Antique-look necklace, Tinsel Bracelet & Garden Flowers

I am getting to grips with the huge bag of beads I bought at the bead fair on Saturday - great fun! Some wire I ordered arrived yesterday and as usual they put in a brilliant 'freebie', some antique-look silver plated, so it looked just right to be matched with the
gorgeous Indian lampwork beads I got in a bargain bag, together with
a few clear seed beads. Very simple and it looks aged and like it has a
history! I also made a bracelet using a few bargain grey glass beads which
have a sort of tinsel inside - very pretty and unusual.

Necklace £16 + p&p
Bracelet £8 + p&p

And below just a few snaps of the flowers in my garden - it actually hasn't rained for over 24 hours and I could get out there with the camera. There is some real colour this year - at least the rain has made everything grow to it's full potential.

Noah's Ark Bag

I know it is raining, but honestly I bought this fabric before the floods started! This afternoon I finished the bag that has been cut out for a fortnight waiting to be sewn together. It is fairly voluminous with a circular base and gathered sides, yet when worn on the shoulder it falls into a narrow arc. It has a semi-circular pocket inside and closes with a pair of ties. Fully lined as well - makes a change for me to be so thorough! Not too sure what will happen to this - probably for the craft fair circuit. Anyone interested in buying it here - £10 + p&p

Tree Frog & Fiery Beads

Computers being computers, the pictures here have been uploaded in chronological order rather than the order I wanted them in, and me being so computer-illiterate, I can't sort them out....
Anyway, the above is the second necklace I made yesterday, using the rather spectacular bright red Indian lampwork beads which have foil inside strung on navy blue wire with little orange glass beads inbetween. The darkness of the wire really sets off the vivid red/gold of the beads. £16 + p&p
Here is my favourite of the day, possibly of the month. Ever since seeing these wonderful little porcelain frog beads I have wanted to make a necklace like this, and since getting the perfect glass leaf beads yesterday, it finally came into being. The large leaf is about 4 centimetres long, and the frog is about 1.5 centimetres. I have hung them on green wire with tiny pink and green glass flowers and dark green leaves which hopefully look like a trailing vine winding up one side of the necklace. Actually on the chain are 3 AB coated green glass beads, just for a little interest before the chain becomes simply wire. £25 + p&p

As is always the way, there were only three of the large leaf beads at the fair yesterday in an oddments basket, so no matter how much I like them, there will only be three necklaces incorporating them unless I can find more somewhere. Oh well, at least they will be a rarity!

Rained all night - thinking the next project might be using a few cubits of Gopher wood and involve gathering pairs of animals.........

Bountiful Beautiful Beads!

Guess where I have just been! This is just a little taster of my purchases today at the Bead'n'Gem fair at Farnham Maltings. Most of the stalls were semi-precious stone beads which were too expensive for my pocket as well as not really being to my taste. But amongst the rest of the stalls I found lots of bargains which I know will get used. The big bag of Indian lampwork beads cost me £2! I just cannot wait to get started, especially now I have such a choice of glass leaves which are crying out for some toucans....

Just as well I have plenty to keep me occupied - the thunder is starting up once again, and we have been warned more torrential rain is on the way. Bob is home as his workplace is a foot under water from yesterday's deluge - all those expensive, beautiful vintage cars up to their knees in stinking brown water. If the water level gets any higher, they are really in trouble!

Last Day of Term...

Hooray, that's the end of the school year, six weeks of holiday! I managed to make it through the day without tears - hard to do when you are saying goodbye to children you have been with for three years. Four of them I have been with for five years as I used to teach at their pre-school. The one thing that nearly finished me off however, was reading the above card from a little girl I have known and taught since she was two. How can anyone not get misty when a seven year old writes that about you all by herself! I shall miss them all, some definitely more than others...

More Sea Glass + 3 More Days To Go.....

I spent half of yesterday making hand-made 'good luck' cards for the class I work in - 28 of them! It seemed a good idea when buying the materials in the shop but by the time I had completed 14 of them, plus forgotten one child and had to sit for twenty minutes listing them all and racking my brains to see who I had missed, it began to get tedious! Then I discovered I hadn't got enough card bases as one pack was missing one and I had picked up two packs with less than the others because they were pearlised - aaagh! Luckily I had some little card bases hidden away in my desk from something else and just managed to completed the 28.

I have also finished the teachers' presents - my daughter goes to special school so instead of one or two gifts, I have to come up with six!

So after all that, I could get down to making something a bit more interesting. I have received the wonderful toucan and tree-frog beads, but need to think a bit more about how to incorporate them into a necklace. Instead I used up my final large piece of sea glass and the last of the silver wire to make the above. It is very cool looking - temperature, not attitude - and I am very pleased with the shape of the main pendant and how it has just taken the wire perfectly. This will be £16 + p&p

And finally....three more days to go. Not that I will be free over the weekend as there is a bead fair on Saturday and we plan to hit the Artist and Illustrators's Show on Sunday, but at least they are fun things to do as opposed to work!

Black & Grey Set

Well, I finally had some time in which to get some creative work done yesterday. I spent the afternoon painting and it was so very good to be able to get back to it after so long. I am in the middle of a portrait of a saluki and it is coming along extremely well - sometimes a painting seems to have a life of it's own and you as an artist are just the conduit through which it flows on to the paper. This is one of those pictures - hopefully I should have it finished by the end of the week.

The above is a simple set consisting of a very long string of mixed black and grey wooden beads, pearls and grey seed beads on steel coloured wire, with a silver starfish pendant. The matching bracelet is two strands of the same beads and pearls. Very classy and quite effective worn over a simple shirt or top.

£20 the set, £15 for the necklace, £5 for the bracelet + p&p