bag blag blog

I am continuing to make bag progress, it is just a bit slower than I'd like! After a meal out on Friday night with the work colleagues I had a rich food induced, vivid dream of the completed bag, but alas, when I woke the bead elves (if such exist) had not done the work for me (boo!) I am happy with this bit I have done though, and slow and steady is probably better since I'm designing as I go.

Here is a picture of the work on the bag to give you an idea of the placement. What do you think? Too much? Too little? I know there is a large area to fill so I am fighting the urge to cover the whole thing with big blingy elements!

A bit  of a close-up:

Then I thought I'd divert myself with working the beaded ring for the handle/bag junction. I had a look at various beaded bead type designs including Nikia Angel's sparkly wheel, but decided to use this:

It is the Scheherezade Pendant from Sabine Lippert's Beaded Fantasies book, and was surprisingly quick to make: circular RAW in increasing bead sizes zipped into a donut shape then reinforced with netting. I'm pleased with my colours and will probably make another for a necklace if I can buy the metallic finish 4mm again (don't you hate when you get to the bottom of a pack of beads you know you haven't seen on sale anywhere lately?) If anyone has seen any, do let me know where they can be found!

 





Post-Christmas beading

I hope the Seasonal festivities left you rejuvenated and ready to go in 2012!

Once the preparation was all out of the way, I enjoyed seeing family and friends, and apart from a heavy cold (me) everyone seemed fit and healthy. Before Christmas, most of my beading was intended for presents with the exception of the Dragonfly necklace. I stocked up on some bead goodies in order to use the break productively. As I had to clear my beading table this meant smaller projects which could easily be contained in a case, and worked on without a large table surface.

My first project was Debbie van Tonder's Seahorse chart from her Etsy shop which requires only three colours of delica beads and is worked in even count 2-drop peyote. It was great fun to do even though charted designs are not my usual choice. I finished it with a Sterling silver sliding clasp:

My next project was a kit I ordered online on the 21st December and received the next day, perfect timing! The kit is from Heatherworks and is a little dimensional piece in the form of an owl. I thought the kit was well presented and the instruction booklet was pretty good too.

I think you might struggle a little if you were not familiar with all the stitches (peyote, netting, herringbone, RAW, and Albion) and working at this small scale can be quite tricky once the owl takes shape. My only real quibble is that the instructions for the eyes ask for an initial round of 11 silver beads in size 11, which were not supplied in the green colourway. I substituted the size 15 silver, but then had to alter the stitch counts to fit the central pearl. The outer round is to be 16 size 11 beads so several increases are required. I ended up swapping the pearls for slightly larger ones, making the inner round 14 beads and increasing twice, though perhaps an initial round of 16 size 15 followed by 16 size 11 would have been easier. I might experiment with this... The diagrams for the head show an initial round of 8 beads rather than the 4 stated in the written instructions (I followed the written version). Here is the work in progress:

The Owl is stuffed with wool, and once assembled is about 5cm tall:

 How cute is that? I will probably gift it to my Mum, as she loves owls!

Overall I am really happy with my Post-Christmas projects, thanks to these rather fabulous designs from Debbie and Heather