Leather,Gold and Turquoise Bracelet

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you have all had a wonderful and special day today. I for one took this day to rest and clean up my flat! Here is the thing; I believe I might be the only person in the world that goes to work on their day off because they just enjoy being around the people that they work with. And since today was the only day that no one was going to be at work I had no choice but to sit around the flat and get some of my own work done!

I love my co-workers they are fun, funny and they make me feel less alone in this world and I love spending every single minute that I can with them! So since I have started working at this place I think I have only not gone to work on my off days to hang out maybe just once or twice. But whenever I go for a couple of hours I make sure to take some of my beading to get done over there which for me feels like killing two birds with one stone; not only do I get to have fun but then I am doing something that I love to do on my time off anyway.

So last week when I was there for a visit I had taken this huge 2-inch turquoise stone to do some beading on. My aim was to either turn it into a brooch or a necklace. But as soon as I took the stone out of my bag to start my work my manager asked if the piece was I was working on was for her. To be honest I had already made her something for Christmas with gold and turquoise charms (knowing that she loves anything turquoise) but when she started dropping hints that she wanted the stone I was working on as a bracelet then I just had to do it.

The problem is she has teeny tiny wrists and the only way I could make a bracelet for her without measuring her wrist was to make a bracelet using a bracelet base.

I have seen a lot of these bracelets using bracelet bases but I have never done it and my manager had a very specific design. She wanted a gold bezel on a leather base and nothing else. So something very simple and for those of you who have seen my previous work you know that I do not do subtle. Restraint is not something I exercise much of in my beading!

My other problem was that I only had a few hours to make the bracelet. Our office party was on Saturday and she started telling me about what she wanted on Thursday afternoon so this piece was done rather quickly because I had already decided to make a whole load of muffins and chocolate mousse to take to work on Saturday, thank god I had Friday off so I could get everything done

Doing a bezel is easy and it doesn’t really take me that long. I glued my cabochon onto a faux leather piece, which was all I had and did my rose gold and gold bezel. The main struggle with this bracelet was figuring out how to use the bracelet base and how to bead around it and I didn’t find it that easy to do.

I bought a bracelet base from Michael’s that had a flatter top, which was somewhat perfect for the huge turquoise stone because it gave it more of a flat base to sit on. The only thing with the bracelet base was that it was not a solid bracelet base so in order to stop the filigree pattern that the bracelet had from showing through once the leather was glued onto it I also used a layer of Lacy’s stiff stuff so that the pattern of the bracelet would stay hidden.

I glued the leather with the beaded turquoise stone on to the bracelet and trimmed around it, I cut another piece of leather and glued it to the inside of the bracelet and trimmed that as well .if I had time I would have waited a while for the glue to dry off before starting to finish the edge but I just had to get it done so I could wrap it and go to bed, so I set out finishing the edge. The one thing about working with the faux leather that I didn’t like was that the stitches were very visible and that doesn’t sit well with me. Since making this bracelet I have made another one for myself, which is a little bit different, and I have use Ultrasuede in that one and the stitching is not visible at all and I love that. I will share pictures of that bracelet in another post having said that I think I need to do more stuff with leather backing so that I could get comfortable with and make my stitching on leather nicer and neater. If any of you guys have used a bracelet base and know of an easier way to trim and finish the edge please let me know, I really need some help in that area!

I finished the bracelet around 1am and went to work the next day at around 7:30, suffice to say I was beat but the look on her face when she opened and saw the bracelet was all worth it.

So anyway I hope you guys enjoyed looking through the pictures of this bracelet too and hope you have had a wonderful Christmas!

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

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 !!

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Vintage Green Earrings

When I first decided to do bead embroidery it was all because of a video on Youtube by Beadaholique. I didn’t know anything about bead embroidery even though I had done a lot of just random beading at my fashion jobs .i really didn’t have a clue where to start so I went ahead and bought the stuff that was mentioned in their video plus some vintage German cabochons that they had on their website. I loved the German cabs I got from there specially the green and purple ones I had purchased. Since they only had a limited number of cabs left and these were vintage stones I decided to go ahead and buy out the rest of the green and purple cabs that they had in stock. i am so glad I did because they haven’t restocked these cabs again and I haven’t been able to find them anywhere even though I have been looking constantly.

Out of the two cabochons I would have to say that the green one that I have used in this piece is my favorite but I had the hardest time matching any colour bead to it.

The cabochon has a unique teal/turquoise colour and I have quite a few different beads that fall in that category but none of them looked anything special next to the cabochon. None of them added anything to the piece and I thought maybe I was going about this the wrong way.

