January Retrospective

 I must say, I've beaded more in January than I have in a very long time, and I've really enjoyed it. Although there were only 5 weeks in January (I've been beading a pair of earrings for every weekend, rather than every week)... I've actually made 7 pairs of earrings! If you read my new years resolution blog, you'll be familiar with the first two pairs, but I wanted to keep a record of each month's makes together, so I've included them here again. 

Tassels and Superduos - my own design. 

Scintilla Earrings - my own design. 

Keep your eye out for Bead & Jewellery Magazine issue 107 to see a tutorial for how to make these.

RAW Pearl Bezel design by Jean Power from her book Rivoli Beadwork. 
I initially made these as I'd seen a friend make them with sapphire rivolis and cream pearls, and they were beautiful, but very traditional looking - I wanted to see how different they would look with dark pearls and a lighter rivoli. The long kidney wire earring findings added to the different look. I really love them. 

In fact, I loved them so much.... I beaded a second pair! 

These are based on the Bicone Snowflake design from Jean Power's book Rivoli Beadwork, although I have used chatons - the 14mm chatons are lovely, etched Chinese crystal chatons which have a really unusual look.

I am in love with these Little Lantern earrings from Sabine Lippert's book Beaded Fantasies.   I made a pair years ago and they have been worn a LOT, so making a second pair seemed like a good idea. They were quick to make up and used some really interesting construction techniques, as Sabine's beadwork always does. 

This last pair for January are my design. A simple loop of CRAW with a crystal dangle in the middle. I must say, if nothing else, I'm very impressed with my wire wrapped loops on these earrings. They're neat and they match - that's quite a feat for me! 

I hope you've enjoyed joining me on my earring journey in January. If you have any questions about the designs I used, or have any suggestions for future months, please drop me a message in the comments. 

I've also noticed that my colour schemes seem to fall into the pink or blue/grey box, so if you have suggestions for colours you think I should try, just let me know. 

2021 New Years Resolutions

 The beginning of a new year is the time to make new starts and new resolutions.  I'm not normally one for new years celebrations or resolutions, but this year I've been inspired. 

I was asked by the lovely Clair Rigby if I would like to join her in her #earringchallenge2021 to make a pair of earrings every week in 2021. This is a no-pressure challenge, and I'm aware that I'm not going to be able to achieve this every week - but it is at least, an incentive to bead each week. It's also giving me the opportunity to do something that I've been thinking about for quite some time, which is to document my creative endeavours in a slightly more structured way. At the moment, if I'm lucky, there will be a picture of something I've made on my phone... but no information on materials, who the designer was (if I used a pattern), what inspired me (if it's my design), what materials I used etc. So I'd like to use this challenge and my blog to gather this information. I'm aiming to blog once a month and post my weekly makes on Instagram. If you don't already follow my on Instagram, you can find me @beadsbybecs

To start the year off, I've got a couple of earring makes I have to confess, the super-sparkly pair I started in 2020, but I attached the ear wires in 2021 (that counts, right!?). 

These are made with some lovely white opal Swarovski chatons and the bezels are made with 3mm and 4mm bicones. This is my Scintilla pattern (it'll be released later this year). 

If you can get more glam than all this sparkle, then this second pair of earrings fit that bill. They're much more dressy, and they continue along my little self-challenge of making bezels with different beads to just regular seed beads. 

These are bezelled using superduos - superduets actually - they're navy on one side and cream on the other. The rivolis are Chinese crystal rather than Swarovski, but still incredibly pretty. I made the tassels using a Clover tassel maker and three different colours of thread - navy, hot pink and a silver-grey. Also, I tend to use wire guardians at the top to add the ear wires, they're very hard-wearing and give a professional looking finish. 

I'm quite happy with these two pairs of earrings as a start to the year and to the challenge - I've started as I mean to go on. 

I think six years ago I set a resolution to learn to knit, and I learnt to knit and fell so passionately in love with it that I ended up getting repetitive strain injury from knitting, and now I can't do it without considerable pain, but the point I'm getting at, is that I know I can stick to a resolution, and I know I can fall in love with a creative idea - not necessarily *just* making earrings, because I know that'll probably be a little too restrictive, but I want to fall in love with making again, and the process of relaxing with my beads, instead of sitting with my phone in my hand, endlessly scrolling and watching the doom and gloom go by.