Oops. I did it again. I left the blog blog less for over a year.

So much has happened over the last couple of years. Our tiny grandson has become a terrific 3 1/2 year old, and we had an addition to our family. Our precious grandaughter who is already a year old.

Both are adorable. We have just purchased a motor home, so we hope to be able to take the kids on mini adventures over the coming months too.

On the bead front, I have discovered some very talented local artists who I have started to buy from, and my collection of beads and focal pieces just gets bigger and bigger. Stephanie Dieleman is one of these local artists. She makes beautiful lampwork beads, such as this one, which I kept simple, adding a gold coloured chain.

Elsie Smith is another local Artist. She makes polymer clay focals that are out of this world. I have quite the collection. Here's a piece I made with one of her beautiful creations

I, of course, continue to buy beauties by Lorraine Dowdle and Natalie Fletcher of Peruzi, and attempt to work my magic on these. Here's one of my latest pieces using Lorraines lampwork beads

And a piece using one of Natalie clay beauties. 

And of course I still make jewellery that use only seedbeads with crystals, pearls or fire polished beads. Here are a few of my latest that I love. 

I think that's enough for now.  We are heading out now to pick our grandson up for a 2 night sleep over :-)

Beading Inspirations challenge, July/August 2015

So, I didn't blog again. I have been enjoying lots of beading, creating some fine designer pieces which I will share with you later. But for now I wanted to share a free tutorial with you, by Jeanne Evans. Jeanne was kind enough to allow this tutorial to be used in a challenge to give people inspiration, in a group on Facebook that I am one of the admins for. I asked members if they would like to share a free tutorial that uses not too many bead types, that beginners and advanced beaders could use. Here is what Jeanne shared.

 

 

Welcome to my Lil Grandson, and to my new venture in Bead Embroidery

Oh Lord, its over a year since I last blogged. A lot has happened in that year. In July 2014, my gorgeous little Grandson was born. My little Landyn is now a few day of being 9 months old, and is a little star. He speed crawls everywhere, and is almost always smiling or laughing. His Grandad adores him, and he adores his Grandad - just this week they spent many hours pulling faces at each other - it was hilarious to watch. Landyn has made a huge difference in my life, and each time he goes home I cannot wait for his next visit.

On the bead front, I decided that I wanted to try something new. I attempted bead embroidery, and to date have made three pieces, 2 of them quite large and pretty spectacular for beginning attempts. I decided to challenge myself to make a piece a month for this year, and I did make Jan, Feb and March, but when I began April's, I forgot that I was going to bead embroider, and began bezelling the piece I chose, so it ended up a beautiful piece, but not bead embroidered. Unless I manage to do something in he next few days for April, I will have to forget a month and pick up my challenge in may.

I will finish todays post by showing you a few of my favourite pieces from last year, and although I am going to make no promises to keep this blog up to day, I am going to try.

Here is my entry for the Freeform Peyote Stitch Bloghop Challenge. Its my second freeform peyote piece, and it was only when it was finished that I realised it isnt really all that freeform at all. Its almost a traditional peyote stitched bracelet with embellishments, but I love it anyway, and its a learning process.

This is a follow on from the green piece, named 'Spring Green' in my previous post, and keeping in the seasons theme, I have called this one 'Summer Fun'. It shows the sea, glistening with 4mm bicones, there is a starfish just at the waters edge, and the sun shines in the sky, a faceted glass bead, with rays of bugle beads. This was fun to make, and now I have to follow up with fall and winter freeform pieces :-) Hope you like it.
Here is a list of all other entries to visit.
Mandi Ainsworth
Karen Williams
Bobbie Rafferty
Sarah Meadows
Katherine Gale
Leanne Kirsch
Jean Hutter
Nancy Dale
Judy Riley
Natasha Wiegelman
Pam Chesbro
Stephanie Woods
Romana Tschunko
Mary Harding
Melody Marie Murray
Shirley Moore
Marj
Sally Russick
Therese Frank
Tanya Goodwin
Christine Altmiller
Lea Paličková
Ivona Šuchmannová
Jennifer Chasalow
VanBenschoten
Tammy Bowman 
Lori Callahan
Tami Norris
SaraBeth Cullinan
Julie Schmidt Bowen
Bette Greenfield
Kay Haynes
Alisa Lehman
Tammi Clapper

I have started to try freeform Peyote stitch. To date I have made 2 bracelets, the first seemed to be a great success via facebook, in that it got lots of positive comments, and spurred me on to do another. The second, you will have to wait to see, its going to be revealed on 23rd of this month, as part of a challenge I decided to partake in. Heres the first, I call it 'Spring Green' since it is green and reminds me of spring. The next one is 'Summer Fun' but thats the one you have to wait to see. Call me a tease if you like LOL

My personal challenge for 2013 is to make at least one piece of jewellery each month, in that months birthstone.

January saw the start of this challenge with the Garnet. I made 2 necklaces, with garnet chips and ruby garnet 6mm rounds.

The first has silver plated bead caps, and a silver plated clasp, is a simple strung necklace, with 3 sets of 3 beads strung in between garmet chips.

The second features a pretty and complimenting lampwork bead made by one of my favourite artistes, Lorraine Dowdle. It has sterling silver bead caps either side of it, and is strung between garnet rounds and chips. This portion of the necklace was then added to some sterling silver chain. Its pretty cute in my own opinion

Here is a picture of the rest of my bracelets from my Bracelets for a Year challenge of 2012. I got waylaid with various things in life, and kept forgetting to post here. This year I am going to do y best to post and keep this blog up to date. I have become a member of a couple of beading/jewellery making blogs on Facebook, and have not only set my own challenge there, but have become a member of a couple different challenges too. Watch this space for those