The cab has a nice shine and effect to it and the beads I was testing around it, all had different shiny effects on them and so maybe that was the problem. Too many different finishes were clashing with each other.  I went with a matte finish bead in the end that was close enough to the main colour of the cab.

I think the matte effect of the bead helps in that they make the main cabochon stand out even more. But I needed to use another type or colour of bead to make the piece more dimensional and interesting and none of the blues and teals were doing that so I decided to see if metal colours would work.

I don’t have an innate way with colour and matching colours is my main headache when it comes to any type of designing whether it is beadwork or if it is fashion design work. So after doing little samples with gold/silver and bronze, I settled with bronze and loved how the piece turned out.

For the edge I did the all too popular picot edge but I really though the piece deserved a little bit more so I decided to experiment with filling out the space between the size 11/0 beads of the picot edge.

I was going for a rounded effect at first. I found out that adding four size 15/0 seed beads between each size 11/0 beads would just lie flat .in the next step I added five which I found with a little but of manipulation would make these pointy shapes and I was really excited about so I scraped the idea of having round loops around the earrings and went with this pointy edge.

I was going to keep these earrings for myself but I decided to list them on Etsy and I was glad and really surprised when they got sold. Good thing is I still have a few more of the main cabs left so I can make more of these if I ever wanted to!:D

            LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• VINTAGE GERMAN CABOCHONS
• 15x15mm SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL STONE
• MATTE TRANSPARENT MINT GREEN RAINBOW SEED BEADS SIZE 8/0 
• METALLIC GOLD SEED BEADS SIZE 8/0 
• MATTE TRANSPARENT DARK SEA GREEN IRIS SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 
• DARK METALLIC BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0 
• METALLIC LIGHT BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0 
• 10mm SURGICAL STEEL FLAT GLUE ON EARRING POST
• LACY’S STIFF STUFF
• GREY ULTRASUEDE
• FIRELINE THREAD 0.006 IN CLEAR
• E-6000

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Emancipation Brooch

I have been so tired lately and I blame the squirrels!!

So a week or so ago I started hearing these really weird sound echoing all around me which turned out to be some squirrels that have made themselves feel right at home just on my bedroom ceiling and are partying up there all night long, every night. good for them but not good for me!!

My eyes are closing as I am writing this but I decided to write a small post for two reasons: first, I don’t really like to ignore the blog specially now since it’s a brand new blog and it’s a baby and needs more attention and secondly I was told off by my mom for not having updated the blog for 3 days!! Now I don’t know about you but I loathe disappointing my mom more than anyone else!

This is a small brooch I worked on a while ago when I had absolutely no idea what to do. I kept wanting to come up with elaborate, grand designs and I couldn’t get a solid idea going so I went to the other end of the spectrum by going completely simple.

And apparently when I go simple I go really simple. I used an image from Natalie Shau called “ Released Time” and grey and red painting and hence the grey and red beadwork.the painting is breathtaking and I really suggest you visit her website to get a better sense of how beautiful and detailed her work is

The design as you see is as simple as it gets, the only new thing about this piece is the edge finish in which I used drop beads which give a fun effect and I wonder why I haven’t used this type of finishing on any other piece since! Hope you guys enjoyed this piece even though it’s rather plain and simple!!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• 30x40 CLEAR GLASS DOME
• HEMATITE GREY SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0     
• SILVER-LINED DARK PINK SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• MATTE METALLIC DARK ROYAL PURPLE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
• 4x3.4 GUNMETAL SILVER FRINGE BEADS

• LACY'S STIFF STUFF
• BLACK ULTRASUEDE
• 1.5-INCH BASE METAL PIN BACK
•  E-6000 GLUE

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Lady with Dark Hair Pearl Necklace

Can you believe the weekend is over? I spent the whole of Saturday waiting for a package that never arrived and then after doing my weekly shopping I decided to go through my scrapbooking supplies and see what I could get rid off. Suffice it to say that by the time I looked through just half the stuff I had I was a little bit ashamed of myself for spending that much money on things that I don’t use. I love paper but I am no scrapbooker .I think I need to find a way of selling all the dies and punches and stamps I have accumulated in the past year. There is no point in them just sitting in drawers.

But before the weekend is over I want to at least get one post finished in order to achieve one positive thing. So this post is about one of my earlier pieces, which means it was done roughly 4-5 months ago when I was in my resin cabochon-making phase.
 
There are a few setbacks to these resin cabochons. First of all it takes a long time for them to get made and you never know if the finished product is going to come out perfect (without pesky air bubbles or watermarks) until it is all done and over. Another thing that can go wrong with the cabochons is the thickness of it.

