Boxing day

While I haven't been blogging about anything I've done lately, that doesn't mean I haven't done anything. On boxing day, I took out the o beads I got for christmas (technically, I got christmas money to buy beads from so I got the beads before christmas eve) and played around with them. Really like how thin they are and how well they can be sandwiched between beads like the superduos in the pic above.

You can see some thread in some places so they aren't all perfect, those first three samples. Will play around some more with these designs and see what I can come up with. And of cause I'll embroider with them too, stitching them "face up" so to speak.

(By the way, if you need some inspiration for your new O Beads, check out this pinboard. The pinner also have a lot of other inspirational pinboards with various themes such as specific bead shapes or techniques.)

And as for this thing I also made on boxing day, can you guess what it is? If I give you another view?

No?

It's actually a cover for my embroidery scissors. After putting all my threads and needles in an organza bag along with the scissors, I realised how much I needed some sort of protection for the sharp blades -- both to protect the scissors from being damaged and to protect the organza bag from being pierced.

The cover is made from something I just grabbed in my stash: the most ugly looking of my silk rods (aka silk carrier rods). It was already softer than most of the other rods, but was soften even more by being rubbed. I then folded it in half and stitched the edges with uneven, but luckily close to invisible stitches. Not the prettiest thing ever made and ideally the shape should follow the shape of the scissors and be tapered, but with some embroidery -- with beads or floss -- it could look pretty nice I think. Should have embroidered first, but forgot to plan ahead...

 
The hard edge on the end is used as a sort of clasp or clamp to hold the scissors in the cover: once it gives in it'll be replaced by a button and loop closure.

At least it's serving its purpose and that's pretty much why I made it the way I made it. It's not about looks, it was about finding a quick fix and crossing it of the to-do list. But I do kind of like the look of it as well. Very earthy/forest feel about it with the texture and colours in it. Might even keep it like this and not embroider it...

August bead soup palette

Well, the bead mix inspiration of the month is late too, as usual. Like some of my earlier palettes, this one's pretty much just thrown together using a few of my favourite colours. But instead of a last minute hodgepodge, let's call it a tribute to coppar and velvety soft, shimmering matte metallics.

You can use the colours together or just go with either light copper satin or dark copper satin depend on how dark you want your colour scheme. I'm sure there are many gorgeous matte metallics to combine with these, but, alas, I didn't have any in my stash.

Unfortunately, I just realised I made a huge screw up. The typo is one thing (it's matte metallic dark raspberry iris, nothing else), but I got the piccies in the wrong order: the middle colour is "the raspberries" and the last one is dark copper satin. Oops....

Got it right this time

Ok, so this is what I planned on doing when I ended up with the variations you got to see yesterday. As you see, a very different result so don't ask me how I could miss that I strung the bead wrong. To my defence, the oopsie stated with my using mini-drops and I really liked that result so it never occurred to me that something was wrong. As a comparison, yesterday's photo has been added below.

The flower bell beads was something I wanted to try already after making the first version with bicones (see below). Didn't know how it'd pan out as I thought the beads would be too big. As it turned out, what the flowers did do was to tilt inwards as I strung them and tightened the threads. Just to see what a difference it'd make I restrung the last three flowers facing the other way around.

I prefer them strung the way I did it first, but the downside is that there's quite a lot of exposed thread along the edge of the flowers. You do need a strong thread that'll blend in with the flower beads if stringing the beads this way.

For more piggy bead experiments and other two-hole beads, please see the 2-hole bead label.

One more -- comparing bead choices (and making mistakes)

After I made the little sample you can see in the last piggy post, I added a section with bicones (as in this post) plus one with Miyuki's new baroque beads.  The idea was to compare the different bead choices side by side. See what works and what needs to be tweaked. See what bead shapes and sizes work better than others.

And -- it turns out at the end of this post -- see what a difference the placement of the beads make. Yes, without knowing I did something different when adding beads in this sample compared to the first one where I added beads between the piggies. Notice that this is a mistake I didn't notice until writing almost all of the post so I decided to keep the text more or less untouched, leaving it as it was before spotting the oopsie instead of rewriting everything, pretending that the mistake was an intentional alteration/experiment or that I noticed right after finishing it.  My excuse is that I did the last two sections late at night after a long day that including having to get up early to go to town after barely having slept the previous night due to the thunder.

