
•  E-6000 GLUE
• CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

---

Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

The Angel Bracelet

To say that this week has been the most bizarre week of my entire year would be an understatement! First off I really thought I had lost my mind this past week; I went a little bit stupid without electricity! So much so that I vouched to go and visit Thomas Edison’s grave once my power came back on and to my surprise I found out that his grave is somewhere in New Jersey, this whole thing cannot be a coincidence! So when the weather is better I would need to go and pay my respect because as of Monday my electricity has been back on!

On Sunday night I went to bed after putting on as much clothing on as I could and snuggled under my two heavy-duty duvets! As I was tossing and turning trying to get warm enough so I would fall asleep I heard a weird noise! I think it sounded weird because I hadn’t heard that noise in nearly 10 days. The air conditioning was making noises; I jumped out of bed in a daze and turned the lights on! OH MY GOD!! POWER! I went in to the living room turned my TV and computer on and everything was working, you should have seen me I was standing in the middle of the room flooded by artificial light and I was completely gob smacked, my mouth opening and closing like a fish! Then five minutes later the power went out again and I was ready to burst out crying but I thought that would be silly so I went back to bed! And then two minutes later the power came back up again and then went out again, and the pattern went on for a couple of hours but I am so so so glad that the power is back on and everything feels so normal! To top off such an amazing day I got a call to say that I was hired at this place that I had applied for a job and that I could start the next day!

So I think I have been like somewhat of a headless chicken this past week with all the different problems with what happened here in New Jersey and I have been trying to adapt to this new schedule that I am on so I feel I have really neglected my blog.but we will blame sandy for that!

I made this piece a month or so ago. I had been drawing a lot of patterns that resembled wings and I had been trying to experiment with different curves and shapes. Also I had been meaning to work with these hex cut type beads that I have had for a really long time!
Since the shape reminded me of wings I went with grey/clear palette although one of the hex cut beads seems to have a purple tint to it but I still think the colours work together well.

I have also been wanting to do a full row of bugle beads around a piece but I haven’t been able to get them to sit right. Every time I tried I got really weird gaps and I don’t like gaps but I was determined to try it out and maybe because I used a smaller size bugle beads (3mm in this case) the gaps were not too bad and I could get the bugles as close together as possible while following a tight curve around the centre cabochon. I also used the same bugle beads for the edge finish to give the bracelet more of an angelic/feather/ ray of light type of feel in keeping with the theme I was going for.

It feels great being back on the blog and being able to post about beading again and I hope you have enjoyed this piece! I also hope that it would stop snowing now, I have work tomorrow and I really don’t enjoy driving in the snow! Good night everyone!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• OVAL WHITE CABOCHON           
• 20x15 CAT’S EYE GRAY CABOCHON
• SILVER TEARDROP GEMSTONE BY RECOLLECTION
• 5MM HEMATITE RONDEL STONE BEADS
• 2MM CRYSTAL CHAIN
• 3MM GUNMETAL BUGLE BEADS
• MATSUNO SILVER HEX 2-CUT BEADS SIZE 11/0
• MATSUNO SILVER-LINED TRANSPARENT PURPLE HEX 2-CUT BEADS SIZE 11/0
• SILVER LINED DARK GRAY SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 SB1563
• SILVER SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• ANTIQUE SILVER PERMANENT GALVANIZED SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 SB2600
• SILVER LINED CRYSTAL SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• DBS 0251           
• SILVER LINED PALES GRAY SEED BEADS size 15/0 sb3399
• METALLIC DARK SILVER SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0 SB3197
• CLASP
• GRAY ULTRASUEDE
• LACY’S STIFF STUFF
• FIRELINE 0.006” IN CLEAR

---

Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

the hurricane

a whole week without electricity is enough to drive me crazy and all this time I thought I was made of tougher stuff.
I decided to just stay home yesterday and by 4 in the afternoon The flat had gotten too dark to do any beading! I decided to light up every candle i had . To be honest it did give the flat a nice ambiance and i enjoyed it for about ten minutes until i settled to read a book and the flickering light gave me such headache that I decided to go to bed at 10 , something I have not done in years but what else could I do? Also all the candle fumes had made me look like i had fallen down the chimney . It was very amusing my whole face was covered in soot . Who knew that candles could do that?
All through the night i dreamt of the power being back on . The one dream i remember is me opening the fridge door and seeing its light turning on!! But alas no electricity this morning either and even worse my phone had died. So this morning I set out to just drive around while my phone got charged in the car. I went to the apple store and used their iPhone docks, searched high and low around my area for size D batteries for my flashlight but no one had any left.
By 6 it had gotten too dark and since most of the traffic lights are not working i decided the best thing to do was to head home. On the way back i decided to go to Michael's and get a pack of those flameless candles . I don't think continuous candle smoke inhalation would have been any good for me.and I am glad i did cause i ended up buying a table lamp that was battery operated! Hurray
Now here is the part that maybe years from now i will find amusing but today just frustrated me:as i was driving towards my flat i started noticing houses with their lights on.oh my god !could this be??? I drove nearer and nearer to my flat and still there were lights. A bubble of happiness formed in my chest. My building complex is made of two adjoining complexes . Both have the same name and sit back to back but they are not internally connected . So when i drove past the back flats and saw that they had power i was ready to burst from happiness! Even the flats opposite my complex had power!
I think you can guess where i am going with this ! As i turned into my building complex i was engulfed in such total darkness that it took my breath away!
I am really amazed at how much I rely on modern conveniences and how lost i feel without them! I sometimes struggle to see how we used to live without a mobile phone , and phones are quite a new thing by comparison ,I could not even begin to comprehend life without electricity! I
All day i kept thinking that in all those Jane Austen novels when the were having balls and dances at night , they were probably doing it in the darkness because i cannot begin to fathom how many candles were needed to light up those huge ballrooms!! because i had about 22 candles in my small living room and i was still struggling to see anything in front of me?
oh boy! I think i really have lost my marbles a little bit sitting in this dark cold flat!
If any of you are on the west coast and went through this hurricane I hope you are all safe!