For my pieces I used to do a thin layer, put the picture in let it cure for 12 hours and then add a layer of black. But after a couple of uses my molds became a bit lopsided so some of the cabochons were thicker on one side and thinner on the other even though I tried to get it as level as possible. This means that when it comes to bezeling the piece it would look weird. And no matter how much I sanded the piece I could never get it completely even which is why I ultimately switched to clear domes.

This resin cabochon was made using a painting by Harrison Fisher titled “lady with dark hair”. The cab that I had made was too thick so I had to come up with a way of covering the sides and at this point I was only doing stacked bezeling and hadn’t learnt the how to do peyote stitch bezel .so after the initial two stacked rows I decided to add the one thing I go to when I can’t find a bead that works: pearls.

I went through the size 15/0 beads and came out ever 8 beads to add a 2mm pearl stacked with a size 15/seed bead. Once I had gone all around the piece I only had to go through one of the size 15/0 beads on top of a pearl and start adding size 15/0 beads to close the gap between the beads and form a bezel around the cabochon.
 
After I was done with the main piece I made two other smaller pieces to match the main piece and I just had to connect everything together. I made a simple chain with the beads and pearls that I had used in the main pieces and attached a spring clasp. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to attach clasps back then and you can see that I have gone around the loop of the clasp with thread a few times to secure it on and I don’t like that I can see the thread .so next time I go back home to visit my parents I have take this necklace from my mom and fix the clasp issues.

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• 2mm WHITE PEARLS
• 3mm WHITE PEARLS
• 5mm WHITE PEARLS
• 18mm JET BLACK ROUND CABOCHONS
•  GOLD SAUCER SHAPED RIBBED SPACER BEADS
• TEARDROP VINTAGE PEARL
• 2mm BROWN GOLDSTONE BEADS
• METALLIC KHAKI BROWN SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• METALLIC BROWN SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• METALLIC LIGHT BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
• ANTIQUE COPPER SPRING CLASP

• FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN SMOKE GREY
• LACY’S STIFF STUFF
• BLACK ULTRASUEDE
•  E-6000 GLUE
•  CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Amethyst Purple and Crystal Earring

I don’t know why but lately I have been really into making earrings. I think it’s probably because they are quicker to make and I am less afraid to use colour in smaller pieces than I in bigger pieces. To be honest I am not sure. I was never much of an earring wearer to begin with. I am more of a bracelet and ring person but I am not sure if a bead-embroidered ring would work.

When I was putting together pieces that I could use in earrings I came across these wonderful faceted square Swarovski crystals that my mom had sent me. The good thing about them was that they didn’t have any holes for sewing through in them, bad thing about them was that they had a faceted back and I was bit iffy about using them.

So the challenge for this piece was gluing the faceted piece to the backing. I had read in the dimensional embroidery book that the way to use these types of stones was to use some sort of air-dry clay under them to make some sort of a setting. I was a little apprehensive to be honest about how to actually do it but after doing more research and finding no other method I decided to just give it a try.

The book says to use air-dry clay and the only type that I found on the day that I went to Michaels was the Martha Stewart’s crafter clay, which is very puffy and kind of reminds me of marshmallows. I made small balls and put the stone on top of the clay ball and pushed it down onto a flat surface to make the setting that the gem would sit in and trimmed the excess clay. Once the clay was dry I checked to see if it was actually stuck to the gem and I found that I could easily peel it back. the thing is that once the bezel was done , the gem would have been completely encased in the beads and would not have fallen out but just to be on the safe side I decided to  glue the stone to the setting and then sanded them a little so that the setting would be as thin as possible and then glued it on to my backing.

Once that whole section was done then it was off to doing the bezel work and the beadwork. For these earrings I went with a gold and bronze palette to compliment the vintage purple cabochons.

The thing with beaded earring as I found out is that they are very lightweight. I usually don’t wear earrings because after a while my ears start throbbing but I have been really comfortable with the beaded earrings that I have made for myself. I think it is probably because there is no metal setting involved in making the earrings, which makes the pieces very light and hence comfortable to wear.

 

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• 18x25mm VINTAGE GERMAN GLASS AMETHYST PURPLE CABOCHONS
• 15x15 mm SQUARE SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL
• 2.5mm APOLLO GOLD CZECH FIREPOLISH BEADS FP2611
• 2mm GOLDSTONE BEADS
• 3mm GOLDSTONE BEADS
• DARK PURPLISH BRONZE SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• GOLD SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• GOLD METAL SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
• 10mm SURGICAL STEEL FLAT GLUE ON EARRING POST
• FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN SMOKE GREY
• LACY’S STIFF STUFF
• BLACK ULTRASUEDE
•  E-6000 GLUE
•  CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

Sailor Girl

I would like to start off by saying that this piece turned out to a bane of my beading existence. I had wanted to do something with this painting from Mary Jane Ansell for a while and I thought it would work perfectly with the swarovski crystal chains that I had ordered. This piece is from her “The beauty of the Hours” series and is titled “Girl in a cocked hat”

I glued the piece on the backing and did the initial bezel. I decided to do a row around the bezel with the navy blue beads I had used in the bezel to make the crystal chain pop a little bit more. And then did another row with the same beads after I had sewed on the crystal chain. So far so good.

