Mummy's Makes: Earrings Galore!

Mummy has been on a bit of an earring frenzy recently.  We wanted some cheaper, smaller items available in our Etsy shop because we both felt that we want to be more accessible to all purse sizes.  No matter what price we sell things for though, only sterling silver or gold fill ear hooks will suffice because who wants earrings that turn your ears green or itch like crazy by the end of the day?!

I had some Swarovski Heliotrope rivolis left over from my Necklace & Earrings Set so I gave them to Mummy and she concocted these gorgeously simple earrings adapting Jean Power's 3D Geometric Triangles to bezel the rivolis using silver duracoat seed beads!  Gorgeous!

These are some simple 14mm Swarovski emerald rivolis simply bezelled (again using silver duracoat seed beads), to let that rich green sing.

She also made a pair using gold seed beads and those delightful green AB 15s to add some interest to the rivolis.

Some gorgeous 16mm Swarovski Heliotrope rivolis simply bezelled using gunmetal seed beads.  I honestly can't believe the difference between these and the first ones in this post.  The heliotrope is really darkened and more indigo, whereas the ones at the top seem much more purple.

These cute little earrings were made using Swarovski Cosmic Squares in Crystal and some Swarovski pearls.  I love them and may have something similar for my wedding in October!

Again, Swarovski Cosmic Squares in Crystal but the Aqua AB delicas look almost denim coloured in daylight and make these earrings seem much more 'everyday war'.  I really love these for their chic simplicity.

A simplified version of her Crystal Triangle Earrings, I love these for the addition of the 2AB bicones at the corners of the triangles.  

And then finally this bad boy!  Rather than make a pendant for a necklace, Mummy decided that this Swarovski Golden Shadow stepped rectangle would make a perfect medal style brooch/lapel pin.  Of all the items she has made recently, I love this the most.  It is so unusual and so stylish that I almost wished I wore suits to work so I could make me one of these!

All of the above are available in our etsy shop.

Golden lariat

So I've clearly not been around much over the past month.  I've been quite busy and haven't been able to bead as much as I'd like, mainly because I had to go into hospital to have two of my wisdom teeth out.  Quite frankly the break was lovely and it was absolutely delicious to have a few hours of down time in the hospital!  Luckily they did it as a day patient and under general anaesthetic so I mainly spent the morning reading a book and chilling out and then the afternoon asleep!  Hurrah!  Mummy was an absolute star and looked after Xander, but because I was quite pants and sleepy afterwards, he was a little unsettled - autistic kids and their rigid routines eh?!  Daddy also bought me ice cream and that was fantastic! 

Anyways, I recently had a commission from a lady at Mummy's work to make a long lariat in gold  That's the only brief I had - that it was a lariat and that it was gold!  I immediately thought of Gustav Klimt and his skilled use of gold, especially in his portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer and the Tree Of Life (which incidentally, I have a print of in my hallway!).  I knew that there was no way I could replicate his panache in a lariat so I decided to go back to the basics and try and use his mosaic aspect of different hues of gold.

This is the result:

In this close-up you can see how many shades of gold I used.  I think I must have used pretty much every hue and finish of gold seed bead there is!

And at the bottom of the lariat, to give it some weight, I used lots of gold and amber glass beads with some goldstone thrown in as well to give it some sparkle.

Unfortunately, I'm not a major fan of gold.  I don't really know why but it just doesn't feel as comfortable for me.  I much prefer the coolness and understatement of silvers and steels, gold just feels too blingy to me!  So there you have it, not my favourite piece by a long way but I understand the lady who wanted it was thrilled to bits with it.

Mummy's Medallion

Another of Mummy's pieces for this post!

A few months ago, Mummy and I decided to take a bit of a road trip up to The Bead Shop in Nottingham.  I needed some of the 27mm Swarovski rivolis and a couple of cosmic squares for my beading lesson and couldn't wait for the postage, Mummy wanted some drop beads to make Ayshe by the fabulous Sabine Lippert, so I took a day off work and we drove up together.  

I picked up what I needed and Mummy picked up the drop beads that she needed.  Unfortunately they were Indian drops so weren't quite uniform or perfect enough for the Ayshe pattern, which was a shame.  However, on went her Thinking Cap and she came up with this design:

I love how it makes me think of a Bollywood Saturday Night Fever!  The colours are fab and it really looks superb on. 

 Here you can see that Mummy used a bail thought up by the ever-fabulous Jean Power, and see that the herringbone rope is chequered.

And here you can see how Mummy beaded the pendant.  Goodness knows what her bead path is in this (in fact I'm not even sure Mummy knows!) but this little blighter is very sturdy and really holds it's shape as well as staying perfectly disc-like.  Very talented Mummy!

Showcasing Mummy's Work

As you've seen, I mainly seem to do big and bold beadwork.  My Mum, however, is a much more delicate beader.  Her work has a timeless elegance and a grace that I simply cannot emulate - no matter how hard I try!  I thought that in this post I would showcase some of her work so that you can see how different it is to mine.  Her choice of pattern, her palette and the style is ephemeral and daintily beautiful.  We are complete opposites in our beadwork and I adore pretty much everything she does.

This piece was from a pattern (unfortunately I can't remember where she found it) and I love how she used a creamy seed bead with that warm amber colour as the accent.  It's delicate and lacy and just so elegant.

