Stash busting, pearly dreams and festivals

Well, after a rather swift accumulation of Swarovski and shell pearls for pieces I will be creating for the craft fair I'm appearing at in July, I felt that I needed a good dose of stash busting (especially as I haven't been let off the norty step by my fellow beaders at Operation Tackle That Bead Stash for months!).
But what could I do? What could I make?

A few magazines and websites later, I decided to have a go at a piece of Cubic Right Angled Weave (CRAW). I must admit, I love the straight forward RAW, but had been a bit apprehensive about trying CRAW, especially as a lot of the written instructions I found a tad confusing. Then I saw a wonderful video how-to on beadmavens.blogspot.co.uk that was straight -forward and easy to use (go to beadmavens then look up the post from 9th September 2011).

My Mum was going to a wedding reception, and had a beautiful dress which obviously needed a new and beautiful necklace to go with it! Approximately 30g of size 8 seed beads later, a gorgeous rope had been created! The addition of a couple of little swags and a small slab of blue opal which I designed to simply fill the "V" in the neckline of aforementioned dress. I haven't taken enough photos of the full piece yet, but these will be up here very soon!!

Festival fashion has been thoroughly on my designing brain this month, and some beautiful and colourful clothes and jewellery have been released in time for the festival season. I'm no exception; again using my stash of dyed shell-strands, neon swarovski pearls and a beautiful strand of orange dyed shell pearl.

If you want to see a sneak peek, go to either etsy.com/shop/uk/bubblyduckbeads or my new facebook page facebook.com/bubblyduckbeads

back blogging and beading!!

The reason I disappeared off the bloggersphere for a few weeks was because of family parties, holidays and fancy-dress costume-making. I did pop into The Beadshop Liverpool for a bit of beady respite, but didn't have time to blog-until now.

So, what have I been doing??

Well, I've been experimenting with superduo beads making a heart design to accompany one of the aforementioned costumes, making pieces to enter into blog competitions over at The bead shop Liverpool and Operation Tackle that Bead Stash. Due to lack of time, I didn't get a chance to enter OTTBS...

I wandered down to The Beadshop today to spend the afternoon beading preparing for September's monthly competition http://www.thebeadshopliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/indian-summer-monthly-challenge.html I have so many ideas running through my head for this, I have decided to make almost all of them, before deciding which one to enter!
Vicky had a new delivery of beautiful seed beads which were sprawled all over the table as I walked in! I bought a few new size 15's in luminous colours, extra needles (word to the wise - you can NEVER have too many needles) and put aside a cabochon for my foray into bead embroidery!

I'll add all the pictures I took today in another post, as they're on my phone, and this post is from my PC!! In the meantime, I'll leave you with my design for the Fairytale theme blog competition in August http://www.thebeadshopliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/2013_08_01_archive.html

New beading stitch!

ItOoh ooh ooh! Looky looky! A brand new stitch! I learned this at my usual place (the bead shop Liverpool) today. I love it there so much I just booked myself on the class without checking what we were making! Hee Hee! Anyway, it was a lovely surprise to find that it was Basic Netting weave. It's so beautiful! 

It's made with size 11 seed beads and Swarovski crystals in 4mm. 

Now, I need an excuse to go out and wear it!

Until next time 

Happy Beading!