"natural scale"

Don't know about you, but as you can see I'm pretty fond of this way of stringing piggy beads. The size and shape of the bead you choose to add between the piggies really alter the final result and some fit better than others. There are so many options to choose between. I've only tried three this far (not counting stringing without any other beads at all).

Using 4 mm bicones was my first version and still a favourite -- even if it can create gaps where the thread is exposed. [Ok, this is the mistake so notice that the text talks about the new bicone varition, not the one, which is the one that's my real favourite!]. Not sure if covering the thread with a seed beads is a good option of if it will push the piggy beads apart so my plan right now is to find smaller bicones and give that a try.

I do have a few 3 mm ones, but feel like they might be too small for what I want. Does anyone make 3,5 mm bicones? It's something I think I've seen, but maybe I've just imagined it? Or got them mixed up so it's swarovski 2,5 mm bicones I'm thinking of? Did a quick googling and found a few copper beads that shape and size so even if there aren't any crystal beads in the size there are other 3,5 mm bicones.

My second version was made using 2,8 mm drops, as seen in the previous post. They nestled perfectly between the piggy beads and created a more compact zig-zag design than using big bicones. The drop shape is the same as the gap created between the piggies: smaller near the hole and wider at the edge. The perfect fit?

For this sample I also added baroque beads. Baroques come in two sizes, this is the smaller size 6/0. As you can see, the rounded shape of the large seed beads doesnt' fit the gap in the same way as neither the drop nor the bicone. A smaller seed bead size would probably be a better choice unless you like how these beads stick out.

 
And, yes, I did forget to mention the versions I made with rizos and 4 mm fire-polished respectively as I didn't make a section with those beads this time, but I might as well collect all variations here so here you go. Why not add the original version without extra beads too, just as a reference?

Oh! I just realised I made an oopsie! A big one! Do you notice it? In my first attempt to use bicones I placed them in the middle of the piggy bead cup (pic above), which made the beads nestle better than in the version I made yesterday where I placed the bicones on the edge, creating bigger gaps and therefore seeing more exposed threads. What a slip up... Stupid, stupid. But I guess it could be a good thing as you now get to see what a difference it makes how you string the beads.

Let's see them side by side:

Ack, now I need to redo the other sections, I think, to see what a difference that makes. Because one difference does become very clear when comparing these two samples: by adding beads on top of an edge hole you get more of a zig-zag pattern -- which I liked so much in the mini-drops sample -- and when adding beads in the cup of the beads, stringing through the centre hole, you get more of an overlapped pattern.

Well, at least this taught me that a small alteration -- intentional or mistake -- can make a big difference. When I take about tweaking experimental samples it really is all in the little tweaks. Like choosing the right hole to put the next bead over.

Live and learn. Live and learn...

Note: I'm using a thin beading thread here just because it's cheap, for a finished piece of jewellery I'd definitely go with a flexible beading wire instead.

Two more piggy variations

I made a couple of variations on two of the piggy bead samples shown in this post. The first one you can see above. I quite liked the result when first seeing it, but worried I would think it too plain or boring later. I must say the photo didn't make me happy -- it doesn't give me the same good feelings as the sample did. Blame the light I had when taking the photo or blame the big size. Due to the latter, I scaled down the pic a bit to get it closer to natural scale.

Did that make it look better?

I thought about doing a tutorial -- have promised more than one for my blog readers this summer, you know -- for that, but I don't know... What do you think? Fun/inspiring/useful enough? Or do you prefer the previous one I made with bicones (or the one with rizos)?

The second variation is just a very minor altering of the basic stitch by adding a seed between the two piggies and one in each "cup". Make any difference?

The "bud" on the end is filled with a picot of four seeds.


Ooops -- got to go! The thunder is back!

Piggies in a circle

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was going to bead a sample with the "herringbone-ish" stitch in a circle. Well, I did have enough beads after ripping up the piggy bead samples to do it and this is the result. Above is a close-up and below is something a bit closer to the natural scale (it's about 31 mm wide).

