kit – The Indecisive Beader

Oscar’s Bauble

Oscar’s Bauble was originally made as a fully beadwoven babies’ rattle. It formed the winter part of my entry for the Stitch N Craft Challenge in 2014. In 2013 just as I was working on the piece our second son Oscar was born – a winter baby, the beads I had to incorporate for the challenge were soft cream opals, palest pinks and blues, and they matched his lovely delicate skin tone, so I made him a rattle. It has a tiny bell, a cellini spiral candy cane handle with lovely pink opal chatons at the base, and the main body is a dodecahedron made of hexagonal gumdrop bezels.

Whilst I don’t think I could repeat the rattle as a whole (there was a particularly challenging join to the handle involving a 20 bead hole needing to meet up with a 7 bead spiral), the bauble works really nicely on it’s own, with gumdrops or spikes, so I’ve finally written it up as a Tutorial which is now available in my Etsy shop. Hopefully in a week or so I will also have some Materials Packs for it as well – it’s taken nearly 4 years to write up the Tutorial though so for now I’m just focussing on getting it published!

Techniques – Circular Peyote

Difficulty Level – Intermediate. Knowledge of 3d beading is useful, and you’ll use the concepts of ‘step ups’ and ‘point rows’ so if you already know about these that will help.

The finished bauble measures 5.0cm in diameter made with Gumdrops, and 6.5cm with Spikes.

What will you need?

12 qty Czech Gumdrop beads 7x10mm, or Czech spikes 7x17mm

11A 11g Size 11 seed beads, colour A (main colour)

11B 8g Size 11 seed beads, colour B (highlight colour, forms the petals/star)

15A <1g Size 15 seed beads, colour A (although these are not seen so you could use any colour).

Something to hang the bauble with – fine chain, thread or fine ribbon or cord.

Beadweaving needles, thread of your choice, scissors.

Baroque Tape Measure – new Materials Packs at last…..

So at last I have had time to photograph and list the Baroque Tape Measure Materials Packs which I worked so hard to put together a few weeks back. There are six new colourways, and I’ve re-shot the two I already had in stock as well. Altogether I have now made over twenty different colourways for the packs, and another five have been beaded into the original and my working samples. Perhaps not what I expected when I made the original piece for my Chatelaine two years ago.

These are my last few tape measures, so I will probably not be listing any more for a while (although if they sell well I may change my mind!), and I’ve been a bit bolder with some of the bead choices because of that. There are two sets – bright fun colours, including one which uses one of my favourite Miyuki colours – red opaque AB (which gives a fab weird salmon pink), and some really dark metallics, including matte black with the new Swarovski Patina rivolis. As usual they are available on Etsy and Folksy – links below:

Folksy links

Etsy Links

Materials Packs for Baroque Tape Measure Surround

Just a quick post to let you all know that I’ve put together some materials packs for the Baroque Tape Measure Surround. Two colourways which I’ve beaded up previously, including the original Bronze & Fuchsia, plus two completely new colourways never yet made, so they will be completely unique. They are available here on Folksy (Bronze & Fuchsia; Bronze & Capri Blue; Silver, Red & Turquoise, Gold & Scarlet) and here on Etsy. For choice I’d love it if you used Folksy as they are very nice and I’m really, really upset with Etsy about their behaviour to sellers around the whole EU VAT thing…… more about that another day.

Now I’ve got a good stock of tape measures and those elusive 2.8mm drops I’m more than happy to put together custom materials packs for you – just drop me a message/comment with a colourway request and I’ll have a beady play.

Although these are listed for UK sales only, I’m happy to discuss and set up overseas postage – be aware that now I’m back at work I can’t get to the Post Office as easily for overseas posting (for UK posting I’ve carefully planned these as letter post size to avoid that trip), but if we have a chat I can let you know what to expect.