When life gives you left-handed lemons...

 I'm the kind of person who tries my hardest to always look on the bright side of things, but the last few weeks have been rather challenging. I've dislocated my right shoulder, twice. I'm right handed. Thankfully I've been able to pop my shoulder back into place myself both times, so I've avoided a lot of trauma. But still, I've been keeping my right arm in a sling for the last few weeks.  For those of you who are curious, I'm hypermobile, I managed to dislocate my shoulder by turning over in bed.

Not only do I need my right hand for work and life in general, obviously, I need it to bead! My best beading friend, the fabulous editor of Bead and Jewellery magazine, Vicky Roberts asks me to test-bead and proof read a lot of her patterns/tutorials, and when I told her I'd dislocated my shoulder, we agreed I should learn to bead left handed. I think she was actually joking, as she was rather stunned when later that day I sent her a picture of a bezelled cushion stone. I'm sorry I can't share that picture with you, but it's for a top-secret project. 

Instead, here's a piece of modified right angle weave I've done left-handed. This will make up part of the chain part of a necklace designed by Heather Kingsley-Heath - the design is called Katia. I'll blog about it once I've finished it. 

It has made me think though, about how easily I adapted to beading with my left hand. Obviously, I was slower, my tension wasn't quite as tight, but that's not necessarily a bad thing as my usual beading tension can only be designed as fierce! With my right arm in a sling, I can hold the beadwork just fine, so it's just like swapping everything over. 

Usually (right handed), I like to bead in an anti-clockwise direction, but left handed, I seem to prefer clockwise. I also feel like I prefer a longer needle in my left hand, but a shorter one in my right, but it may be too soon to tell on that one really. 

It definitely is much easier to bead left handed than it is to write left handed. I've just about got the hang of using a mouse left handed, and typing with just one hand is slow, and involves a lot of proof-reading (I tend to forget capital letters and apostrophes). 

Months ago, I signed up to do a Zoom workshop with Sabine Lippert for her Fields of Gold necklace which is just beautiful. The workshop is tomorrow, and I still have to keep my right arm in a sling. Normally, I'm a speedy beader, but I I'm definitely going to be one of the slower ones tomorrow. At least I have a really good excuse! 

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. 

That's no moon.... it's a space station!

Oh dear, it has been far too long since I last blogged - I am so sorry!
I have been wanting to blog about a piece of beadwork I made for quite some time (I actually finished it in January), but I had to wait until the judging of a competition before I could publicly share it.
I decided to take part in the Beadworkers Guild Crystal Anniversary Competition; it was sponsored by Swarovski, so it had to be something bling.
I'm not often a very sparkly beader - I have the odd moment when I go crazy with crystals, but usually, I'd prefer pearls.  After my first geometric beaded sculpture being accepted as a finalist at the British Bead Awards, I decided to make another piece along the same lines.  Still 60 triangles, but joined together in a different arrangement, to make a stellated dodecahedron (a round(ish) structure made from 12 pentagonal pyramids).
To show off the crystals to their best, I decided to make the majority of the structure from white delicas.  Buying delicas in 50g packs was something quite new to me... it felt very odd!  To complement the white, I added a pale pink (think coconut ice) and a matte copper to embellish the edges of the triangles. 
I chose five different finishes of Swarovski chaton to include, and a generous sprinkling of Swarovski sequins to add some shine to the vertices.
As my first geometric structure ended up with a nickname (sixty flippin' triangles), this one did too - I jokingly started calling it The DeathStar (I am a secret sci-fi geek).
When I had finally finished making it and stitching all of the triangles together, it was so close to the deadline... I only just made it!  I took some photos and submitted them, and I was honoured to find I had been selected as a finalist in the competition.  The Beadworkers Guild website has a gallery of all of the finalists and winners.There is some incredible work on display in the gallery, it is well worth checking out. 
I wasn't selected as a winner, but I am grateful to have got through to the final round of the judging.
Here is my DeathStar... It's so nice to have it back, proudly displayed in my living room.

