My Mum's wedding necklace.

Feeling brave enough now to take my skills to another level,

My parents married in 1945, I do have photographs somewhere of their wedding, and in the photos you can just about see the lovely necklace mum wore.

When we cleared the house after our dad died in 1979, we found this old Sharps Toffee tin, inside the tin, was the sad poor broken remains of mum's wedding necklace,

my next project, I'm finally feeling confident enough with my beading skills to try and bring this lovely necklace back to it's former glory. I am really excited about this, to bring it back to as close to it originally was on their wedding day....

The necklace is approximately 20 inches long, and has 24 beaded strands of the teeniest tiniest white glass beads I have ever seen. ....... the strands then platted and topped with silver bead caps and large white round beads.

The 5p coin is to help give you some idea of just how weeeeeeeny little the beads are.

My mission........ to rethread and reassemble the whole kit-n-caboodle,

I'm Back :)

It's taken me a long time (3 years in fact) but I'm going to try and get back into keeping my blog updated with some of the stuff I've been up to (beady speaking)

So here are a few bits I've made for friends and/or just for fun:-

Chunky black glass beads with matching earrings
Commissioned for a friend.
£25 (Sold)

Slightly more demure black beads/silver pendant necklace
Made for a Christmas present to my Sister.

Red aventurine and clear crystal beads necklace, gold plated heart shaped magnetic clasp.

Another pressie :)

4 into 1 Bronze necklace

Unusual black & bronzed multifaceted 10mm beads, united with 4 strands of black, purple and gold lined rocailles make this a fabulously versatile necklace.

Fastened with a gold plated lobster claw clasp, with added gold coloured extension chain.

Length: approx 19" (49cm)

plus extension 2.5" (60mm)

You can find this item for sale in my new shop,

on line at Folksy.com
>>>>>> : BEI BRANELLI <<<<<<

3 into 1 amber glass beaded necklace

Bold and brilliantly clear amber coloured glass multi-faceted 13mm beads, unite beautifully with 3 strands of peach coloured copper lined tiny 5mm drops.

Finished with a gold plated toggle clasp.

Length: approx 19" (48cm)
 
 
You can find this item for sale in my on line shop at Folksy.com
>>>> Bei Branelli  <<<<<

Gold Blend

Kids christmas

Got this as a link from 'Scrapbook.com'
cute little kids talking about christmas
http://scrapbook.com/videos/371.html

Christmas Crystal baubles earrings

A friend at work asked me if I could make her something 'Christmassy' well I didn't want to be too obvious and make Santa, or snowmen, so found instructions for these crystal baubles which were just the nice size to fit onto ear wires,

If she doesn't want them I guess I'll just have to pretend I have some of the Christmas spirit and wear them myself lol

My Dreamcatcher

Well I finally managed to complete something,

Here at last is my version of the dream catcher,,,

It's not totally finished, as I do not have any leather or suede srips to wrap around the hoop, but apart from that, it's pretty faithful to the original instructions.

As I am very new to beading and beading techniques, I do hope that seeing my efforts might give a few others a little inspiration to have a try at making one.

The hoop is actually a find from a macramé supplies website, it's a plastic shopping bag handle, and was just the right size for this project.

It took lots of patience on my part to do the beading on this, because of my useless eyesight, trying to thread the very fiddly little rocailles needed, but it helped sooo much when I 'discovered' a pack of 'big eye needles', wow do they make a difference.

If you've never tried them, you have got to give them a go,

For those who have never heard of them, they are literally just as the name says, the whole length of the needle is just one 'big eye', it's wonderfully bendy, really tough, and allows you to thread the tiniest of beads.... as you can see....

Happy crafting everyone.

Post your Challenge creations here

'Passion for Beads' very first challenge

Make a pair of earrings, and Post a picture of your creation here, I'll do a poll for peeps to vote for their favourite.

The winner will be sent the kits for one pair of each of the earrings in my very first range.

Closing date is 15th December. I shall add the voting link on Tuesday 16th December.

Colour variations on theme

Same design for each of the six different colours

Just had a little play with my 'chocolate box' of beads and tried out a pair of earrings with the magenta coloured Czech glass beads, and I was so pleased with it (modest little soul that I am!!) I decided to see what the other colours would look like in the same design, I think they've worked reasonably well.

The scan has made the colours a little less bright than they are in real life, but I hope you 'get the picture'

I used 8mm Czech Glass beads, with Tibetan silver bead caps, and that's all, threaded onto silver head pins and attached to the earring wires.

Once I got the initial design put together it took me approx 11/2 hours to make all 6 pairs,

They were so simple and easy to make I might make these into kits for peeps to have a go at if I ever get to do any beading parties.

'Let's Twist Again' #1

Here is a picture of the gorgeous blue/black AB glass spiral beads that gave me the inspiration for my 'Jukebox Jewellery' range of beady stuff.

So here it is folks,

the very first piece for my

'Jukebox Jewellery'..

'Let's Twist Again' #1

It was a pack of the gorgeous black AB glass spiral beads on this pendant that gave me inspiration for this range,
(well okay there's only the one piece at the mo. so probably can't be classed as a 'range' just yet!!, but 'acorns and oak trees'. if you know what I mean).

The spiral bead is threaded onto a silver head pin and topped with a blue silver lined glass bugle bead just to give it a bit more depth..which now forms the pendant

That's attached to a Tibetan silver bail bead which I've threaded onto 2mm black waxed cotton cord, then held in place with a surgeon's knot at each side,
I continued with surgeon's knots at either side of the other beads to hold those in place and to create spaces between them along the length of the cord.

I didn't want to add too much other beading as I didn't want to detract from the spiral pendant.

The other beads are:

Tibetan silver twisted tubes,

pearly Ivory round glass,

and black AB square glass.

I haven't finished off the cord ends permanently yet because I still need to decide on the final length to get the right 'balance'

Any way I hope you like it, and that you might now start to see how my 'Jukebox Jewellery' is going to pan out.

Happy beading every one.