The seeds used are 8/0 and then the rest is just piggy beads, stitch the same way as in the straight sample (see below) and then joined up. Did learn one thing though: if you want to stabilize the inner ring by going through the centre holes a round or two, you have to do that with a separate thread before joining the circle together or it'll be too tight for the needle. Because it needs stabilizing. Perhaps using double thread or a heavier thread (I don't want to say Fireline...) and/or tighten the thread tension even more, but I think just running the thread through all the inner beads once or twice will do a lot.

Guess the next step from here will be to try a few variations with other bead shapes either in the outer or the inner circle. But that'll have to wait as I'm reluctant to rip up this sample. In fact, this one's no longer a sample but a component I just have to figure out what I want to do with. A pendant? A brooch? An objet d'art? Perhaps it's even a big-hole beaded bead?

More piggy bead samples

I spent the morning taking a few photos of my latest piggy bead samples. Just as in the previous piggy post, it's all about playing around, seeing how the beads behave when strung in different ways and combined with other bead shapes. I did have to undo a few samples that failed miserably and I haven't made anything elaborate or complex, but I hope you still find these pics of interest.

The first sample began with my trying to do the "pearl in an oyster" thing I've seen others do. However, I only had 4 mm fire-polished beads and bicones nearby and I think they are too big. In the case of the fp, I think they're also the wrong shape, really. For more successful versions of this, see my 2-hole bead designs pinboard or the Piggy Beads board where I got several of the pics/links from.

To the left is a small sample of piggies strung the same way as in my first sample (see previous post), but with every other bead flipped the other way.

Natural size (more or less)

Then I got back to my favourite way of stitching Twins and Superduos. It works nicely with piggies too -- though only if you turn the concave side outwards. It will get too crowded the other way around. You can do two rows, as done on the left, but not more. (I keep flipping these samples so the first stitches made end up to the right and the last ones on the left for some reason.)

You might blame my thread tension, but the sample ended up being very flexible and can be bent into an arc as seen below:

My idea is to try and make a whole circle when I get enough beads and add beads to the outer cups. Perhaps also add a bigger bead in the centres. Keep your fingers crossed it'll work out as planned!

I also made a short piece using the same technique, but mixing piggies and 2-hole lentils (from the CzechMate sysem). Never did try mixing it up, making every other bead a lentil instead of separating them into two rows like this. Might have to do that too, though not at all sure if it'll work...

After that, it was time to try something different and I went back to stringing piggies, testing something I thought of already making the very first samples (see aforementioned post and/or photo at end of this post): stringing as usual, alternating the two threads between centre and edge holes, but adding beads to the centres. First I tried 4 mm fire-polished (with bad thread tension as you can see!), then rizos and finally 4 mm bicones. Did try the 2-hole lentils too, but that didn't work at all... Not in my eyes at least.

Don't know about you, but I kind of like this, especially the bicone section. It's a bit like a flower in a lily pad. In fact, once I looked at it, one of my first thoughts were "wonder if I have some tiny flower bell beads to use instead?". Not sure there is anything smaller than 6 mm, though, and that might be too big. We'll have see: do have such flower beads so I can try it out as soon as I rip up these samples.

Changing the direction of the bead string kind of changes the way the sample looks too, in a way, emphasizing the flower/vine shape. Or maybe it's just me.

And, to finish this post off, just to remind you of what the first samples looked like:

(Click here to read more about it.)

Your turn!

So... How about you? Have you tried piggy beads? Have any pics and/or ideas you want to share? I'd love to see it!

Or haven't you got around to playing with this bead shape yet? Haven't found them in you favourite bead shops yet or just don't like them -- or perhaps like them, but have no idea how you want to use them? Unlike 2-hole beads like e.g. twins/superdous and tilas, these beads are fab to just string so don't let the fact that you aren't into seedbeading deter you. And, besides, you don't have to use both holes if that's what's holding you back. Just use the centre or edge hole -- e.g. like Pearl at The Beading Gem's Journal -- and treat them like glass bead caps, fun-shaped lentil beads or glass charms.

If you're looking for inspiration, may I suggest this pinboard? Mostly bead-weaving, but some ideas could work for strung jewellery too. I've got some piggy inspiration on my 2-hole beads pinboard too, but as said above, many of the piggy designs come from the aforementioned board.

