Ombré flower

This pendant got started "backwards" because I had forgotten to sew on one of the leaves for Nadine's palm in my last embroidery piece. Then I found I just had about enough of those green beads left for one more leaf, so I beaded that, and only then I started thinking about a main design to go with those leaves.
I had a small flower in mind, but as you can see once again my mind and Mabel (my imaginary muse) didn't agree and as usual Mabel won.

I pulled three colors from my drawer for an ombré design. The red is one of my regular stock-ups because I love the color, the other two were in one of my surprise orders.
Sometimes the bead tubes in those orders are full, sometimes they are leftovers, so I didn't have much of the salmon color and therefore didn't know how many petals I would be able to make. I honestly didn't think it would be enough for the fifth one and had already made plans how to deal with that. It was pretty close in the end, I had about ten beads left when I finished!

After the petals were attached to each other, the hole in the center was next.
The last time I made a flower with brick stitch petals, I had filled the center with beads in the round, but this time I went for loads of stamina in yellow and gold on a bead foundation instead.
Then I sewed on the leaves and beaded a golden bail and voilà!
Some time ago I got some black satin ropes and spontaneously added a few pink ones although I didn't know if I would ever use those, but isn't it perfect for my flower?

Silk shading flower

Silk shading, thread painting, needle painting - these are all different names for one embroidery technique.
I had seen it more than once before and thought it was really beautiful, but it had never been on my want list.
When I decided I really wanted to give embroidery a try, it was because I had totally been hooked by gorgeous goldwork which is probably not too surprising for a jewelry maker.
I had no high expectations about my own skills, so it took me very long to jump into the cold water, but I finally ordered my favorite kit by Becky Hogg - the little fox (if you haven't seen the blog post, it's here). It sure challenged me and even more my hands, but much to my own surprise it didn't put me off embroidering.
Actually I had just ordered the kit and already knew I would treat myself to the self-paced online course "Introduction to Goldwork" offered by the Royal School of Needlework eventually and bookmarked it, but when I was ready to purchase it, it was not available due to supply shortage and I had to pick another course.
There are 16 courses and I really had a hard time choosing one that I felt confident enough about. In the end I chose silk shading, which I wasn't confident about at all, because I liked the design best (although I was aware I might not like the look of mine that much).

Next I got myself a free-hand embroidery stand and some bias band to bind my hoop.
When the RSN parcel arrived, however, I was very reluctant about starting the kit. I had watched the first video a few times already and had even started to do some sampling for practice. The kit looked so much more intidimating to me, though. What had I been thinking?

It took me two months to complete this project. Seven weeks were dedicated to three petals and the leaf - I needed a lot of long breaks - and in the last week I had become more comfortable with the process and finished the last five petals, the stem and center.

I learned a few things during it, not all of them embroidery technique related.

1. While Gundel is usually fine to watch from afar, der Dekan is determined to get to the embroidery floss and he would gladly try to grab the thread I'm working with at the moment and pull (don't ask how I know). Thankfully he calmed down eventually and after discussing his wishes and mine whenever I started a session ("No! No! You can't have it, Dekan. Don't even think about ... Dekan, go away, I'm holding a needle! Stop that! You don't want to go the vet, do you?"), he usually was distracted by a snack and then went to wreak havoc elsewhere or take a nap.

2. I have absolutely no mind for directions and although I absolutely understood the stitch and color diagrams in theory, I had problems to translate that to my stitching. To be honest, I think it has a lot to do with my being so used to working without a plan (except in bead looming) and follow my guts rather than my head. Which wasn't bad for most of it, but I didn't like my second petal much, and to save the look I made the last petal bigger than designed before then ripping out the unloved petal after all.
Actually I'm fine with that, but it's also typical for me - drawing outside the lines ;-)

3. I like finishing embroidery, but I still haven't put up my fox and I'm completely clueless how to frame the flower.

4. I'm as hard on my embroidery needles as on my beading needles.

5. "You're gonna need a bigger boat ... erm, embroidery hoop." Actually I'm going to need more hoop sizes, I think, but I'm trying not to go nuts now and buy supplies like crazy, as tempting as that thought is, also ...

5.1. ... I hate Brexit because so many of the supplies are much more readily available in the UK, but custom fees and taxes add up quite quickly. Yes, it is a very selfish reason.

6. Bullion knots and I are not good friends yet, but I love French knots, both seeing and stitching them, in fact that was one of the first stitches I consciously noticed when seeing embroidery pieces.

6. I really loved the self-paced course. I watched the videos in full more than once and sometimes I just went to a spot to remind me of something. Kate Barlow is a wonderful tutor who explains and shows everything very clearly.
I often say I'm not good with tutorials as I'm too impatient and that's true, so it was a bit of a surprise for me that I pulled this through and I also credit Kate's tutoring for that.

There is probably more, but you have suffered enough already, so I'm finally going to show you my flower and not point out the flaws because I'm really happy with it!

Waiting for spring

At first I was completely without a plan when reading that the inspiration for our first challenge at JAC this year were daffodils.
I didn't even think I had yellow seed beads, but found two different tones in my box, much to my surprise, so that excuse was gone.
My beaded pin is just a little something, but it made me think of spring which fit the challenge theme "Yearning for spring".

Tackle that stash - Fairy flower

It's so late already that I honestly didn't think I would make it today.
Just for fun I grabbed some wire and a lampwork bead and started looking for my 1.4 mm crochet hook. I have no idea how that had ended up in the waste paper basket, but I'm sure glad I found it. I hope my beloved 1.65 mm hook that has disappeared didn't take the same way at a former point in time.

I'll make this short. My first effort went into the basket my crochet hook had just found its way out of and the lampwork bead wandered back into the drawer.
I started over planning to make a wire knit ring. As you can tell, that did not quite happen. Instead the flower that started taking shape called for a different lampwork bead, a bigger one, and decided to be a pendant reminding of a sweet pea (I always loved sweet peas) ... or maybe a fairy flower after all?

Bead and wire crochet flower - a little tutorial

Be gentle with me. I haven't done any kind of tutorial before, and I thought I'd try it with something small first. What I learned from this is that I need more hands (or a helper who can deal with my moods ;-)), better weather - I made this in my light tent and had a bit of a space problem - less distraction and maybe more patience. I hate to put something down to take a picture, that's something I seriously need to work on.

What you need to make this cute little flower:
Round nose pliers
Cutter
Copper wire 28 gauge of any color you like
7 beads - it doesn't really matter what kind or size you use, they can even all be the same. I like to use one large bead and 6 smaller ones, in this case it's riverstone and jasper. Not even the shape of the center bead matters much once you have some practice, it can be oval for example. If your center bead is very large, you might need more of the beads for the petals to avoid big gaps
A crochet hook - again you can use different sizes as long as the hook is not too big. My favorite one is a 1.65 mm at the moment, but I have used anything from 1.3 to 2.1 mm.

Which stitches you should know:
Slip knot, chain and single (double if you are in the UK) crochet stitch

1. First of all you need to put the beads on the wire, first the small ones, then the large one because this is the one you'll start working with.

2. Make a slip knot and tighten this knot around your crochet hook by tugging on both ends of the wire. Don't make it too tight as you'll pull one of the loops open again.
Leave a tail of wire long enough to go back and forth through your center bead a few times later on.

3. You can see that one loop is tightened, that's the little knot on the bottom. The second loop is big enough to go the whole length of the bead, it will be the foundation on which we put the "petals". Add a chain stitch as small as possible. If you don't add this, you won't be able to crochet the petal beads onto the loop, but you also don't want it to stand out too much.

4. The next step is to add the smaller beads with single crochet stitches. Slide your bead next to your last stitch, pull some wire through the loop wire. Then grab the working wire with your hook and pull it through both loops. Try to keep your wire tight on the same spot of your crochet hook to achieve regular stitches.

5. Once you got three stitches with beads on one side of the loop, turn it around and add three more on the other side. Cut your working wire, pull it all the way through the last stitch and tighten it.

6. As you can see, this flower is not looking very symmetrical yet, the bead holes look in different directions, and the petals look kind of loose. You can bend it in shape, you can add single crochet stitches to make them sit on a base or you can deal with that later ... as we will.

7. Cut your wire and leave a tail long enough to go one or two rounds through all of the petal beads.

8. Pull one of the tails through your center bead.

9. Anchor the wire in one of the stitches on the other side and go back through the center bead. You can repeat this as often as the size of the bead hole and the length of the wire allow.

10. After going through the center for the last time, anchor your wire, wrap it around the stitch once or twice, cut it and hide the end in your stitchwork.

11. If you now want to fix the symmetry issue, all you have to do is use your second wire. Just go through all the outer beads and gently pull the wire tight. Again, you can do that once or twice.

12. You see that the center bead sits slightly on top of the others now.

13. Wrap your wire around once or twice and cut.

14. Voilà!
You can do different things with these flowers. Turn them into little pins by adding a needle, put a bail on to make a pendant or add some chain and a lobster clasp to create a sweet little zipper pull. Use earwires to make them into earrings.
Use up leftover beads, go wild with colors and shapes, and most of all - have fun!

Again, if I left something important out, let me know and ask. I'll learn to make it better over time, I hope ;-)

Experimenting

Real life has me being a bit tense these days ... some days more than others.
And sometimes the only way to make the world around me go away for a while is to experiment. To play with materials without the goal of making some beautiful, useful or planned. If I'm lucky, it will turn into something that I learn from or it will develop into something I like after all, something beautiful, or it becomes something the world doesn't need, but something my inner playchild needed.

This ... erm ... thing is just one of these pieces. I could use it as a paperweight maybe or I could keep shaking it to make the glass gems inside rattle.
Curious already?
Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

I have a bunch of hot pink wires in slightly different hues. Now hot pink is not a color I use very much, so it's usually a good choice for an experiment.
And for some strange reason I have two enormous spools of black wire. Don't ask me, I have no idea if I intended to crochet a black gothic cloak or a humongous black cat (now that's funny because that is one animal that absolutely refuses to be made by me, believe me, I tried) or if I had just forgotten that I had already ordered one before. So black isn't a bad choice, either.

The black thing on the left is what I had made a while ago, for no particular reason, not a reason I can remember at least. It's like a little wire knit bowl, and I had no intention whatsoever to use it for this piece.
I took two pink wire spools, if you look closely you see they are two different colors, and knitted a ... thingy until I suddenly noticed that the pink one was about the same size as the black one now. I kept knitting and added a rim to the pink "bowl", so I could fit the black one in there.

No, this is not a UFO. Although a pink UFO would be fun.

And of course the natural choice was to put something in there then. Ponder the Great Nagger was too big, so I used the glass gems instead. Although the black part can be pulled out and put back, it won't come out by itself.

If you think that was it, you are wrong. What I like about the wire knit structure is that you can bend it, fold it, unfold it, and if you are being careful about it, it won't kink and break right away. Stretching is not always that good an idea, but I didn't need to stretch anything here. I pushed the bottom of the pink part in, I pulled it back out, I flattened the rim, I pushed the black part in, I put "pleats" in .. in other words, I had fun.

What am I going to do with now? No idea, but I learned something from it.

Awol ... Christmas in July ... working on my stash/preview

What can I say? Day job, heat ... age ;-) All of that is wearing me out at the moment and I can't do things like I want them to do. Sorry about that. I'm alive, though. I am. Don't forget that when you don't see me around much the next few weeks.

I thought however I really should drop in for a bit of the latest news.

Let's start with Christmas in July. Did you know that many of the Smooshers are having a sale for this event? Check out the guild blog to see a list of all the shops participating!

Yup, I'm in there, too. 10 % off each item.

Now to show you that I am not just sitting on my butt, looking DVDs and snuggling with cats, here are a few still unlisted pieces I made over the last few weeks. Should any of them catch your eye and you want to take advantage of the sales price in July, you know where to find me. Just shoot me a message.

I used up my red goldstone beads and aren't they a perfect match?

A fossilized shell in a netting of gunmetal wire with tiny freshwater pearls

The "Doily pendant" ;-) Onyx donut filled not with jam, but different dark beads

Free form serpentine cab made into a heart with fine silver wire crochet accented by rainbow moonstones

Mmmm, Deronda O'Neills clear bubble beads teamed up with fine silver wire crochet beads of my making covered with tiny red carnelian, black and green onyx

Sunflower ring, this is not the only flower I have made, either!

Wait for me, will you? I promise I'll be back! ;-)

Cuppa tea?

I am still working hard on turning those spare beads of mine into jewelry. I'm proud to pronounce a first success ... I am out of beer! Quartz, I mean. Beer quartz. The last bead went into this piece that reminded me of a camomile flower after I had finished it. Granted, camomile usually doesn't sparkle that much, but when wearing them on a necklace they also don't last that long.

It can be found in my shop now and I'm off to look for more stray beads ;-)

Honey pie, honey pie

I'm still playing with lampwork beads and pearls.
There is this one cab that looks like liquid honey and flowers that remind me of Art Deco, absolutely beautiful.
I picked the wire (warm gold) and started. I guess I got a little carried away because when I checked, the disk had become too large already and it started wrinkling at the edges which reminded me of a flower.
This called for a quick change of plans. Instead of caging the cab I added a bail to the flower and a white pearl. A simple design, but an effective one, I found.


Therefore I made two more in different colors, dark blue with a white pearl and dark purple with a pink pearl. When I list them, I'll offer the buyer to choose from the many wire colors and the two colors of pearls that I have.


So now I had three pendants, but that wasn't what I wanted to make, right? So I started again and finally had my bezel around the lampwork cab. That is usually the moment when Mabel, my muse, has to take over. Will it become a ring? A pendant? It took her a while, she was probably already exhausted from whipping up the pendants, but suddenly the idea was there. A cuff it would be, looking like a wristwatch.
Said - or rather thought - and done. Here it is, the "Honey Flower Cuff".


Not bad for one day ;-)

How desperate can you get?

Ok, so today it's rain and no snow. The snow on the streets is melting. But hey, this is still not at all spring and I am desperate for spring!

When reading a forum thread about gardening and mild Californian weather (!!) I decided to plant snow flowers to have some flowers at least. I thought sticks with snowballs on top would look nice, but no, one of my forum fellows said it was not enough.
And that was how she planted, not flowers, but an idea in my head.

I'm not the gardener type anyway, I might have mentioned it before. I say Hi to a flower and it cringes and dies, but there are ways ...


Voilà, my spring has officially started. I don't know what kind of flower this is, but frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn ;-)
(Don't be surprised, I love movie quotes!)

Springtime and brooch addiction

Not only have the meteorologists finally announced that the spring is coming, but you can already smell it in the air. The sky is blue, the sun is peeking through and that gave me the inspiration for my flower brooches.

Well, although this one looks more like an ice flower, but maybe the gold seed beads mean it's about to thaw?



This flower was made from warmer colors, maybe an exotic plant, who knows if maybe my wishes to take off to somewhere nice led my crochet hook in this case ...



This might not be a flower in the strictest sense, but I am not sure what else it reminds me of. It's a piece like a chameleon, it changed from stitch to stitch and I think I heard my muse giggling in the background. She is probably in a spring mood as well. If you do a craft, have you ever wondered what your muse looks like? I used to think of mine as one of the beautiful Art Nouveau ladies by Alfons Mucha, but yesterday it was probably more like a bratty little girl with freckles ;-) Maybe she is a chameleon, too! That would explain a lot!



And last, but hopefully not least the smallest specimen. I can see them as a nice little accent on a lapel.


Maybe I can come up with something else today. I'll open my windows wide and let the air come in, take a deep breath and - do the laundry first. The laundry, my old enemy, keeping me from more important things, (insert an approriate word of your choice in here, thank you) you! ;-)