This was another piece that she made from a pattern, and even though she's done it in haematite and black glass, she still makes it look so delicate and feminine.  This necklace looks blooming gorgeous whenever it's worn!

A choker this time, in a modified Right Angle Weave.  I'd have been tempted to do this in all black but she conjures up the Renaissance with her colour choices.

This was her first ever cabouchon!  How unbelievably neat is that?!  She thought the delicacy of the rose quartz would be lost on a beaded rope so instead she found some pale pink organza ribbon that matched the cabouchon perfectly and used that instead.  It tied at the back in a large floppy bow and is ultra femme.  

This was made from a pattern from The Bead Shop kit that she bought a few years ago.  The beads that came with it were much more vibrant but she loved how the pattern flowed so she made it in silver and amethyst.  It looks so delicate but is actually pretty robust! 

Mummy's very lucky in that she can go from being uber glam to being right in there with block colours and chunky cuffs!  This was a pattern in one of the beading magazines we buy (either Beadwork or Bead & Button) and she absolutely adored it as soon as she saw it.  The closure on the original pattern was with Margaritas but she wanted to echo the Art Deco drama so used gunmetal cubes for the closure instead.  Personally I think this works better than the original pattern!

And then we go right back to old school Victorian beadweaving.  She's a bloody marvel!  I love this pattern so much because it sits at the base of the throat, collar length, and really makes you feel like a princess when you wear it!

This is another of her cuffs made using elements from Jean Power's Freeform Cuffs and then framing the beads.  I love how subtle her colours are and how they blend and complement so perfectly.  Her refined use of colour is what I am most jealous of.

And then once in a while she will make a real show stopper like this Gothic Reticule.  We are lucky that in Leicester we have a huge selection of fabric shops and The Golden Mile, which is host to not only the most beautiful and ornate jewellery shops, but also a delicious array of Indian fabric shops selling the most exquisite silks and saree material.  Together we trotted off down there to gasp at the opulence and she bought this fine silk fabric with which to line the reticule.  

And then she made a bridal one in a slightly different pattern.  Unfortunately this picture doesn't even begin to to do this reticule justice, nor does it show the detail of the tiny brick stitched hearts around the top. 

Finally, Mummy at her most simple.  A plain peyote tube hung with haematite arrows and slid onto a neck wire.  Gorgeous. 

So there you have it.  This is all the work of my fabulous Mummy.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I always do.  We are polar opposites - I think that just adds more depth and fun to our beading adventures in that we can look at the same component and dream up completely different ways and styles to use it!

What To Do With All Those Leftovers: Bead Soup

Over the years I have become very lazy when I finish a project and usually end up putting all the leftover beads in a little bag and then just leave them in my drawer of randomness!  I know I should sort them all out and get the beads back in their original boxes but that just seems so dreary when my head is already full of the next project!

So I decided that I would start working my way through these small bags of 'bead soup' and see what kind of things I could make to use them up - I can't extol the virtues of bead soup projects enough! 

These two necklaces were my first attempt at getting rid of those bead soup bags.  I started with a peyote base of random seed beads and just kept on embellishing until I couldn't fit a single bead more on there.  I like the brown and green one more than the silver/red/black one but they both helped use up those pesky leftover beads.

This one was another bead soup leftover bag but just in red.  I decided to make a simple Potowatomi chain in red seed beads and then embellished the toggle and loop clasp so that it would hang at the front.  All the fizz helped disguise the clasp and used up some pretty ugly beads at the same time!

 This one was a slightly different kind of leftovers necklace, in fact these seed beads were left over from the necklace at the very top of this page!  I threaded a few beads on jump rings and then linked the jump rings to each other to make a cascade.  It's not something I'll ever do again though because opening and closing all those blooming jump rings hurt my thumbs!  I now have a huge respect for people who can sit and make chainmaille!

 This was a small bag of shell spacer beads that Mum had left over.  She thought they looked like Nestle's Smarties so made a simple peyote band with a picot edging and randomly added the shell beads.  Gorgeous isn't it?

 Another leftover soup necklace.  I don't often use gold in my beading but was bought a load of gold and brown beads.  My sister had this and said she wore it out with a posh evening frock and it looked fabulous.

 Then I had a few more of the golds and browns left so I gave them to Mummy and she made a cuff. 

 This cuff was an experiment that went horribly wrong!  There is nothing I like about this cuff at all!  The bead soup didn't do justice to the amazing focal bead so it didn't last long - it was cut up and the beads were put back in a bead soup bag for another day.  I include it only to show that not every bead soup project works!

 These three cuffs are all made on the same theme - plain silver peyote base with a picot edge to complement the larger beads in the embellishment - perfect for when you don't have a huge amount of bead soup left!

 Another red embellished cuff.

And finally, possibly my favourite of all my bead soup necklaces.  This one was given to my Nanna, along with some matching but not the same earrings (of which I didn't take a photo).  I love the bright purples with the deeper, richer iris beads and then every so often seeing a silver sparkle crystal poke out.  The movement of this piece and the jumble of beads makes me laugh every time I see it because it really does force you to look at it and then follow the beads all the way round.  It's a very chipper necklace and I know that Nanna wears it often.