Strung piggy beads

I've had my piggy beads for some time now, got them back in April, but as other things have gotten in the way, I haven't really started playing with them. But at least now I have tried stringing them.

Stringing might sound boring, but first of all, the shape of the bead makes plain stringing interesting -- and stringing a new bead shape in different ways is a good way to learn how the bead shape behaves. Better to start by stringing and learning what the bead itself want to do than to sketch on a design only to realise that when you bead according to the plan, the new bead wants to do something completely different because of its shape and hole placement/direction. By stringing like this, you learn how the bead wants to curve and position itself. You also learn another very important thing: how rigid or flexible a row of beads will be. That's important to know when planning a design as you sometimes want something flexible and supple, e.g. for a bracelet, and sometimes something that'll keep its shape well and act as a support, e.g. for a large pendant.

As I only have a small handful of beads, I only got to these two variations. Now that they have been documented, I'll pick up the sample and try something new. First more stringing variations, then adding more of other beads such as seeds and druks. And when I've done that it's time to create a few designs. Which sounds like a very linear process, but of cause in reality the different phases melt together and you work on designs in your head the whole time you experiment with simple variations and explore all the "what ifs".

I'm thinking about buying enough beads to make a bracelet in the first variation (the not curved one), but this sample is already heavy so it'll turn out to be quite a heavy bracelet in that case. Scrap the idea -- or just use it for one section of the design? Some ideas are bad ideas (or at least ideas that doesn't work as well in real life as on paper), other ideas just need to be tweaked or combined with another idea in order to work.

My new piggy beads -- and the quest for clear seed beads

I've been doing a wee bit of shopping (honestly, it actually wasn't that much) to celebrate the beginning of spring farming and soon seeing my first pay check of the year. One thing I absolutely had to get was piggy beads. Got them in jet vega (above) and crystal vega, but my sis wanted half of them so I don't have that many to play with. That doesn't have to be such a bad thing, actually, because I don't really know what I want to do with these beads yet -- and am focusing on a few other things at the moment that needs to be taken care of first.

Do you know what very basic colour can be really tricky to find? Clear crystal. I tried to find some clear larger (around 8/0) seeds or cylinders and Miyuki triangles to do something along the line of this and this. All I kept finding was crystal AB/rainbow and crystal lustre. Not to mention matte crystal and crystal silver-lined. Finally, I found one shop that had medium Delicas in crystal plus some other beads I (and my sis) wanted.

Now I just need to find Miyuki triangles. I want the rounded ones, no the sharps that both Miyuki and Toho makes. And that's been tricky to find as those who stock Miyuki triangles seem to prefer their new sharps. While sharp-edged triangle beads are very useful in many bead-weaving designs, they just wouldn't work as well in embroidery.

Part of what's making it tricky is of cause that I wanted to keep postage down and not buy just a small bag of triangles or seeds and then have the postage double the price of the beads. I'm sure there must be someone who have the beads I want, domestically or internationally.

(Things I bought that aren't pictured here included small cut farfalles [cut = they have a facet, just like charlottes], rulla beads, mini rose petal beads and a big dragon glass button. But they all have to wait until after BSBP before I get time for them.)

Bits and bobs -- sunday ramblings

A sale made me buy some new beads recently. Don't know what I want to do with the beads I bought (rarely buy for projects, just go for gorgeous colours and pretty beads) and so far I've mostly made a couple of sample to test ideas and see how different bead shapes fit together.

Those 11/0s are Toho gilded marble turquoise. Not the cheapest seed bead finish, but I only regret not getting them in green too. And maybe gilded marble lavender too. I have a bad habit of falling for the more expensive seed bead and pressed-glass finishes/effects...

I really have no idea where I'm going with these samples. Will try variations of one or two of them and have some sort of thought about making a flower with the daggers and superduos.

Just to add a little colour, I took this pic below. The mottled turquoise and blue beads mixed with matte bronze sequins, which you might remember from my previous sequin posts. Realised yesterday that I need (or want, if you want to split hairs) some more matte metallic beads, especially seeds. Some of my beads just scream for matte/satin copper and (light) bronze seeds.

Putting a bead -- or in this case sequin -- in the middle of a 2-hole bead ring like the one above makes a big difference compared to keep it as an "open circle". Preciosa Ornela has a free bracelet project for something similar (using Twins, not Superduo of cause), which you can find here. So simple, so pretty!