OTTBS Beaded Earring Challenge (week 1)

I belong to a beading group on facebook, and several of us have accepted the challenge to make a pair of earrings a week - for the whole of 2012... I must be mad... but if I stick to it, I'll have 52 new pairs of earrings by the end of the year! 


No idea what on earth I am going to do with 52 pairs of earrings... hopefully sell some of them!


Following on from my last blog post about learning bead embroidery, I though I'd give myself an embroidery challenge for the first week.  So, I sat down with some stiff stiff, some blue mountain jade, some size 11 and 15 seed beads and a bit of ultra-suede and went for it!


So, here they are... my embroidered earrings.

One down... 51 to go!

Diddy Becs

I must apologise for not blogging for so long... going through a change in jobs is pretty darn stressful!!  It has kept me from my creative endeavours, and means I've not had much to share with you all.  Until now, that is!
I have been crocheting a doll for quite a random purpose.  You see, I am very fond of my current manager, and he has frequently said "what I am going to do without you?" over the past 4 weeks, so I decided to make him a little reminder of me - a 'diddy Becs' doll!  Kind of like a mini-me, but crocheted!
I have to give credit where it is due, as I based the body of my doll on that of one designed by Michele Wilcox.  The pattern can be found here.

So, I sat down with some beautiful bamboo acrylic and started to crochet myself from the top down, using nothing but single crochet (with increases and decreases in the right places).  It's a well written pattern and was easy to follow.  I love amigurumi, so it was good fun to make. I decided not to go the whole hog and crochet the underwear into the body, especially as this is a gift for a man... I felt it might feel slightly inappropriate!  So, the head, body and arms were made in a beige bamboo acrylic and I decided that instead of making trousers for the doll (no idea how I'd manage that anyway!) I'd just make the legs from black acrylic!




Now I had to decide what top/dress the doll should wear - this was an easy decision to make as I have a rather unique green dress/tunic that I wear to work - it's very distinctive, and is unmistakably me!  I had a yarn to match too... but it had to look like my tunic, so of course, there was no pattern to work from.  I started crocheting a tube, starting at the bottom of the tunic, working up, tapering it as I went.  I stopped when it was the right length under the armpits of the doll, and the rest of the tunic was crocheted onto the doll, which was really quite fiddly!  To make the yoke of the dress and the start of the sleeves, I stitched around from the back until I met the arm, chain stitched a strap over the arm and joined it at the front of the dress, and continued around making a strap for the other arm.  I then worked one row of single crochet to finish off the yoke.  Then to make the sleeves... they were just single crochet tubes worked around the arms, and finished off at the wrists.  The points at the bottom of the tunic were just worked in single crochet rows, decreasing one stitch per row to make them taper.
Now to make the doll look like a diddy-Becs... hair and facial features...  The hair was more time consuming, and took a lot more yarn than I thought it would do.  I used a gorgeous chocolate coloured cotton/bamboo mix, which is a little darker than my hair currently is, but is a very close match to a colour I had for a very long time.  I have a rather asymmetric hair cut, so at least I didn't have to get it to match perfectly on both sides.  The hair was made by cutting lengths of yarn, inserting a crochet hook through the stitches in the head, and pulling the folded yarn lengths through, and forming a little loop/knot to hold it in place.  The eyes, I have to give credit to a good friend for - she suggested I made eyes from beads, as I'm well known for my beading at work... I had been planning to embroider them, but beads was a much better idea.  The other thing I was told I had to include was a BIG smile... so out came the pink yarn!!



Any representation of me without jewellery would be completely wrong, so I made a little beaded necklace from an earth-tone bead soup that I have been waiting for inspiration to strike with... it went so well with the colours of this doll, it seemed perfect!!

I also wear glasses at work - this was going to put my wire-work skills to the test!  But I managed to make a pair that look relatively like my work glasses, although mine are black, and these are silver... I didn't have any black wire in my stash, but never mind!
So, this is me, with my Diddy-Becs... I just hope my manager likes her, and she reminds him of me, and all the cheeky, things I've said and done while he has been there.  But mostly, I just want her to make him smile!

Melding with the Mavens

Well, after several weeks of planning and around 30 hours of beading, I have finished my piece for the Maven Meld challenge.
And to show it off, I've finally got around to buying some proper jewellery display equipment!    Purchased from ebay, I bought a display bust in white leatherette, and a matching bracelet display rack.
So, here is my new bust, with the finished challenge piece for the Meld:

Showing the detail of the necklace:

Please do have a look at the other entries for the Bead Maven Challenge - on their blog, or their facebook page.


I'm very excited about the bangle rack though - as I love making bracelets, being able to show them off properly at last is great!

Melding more beads

A few weeks ago I started beading a piece for a challenge for Bead Mavens... the challenge was to 'meld' two or more tutorials written by the Mavens.  
I started off with Heather Collin's satellite beads, making them from black, teal and grey beads with sterling silver accents.

I beaded up three of these beautiful beads, the third (not shown) has silver bi-cones instead of rounds.  My plan was to then incorporate these beaded beads into Nancy Dale's Trellis Necklace.  This was where I got stuck - it was nothing to do with the tutorial (which is very well written and beautifully illustrated), and was entirely to do with getting my head around how I was going to get these two components to fit together!


This evening, I sat down in my studio with the determination to get a bit further on with my meld... thankfully, I managed it!!  After linking the first two of my satellite beads with a length of trellis rope, I took a picture...

The beaded bead on the left is going to be the focal point of the necklace, with its silver bi-cones and extra flashes of teal, it is bracketed by two slightly smoky looking faceted rondelles, the beaded bead on the right has smaller, haematite-coloured faceted rondelles on either side.  Encouraged by my progress, I carried on beading sections of trellis rope, and added the final beaded bead, and more faceted rondelles.

It doesn't show too well in these photos, but inside of the light grey AB trellis is a RAW rope made from matt black and teal 11/0 Tohos.  The trellis is made from 15/0 Miyuki seeds.  

I carried on beading as the sun went down (hence the shadows in the photo above) and added some further trellis sections.  


I'm actually really enjoying the way this is turning out... it is definitely a challenge though. Part way through beading this evening, I came up with an idea to make this into a long necklace (instead of a standard 18" one), which was going to be tremendously assymetric, with the beaded beads on one side, and bezelled agate rectangles on the other... it may still turn out that way, but as I only have two weeks to finish this before I head off to LaVidalerie for my holiday, time is of the essence!
Is anyone else out there Melding?  I'd love to hear about your progress if you are!

Beading up a Meld

Tonight I started work on a project for a challenge, a beading challenge, organised by the Bead Mavens.  It's called the Maven Meld, and the idea is to make a piece of jewellery based on two or more of the tutorials written by the Mavens (a group of top class beaders, who design the most beautiful beaded jewellery).
So, I've been giving this challenge a lot of thought... like, several weeks thought - which is quite unusually for me; normally I just start beading and see where the beads take me.  Basing some jewellery on two other people's tutorials is much more difficult than it first seemed!  Normally I never stick to patterns, and add a little twist of my own, but actually getting two patterns to meld seamlessly was really tough.  
I've decided to base my design on the Trellis Necklace by Nancy Dale, and the Satellite Bead by Heather Collin.  It's going to be like a Pandora-style piece, with three satellite beads on a trellis rope, all based on my favourite shades of green, and grey with silver thrown in for good measure.  I've made two of the satellite beads, the third is going to have different shaped silver beads, to make it stand out as the centre bead.  

I'm not sure what the plan for the trellis rope is, but it is going to involve the teal, the matt black, and its going to be accented with the light grey AB beads.

As it all comes together, I'll keep on posting...