A monthly jewellery challenge

Just a quick post today as I realised that I have not introduced you to a competition that I am running over at Spoilt Rotten Beads. The rules are simple. All you have to do is to create a piece of jewellery using these beads:

You then send a picture to this address:

customerservice@spoiltrottenbeads.co.uk

BEFORE the 31st July when a winner shall be chosen who will then receive a £10 voucher to spend in the shop (or online). So if you make jewellery at all why not have a go? I shall be trying to (although will not be able to win the voucher!)

Should you require any more info you can read the full blog post about it here.

Good luck 🙂

 

A Win = Beaded Rope Number 2!

This week I realised that I had a won a giveaway competition over on the Make and Craft Blog. What did I win?

One of these tubes of lovely beads 🙂

It arrived in the post a few days later – so full that the top wouldn’t fit and the beads were spread all over the bag. (Not that I am bothered – the more beads the better ;))

So what would I use them for?

That was easy really. Having completed my first beaded rope bracelet I was really keen to have another go. When  I posted a picture of my first go on my Facebook page Mary Anne and  Miss Beatrix suggested that I should use as many colours as possible. Well here it is.

A pretty rainbow of colours.

I started off threading the beads on randomly but didn’t like the effect so ended up sorting them all into their colours. There were a lot of different colours so ended up making the decision to graduate the colours, going from lighter to darker.

The lighter end….

….and the darker end.

To be honest I am not sure about the overall effect. I am, however pleased with the way I executed this.

What do you think? Spot any mistakes?

The beads are a smaller size the ones I used previously so I had to use a much smaller hook (size 1) but still managed to get into the swing of it easily enough. My only mistake was to twist the odd bead somehow, can you spot any?

I can see how people can get hooked on making these – expect a few more popping up! Would any of you be interested in a tutorial so you can have a go? It is truly addictive and not that tricky, honest.

I hope that you all have headed over to Handmade Harbour this week to join in with the giveaways as part of the centenary celebrations for Handmade Monday. There have been some amazing things up for grabs so if you haven’t looked, I suggest that you go now!

I am now heading over to check the other blogs and catch up on what everyone else has been up to this week. Do come and join me 🙂

The Big Reveal!

Firstly I want to say a huge thank you for all the encouraging comments I received last week. It was really helpful.

Now for the whole story. I was making all those necklaces for a competition that I wanted to enter. Not really sure why except I like a challenge! I didn’t say so before because as you know I have a problem committing to anything. It has all been sent in so I can openly talk about it without fearing that something would go wrong and I would look silly. It was a competition to make a necklace fit for a queen using some specific pearl like beads. All the necklaces I have made previously were my prototypes. The one that I went with was the Queens Tiara Necklace:

This time however I used the proper beads (they are a bit more expensive being Swarvoski!) and, because they are pearl I thought Gold would set them off better. The only gold I have is 2mm instead of the 3.25 that I had been using. I also used a smaller hook 1 instead of 2. The result is this:

As you can see the beads around the bottom are larger than the others on this one. I was really pleased with the result (even if I do say so myself!). Here it is on a real model:

I think it is fit for a queen – indeed whilst looking for a picture of the queen for another project I found one with her wearing something quite similar. (No doubt several more times expensive than mine!). What do you think?

The second reveal is the WIP from last week. I have finished it. For those of you who guessed the jubilee theme you were quite correct. Here it is:

It is not meant to be a hat but I think that it works well. Any guesses as to what the real purpose is?

Even though I was following a pattern for this I still made a few silly mistakes. originally I thought that each length of the cross should be this length and couldn’t work out why they wouldn’t fit!

No not going to fit!

The top one is the length that it should have been (double the length of my first attempts). I must read the instructions properly!! At least it wasn’t too major and easy to correct.

It seems as though I always like to give myself problems to solve. Have you done silly things like this in the past?

I am now heading off to handmade harbour to see what everyone else has been up to this week – do follow me 🙂