Maybe I'll try to make my own variation of that kind of flower motif. Or maybe I'll just use it -- in a tweaked version -- as a centre of a dagger flower. Many possibilities to muse over (which might just be a way of saying "I don't have any ideas and the creativity isn't flowing today", right?).

There might be another little flower motif next week as I thought of a simple variation while writing this post. Just hope I'll find matching colours in the bead shapes/sizes I need -- that's usually my biggest problem: no matter how big the seed bead stash grows, I'm always missing the right colours in the right bead shapes and/or sizes, which makes it hard to combine beads in one design... Well, we'll just have to see what I find in the stash tonight, won't we?

WIP: copper satin and blue silk

I did make a few thing while being without a camera. Here are two pics of a couple of ideas that I tested. For bracelets, most likely. Both uses satin copper twin beads and blue silk

The piece above probably looks soutache-inspired, but my main source of inspiration is actually smocking with pearls and pearls/beads stitched into the folds of shibori silk. Things like Phiona Richards' book sculpture Pearls of Wisdom shown here and the silk bangles from Alyson G. Design.

The soutache inspiration was probably more subconscious in that case, having seen soutache jewellery and tutorials for years now, it's tricky to say they didn't play a role in the process behind this bracelet design. It's got the strict, clean shapes and curves of soutach jewellery even though I'm more drawn towards the organic shapes of scrunched and "freeform folded" beaded fabric. Hopefully you'll get to see some embroidery of that kind in a near future. I'm playing with a few ideas, developing a few things I've done before and exploring some new ones. Nothing finished enough to show on the blog at the moment, I'm afraid.

As you can see I haven't got very far. Right now I'm using a brick/peach red thread, which matches the twin beads well, but as the thread will show on the cobalt blue silk ribbon, a darker blue thread would be better. Seeing how blue isn't a favourite colour of mine, however, there's no such thread in my stash. So I've put this project on hold while planning for the closure (and a good excuse to do a tiny bit of bead shopping again).

The other sample is made with the same twin beads as above and some denim blue pearl silk. Tried a few different things before doing the "strung-and-whipped" design you can see on the left. It might be a bit too stiff for a bracelet, though, so I'm trying a few variations first before trying to do a whole jewellery pieces. Also, I'm not sure it looks that interesting, just doing this. Don't know. Nothing wrong with simple bracelets, but it's perhaps not the style I want to explore at the moment. But even if I scrap the idea, I'll keep the sample for future reference.

WIP: wide twin bracelet

I've been working on this bracelet on and off. Just haven't been able to decide if I like it or no, whether I should finish it or frog it.

I began by doing a row of stitches just like the ones used in my twin bead sampler here. I then wanted to make a wider band by adding one or two more rows. As you can see  neither of the rows are finished: I stopped making the second row as I wanted to see what it'd look like with a third row before deciding whether it was time to rip it up or keep working on it. It's pretty slow in making so it doesn't feel worth continuing if the results are mediocre.

Below I've "isolated" the section with two and three rows respectively to get a better look of what the two versions look like.

double version

triple version

As you might've guessed from the number of threads I'm working with a double-needle technique. Basically just because that's how I made my first version (with a single row). Tried a single-needle technique first, but had trouble with the thread tension and keeping the beads straight.

I'm also going to do wider bands of at least one of the other variations seen in the twin sampler post. Not sure when I'll get around to it, though, as I'm doing a coulpe of embroideries at the moment and they take time, both for the actual stitching and for the design process.

Twin bead sampler -- and tutorial input needed

So this is, finally, the twin bead sampler, a round-up of all the little samples and swatches I've been making over the last weeks or months inbetween work, other projects and everything else needed to be done at the same time. Mostly simple designs and variations of those, nothing elaborate or fancy, really.

This post does not include any of the finished or unfinished bits and pieces I've shown earlier. The rest of my twin bead explorations can be found here.

(And if you think the pic above is a mess, with all the new and old samples all jumbled after being poured out of the plastic bag they were kept in, you should've seen what it looked like before I cut all the long thread ends!)

The tutorial

I've mentioned earlier that I want to make a new free tutorial on my blogs after the potato season. So I'd love some input on which design here you would like to see a tutorial for the most. (Preferrably not the "doubled" ones in 2-needle techniques that I haven't worked out good turns for yet or the circular ones that need some tweaking, but it can include the previously shown twin bead lace bracelet.) Every pic has a number and every variation in each pic has a letter to make it easier. Just leave a comment -- or e-mail me if you prefer that.

Most of these designs are pretty easy so they shouldn't be too hard even for a newbie, though some find 2-needle techniques a tad tricky (if possible -- and applicable -- I might throw in instructions for both 2-needle and 1-needle versions).

Twin bead samples

1. This is a close-up of the two bracelets posted before. I'm showing these manily as there will be a variation on the lace (picot) bracelet below. Also, the lace picot design is one of the designs I'm considering doing the tutorial on.

2. This was an early experiment. Basically just a peyote variation that you can see in many twin bead projects. I also tried to embellish it with beads (11/0 seeds, Preciosa and Toho, and 2 mm round metal beads). 

3. Then I also tried some sort of netting (really just like above, but with a seed bead on either side of each twin bead). Both samples are made exactly the same, though the thread tension is looser in the left sample. 


Notice what a difference it makes whether using solid colours or colour-lined beads. Ideally I would've wanted to make all samples in both, but I ran out of solid beads (therefore you'll see some really crude photo manipulation below to illustrate what a design with opaque beads might look like). 

4. My favourite technique turned out to be this one (a) that can be used for a number of different variations. You can add seeds (c) or drops (g)  or even twins (d) to the centre. In g I used Miyuki's mini drops, a perfect size -- and the shape also adds a dimensional aspect to the design. You can also add beads between the twins (e and f) and you can even add a few beads to the outside, though it didn't work as well as I hoped (it exposed more thread, not less!). The variation on the right end (after f) will be further discussed later in this post.

5. This is a few of the variations in pic. 4 made with colour-lined beads instead.

6. Ooops... No letters on this one. On the left  is another variation of the design in pic. 4. In the rest of the sample I've added tila beads to the centre the same way twin beads were added in 4d. On the far left, I've gone back and added more tilas inbetween the ones first stitched. It's tricky to see in the photo, but the tilas are overlapping (think roof tiles). 

7. A crappy manipulation that might show what the fan-shaped design in pic. 6 might look like in opaque beads. It might help if you squint your eyes while looking at it...

8. Remember the right-side end in pic. 4 where the beads changed direction? This is a continuation of that idea where I've tried some different variations. A type of design that probably looks better in solid colours. Which means I made another one of these:

9. Illustration of what pic. 8 variations might look like in opaque beads.

10. Now we're chaning tracks. These are variations of the picot or zig-zag design you can see in the lace bracelet in pic. 1. For b I just added picots to one side and single beads to the other, I then turned and worked a second row on the other side of the picots. 


For a I made picots between each twin, but insead of letting it sit on the edge, I turned it and and ran the second needle through the three beads at the top, securing the picot between the twin beads.

11. This design is stitched in 2-needle RAW and is partially inspired by metal watch bands and partially by the picot variations. On the right side I added additional rows of twins on each side.

12. Ah, this is one of my earlier samples where I tried to make ogalala butterfly stitch with twin and farfalle beads. 

13. More farfalle and twins on the right here. This is basically the same wave design that can be found in the fire-polished bead bracelet in pic. 1. The farfalles made the twist and turn -- so much that I thought it might be interesting to make this without changing directions, i.e. add the farfalles to the same side all the time to make it corkscrew.  


On the left is another RAW design in two layers. [I just realised I've forgotten the sample that inspired this variation. Darn...]

14.  And, finally, a few circular designs. The first design was just three twin beads in a row and then subsequent rows were built on that in a circular peyote type of technique. Looked pretty so-so, especially since I had problems with the thread tension. For my next variation (a) I added seeds on either side of each twin bead. 


The last sample is kind of a variation on CRAW (cubic right-angle weave) that I've been meaning to try -- without twins -- for some time. 

~*~

And that's it. Some samples better than others. Some I feel like I could do more will and develop further, others I like just how they are (and I few I probably won't try again). Some I'll redo with solid coloured beads once I buy more twins.

So... what do you think?