I started this piece right after I had done my Maleficent bracelet so I was pumped. That piece had come together so nicely that I wanted to replicate that experience. That’s when I decided to turn this piece into a bracelet.

Since I had planned this piece as a brooch I had glued it to a small piece of backing which meant that the bracelet would have to be made of separate pieces. But that was ok. I drew out the shape I wanted the sides to look like and went looking for stones, cabochons and other beads to use in the piece. And I had nothing. Well I mean I had stuff but nothing that would go with this piece.

So I went online in search of blue stones. I found some blue opal stones on the website where I had purchased the crystal chains so I thought they would be a good a choice. While I was at it I went on my favorite website for buying seed beads to get some that might help the process along.

So at this point I couldn’t really go any further with the piece. I had to wait until I had all my pieces so I could start up again. Leaving a piece half finished is never a good idea. I lose my train of thought and my groove and it’s always a little hard to get back into that exact same frame of mind to finish up a piece. But I had no choice, I moved onto doing other pieces.

A week or so passed and I got my packages but I really wasn’t feeling it so I didn’t go back to the piece. But the fact that it was unfinished kept nagging me so I gave in and decided to just finish the piece and be done with it.

I glued on the blue opal stones I had purchased for this piece and started doing the same bezel as I had done around main focal image. It took me a couple of tries to get an even number around the piece in order to get the bezel done but I finally got there. I followed the same pattern as the main image and added the pearl and goldstone.

This is as far as I had planned but when I put the pieces next to each other it was so obvious that the piece would not fit around my wrist. So I had to add more.

Initially I thought I’d do a row of bugle beads all around the piece. I had seen it done and I though how hard can it be, the answer was very hard. I just could not get the beads to sit right, there were unsightly gaps and they just look weird . So I thought why not just use seed beads. But on second inspection I found out that I had run out of the navy blue seed beads I had used in the piece.

Argghhhhhhhhhhhh!! This is the point at which I started thinking this piece just does not want to get made!

The right thing would have been to order the blue beads but I was just really frustrated with the piece at this point and I didn’t want to have to wait another week or so for beads. I decided to use what I had instead.

Once the few rows were added I was thinking surely it will fit at this point. But alas it was not to be. So I started adding other elements. I mean at this point I just had to laugh and go with it. Ok maybe had I planned things better or if this pattern was what I had in mind I would have been ok with it but since I had to keep adding and adding things just to make this bracelet reach the 7.5 inches I needed for it to fit around my wrist, everything felt like an afterthought.

I cut the pieces out finished the edges and connected them together. And wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing still didn’t fit!!

I mean the process I went to through to finish this piece was so ridiculous that it makes me laugh. I have done enough beading now, not to have to repeat these basic stuff over and over again to get it right but with this piece  I had to rework every element over and over just to get it somewhat right!

 

All in all I am at peace with this bracelet, its not one of my favorites but I don’t hate it now as much as I did when I was making it. But I am sure glad it’s done

 

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• 30×40 OVAL CLEAR GLASS CABOCHON
• 18mm BLUE SEA OPAL GLASS STONE CABOCHON
• 7mm DARK BLUE GLASS OPAL CABOCHONS
• 2mm SWAROVSKI CRYSTAL AB CHAIN
• 2mm BLUE GOLDSTONE ROUND BEADS
• 3mm GOLD SWAROVSKI PEARLS
• 3mm ROUND BLUE GOLDSTONE BEADS
• 6mm MATTE METALLIC BLUE IRIS BUGLE BEADS
• GOLD SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• GOLD METAL ROUND SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• METTALIC EGGPLANT IRIS SEED BEAD SIZE 11/0
• METALLIC VERIEGATED MIDNIGHT BLUE SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• OPAQUE DYED COBALT BLUE SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0 
• GOLD COLOURED METAL SEED BEADS SIZE 15/0
• 14kt GOLD TOGGLE CLASP
• FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN CLEAR
• FIRELINE THREAD 0.006” IN SMOKE GREY
• LACY’S STIFF STUFF
•  BLACK ULTRASUEDE
•  E-6000 GLUE
• CRAFTER’S PICK THE ULTIMATE GLUE

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved