A little bit of seaside

Dreamy Dagger beads

Bead love alert!
dreamy dagger beads!
When these arrived in the post, I decided that deadlines could
go hang, time to follow my bliss for a few evenings and bead me a necklace!

The hanks of beads were silky and tactile and I soooo wanted to have them with me as fringy pendants to swish my fingers through.

The colours reminded me of a piece of Abalone shell, picked up during a last long walk on a beach at the end of a holiday. I kept it to remind me of the pure luxury of sand between the toes, salt in my hair and the warmth of the sun.

The necklace grew simply, from the colours and with no particular plan in mind. More importantly, no stopping. No stopping to get caught up with re-works, rip outs, or planning, no stopping to think too hard about bead choices... Instead I kind of worked with the same frame of mind as that walk on the beach. Oh, and no stopping to tidy up the bead board, random messy, definitely a new approach and the random juxtaposition of beads gave me ideas and choices I might not usually have made.

Random act of beadiness!

The cord is a length of crochet, worked in fine cotton around a length of narrow jewellery tube, which gave a simple base to add a bail and beaded beads around.

The finished necklace

The pendant is simple bead embroidery, it's been an age since I did any, but it seemed the easiest way to bezel the irregular shell piece, and add the swishy fringing. Accent beads include semi precious stone beads, of South African Jade and pink Phosphosiderite.
I'm really happy with the outcome, it's not ground breaking, all the techniques are old favourites, but it's a fun piece to wear, and while I might not have time to go dig my toes into warm sand just now, instead I can run my fingers through those swishy fringes and take a moment to dream.

Lots of swishy fringes

Random embellishments

Vintage chintz

Spiral Garden

Sometimes things are really crazy simple... when up till now you thought they were complicated. OK so one of the top all time fave designs that people like to buy is called Spiral Garden. It's a double helix spiral with a daisy chain decoration...
plus I show you how to join up double helix rope to make a continuous loop for bangles and necklaces. I love this design, I've made myself and my friends lots of different versions to wear over the years. It is genuinely a constant source of happiness for me that other people really love it too.

So there I was trying to work out an idea, and hit upon the most simplest ever way to make a garland of beady leaves and flowers spiral, without even trying. Gasp! I was so excited and eagerly tried it out on my 'not very good at beading' tester...
Aww! heartless you I hear you splutter into your coffee. No, not at all, she's a nearly beginner and loves to try out my designs and is perfect because she shows me all the places where I'm just assuming you'd know how to do stuff, which is really easy to assume if you already know how to do it... Oh c'mon, I pay her in beads too!
She loved the pattern too, which is sometimes how a new design is born.

Summer Garland, vintage pink

I've called it Summer Garland, inspired by Garden fetes and country weddings, cream teas on mis-matched china, and time worn favourite floral cotton dresses. You can see that once I had the design sorted out (the original sample, for reasons I won't get into, was bright yellow, navy blue and orange), I just fell in love with mixing up some retro inspired colour combinations.
So come and join the garden party, Summer Garland is available as a pattern, as a kit in vintage pink or vintage blue, and with additional materials packs too.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy