A puff stitch flower

I've tried a new crochet stitch again. This time it was one of those puff stitches that look so pretty you just have to give it a go. I followed a video tutorial, which in my case means watching it three times or so, then go find some yarn, sit down in bed and try to remember how to do it. Now, I had some written instructions for a similar flower by my side so I could consult that as the basic idea is the same. Considering my method of learning, I think it looks rather nice. Have problem making the loops a consistent size, but it doesn't look too lopsided, does it? At least not for a first try. Next time I'll use fewer chain stitches to move them more to the back where they're hidden

My original idea was to make brooches, but they were kind of addictive so now I'm thinking of making something bigger, stitching them together. Making a cushion, bag or something. Like this gorgeous bag.




After finishing it, I thought a mushroom button drop might be just the right bead to put in the centre. It was. And now I have a reason to buy mushrooms. You see, I've seen some pretty colours of button drops, but always thought it wasn't worth buying as I don't really use them. Well, now I do -- and having an excuse to "have" to buy a certain bead always feels good.

(If you want a reason to buy mushroom drops, you should check out this necklace and this bracelet, by the way. There are many other designs using them too, some probably more impressing that these, but these two are ones I spotted the other day and which whispered "you should get some mushroom drops to play with".)


PS! Looking for tutorials? I've got a handful of puff flower patterns pinner on this pinboard. When writing this, the pins are close to the top of the board so they should be easy to find. Some of them are also on my DIY flower board. (Or... I might just repin them all there too so they're easy to find. Just noticed I had some crochet flower there that are pobably buried far down on my crochet/knit board.)

We're All Ears march challenge

So... when I saw the pic Erin chose as the inspiration for this month's challenge, I felt like joining in even though I rarely make earrings. Very rarely. The deadline was yesterday and I had nothing to show. Why? "Det bidde en tummetott", as we say here (at least if you remember the old classics). Of grand ideas came a meager result. I wasn't happy with my embroidery designs, that's way. First time trying to make embroidered earrings and all and I'm simply more used to adapting stitches and motifs to bracelets, not tiny earrings.

But I didn't really give up. No, instead I decided to let the ideas mature a bit and instead make just a fun little design. Or "design", it's more of just putting a piece of tape on an earring. As you can see below.

But let me explain some more. That's a piece of printed textile tape that I pierced with a headpin on the middle and then folded together. After that it was just a matter of creating a wrapped loop and slide it onto the clip-on earrings. Unfortunately, I only had bright silver plated and gold plated ones and this earring dangle is crying out for something a tad more antiqued (tricky to oxidize plate).

Those rectangular tape pieces reminds me of the "wind catchers" on a fūrin. Guess they'll blow in the find just like them too considering how light they are.

As for making the loop you have two options: either make a small loop big enough to fit the ring, but not slide over the balled ends, or make a slightly larger loop that slides over the ball ends so you can make the earrings interchangeable. Personally I prefer the latter, though you have to be aware that it's easier to loose either the dangle or the ring when they aren't permanently attached to each other. (This is what happened with these earrings yesterday...)

That's the back of the earrings in case you wondered why I needed four photos of a simple pair of earrings.

So to conclude, not the earrings I wanted to show you today/yesterday, but still a fun little experiment I'm not too embarrassed to show people.


To see everybody else's challenge entries, please visit the Earrings Everyday reveal post!

Bicoloured loom knit sampler -- part 2

I've made a new sampler while figuring out if it'll be possible to get yarn to finish my cushion (see last post) or if I need to add another colourway (that doesn't match). Did the same mistake as last time by working late at night and thinking I'll remember exactly how I did the different stitches... Some tests didn't work out so I'm just going to show the parts that were successful, not the whole sampler.

 First of all, I learned the figure 8 stitch. Above you can see it done in orange yarn to the left and mixed orange and purple yarn to the right.

 I also made a variation making a row of figure 8 stitch (orange) followed by a row of basic knit stitch (e wrap, purple).

 I then made yet another variation of basic knit stitch (e wrapped). Let's see if I remember... I made a row of orange and then added purple to every other peg (odd numbers) followed by a row of purple with orange on half the pegs (even numbers). At its best, it gives you a fun pattern as the one you can see on the left side.

 The last thing I tried was making some sort of lacy pattern. I'd seen a YT video about eyelet stitch, but couldn't remember how it was made. So I just made up something, inspired by something faintly remembered from another loom knit video, trying to create a pattern making alternately big and small gaps. You can see the pattern a bit better when stretching out the knitting a bit, like below.

 Personally, I prefer the wrong side of it.

And, yes, I'm doing this without a basic knowledge of knitting vocabulary -- something I realised could be a problem when finding a beginner-intermediate knit loom pattern using knitting abbreviations and when learning that stockinette stitch means slätstickning, which I've of cause heard of but just barely knew what it was. So far, however, my knitting analphabetism isn't a problem, I'm just playing around and don't worry too much about advanced patterns or learning about yarn weights or anything. It's fun, it's easy -- and I'm not that interested in learning to knit as I'm content knowing how to crochet and french knit, so that's enough for me.

Pébéo Fantasy test pieces

I thought I'd better blog about this before forgetting about it. As you can see, there's two more pieces than in the sneak peek posted here. As mentioned in that post, the paint comes with instructions just must follow to the letter in order to get the effects you want so therefore I thought this post would start with my first pieces, which all failed, and tell you what I did wrong.

The first fault I did was not paying attention to the instructions saying mix well. I just shook the bottle and stirred the knitting stick (for applying the paint) around the bottle once. That's usually enough with ordinary paint, but this isn't ordinary paint and you really, really need to stir well as the effects won't appear if the paint isn't mixed properly.

The second fault was taking the next set of instructions lightly. Flat, horizontal surface means that and not just something sort of horizontal and flat-ish. I wanted to paint the bottom of a cab. To keep it horizontal I fixed it onto the table using Tack-It (häftmassa) and moved the cab until it seemed to be horizontal. It wasn't 100 % so and therefore the paint slowly, slowly moved to one side, which ruined the possibility for the patterns to emerge.

The third fault I made was forgetting how slowly the paint dries and thus making the very first piece, the round bronze tag, on an impromptu worktable. When moving it, the charm got rolled over by a paint syringe, got knocked into the wall of the cardboard box and then, finally, was dropped on the floor. You need to work on a table or other space where you can leave the pieces untouched until they harden. And don't pick them up just because you want to look at them more closely, even if they've been drying for two hours. I did that with the piece below and accidentally put my thumb in the bezel, ruining the paint (which was one of my first successful pieces) and having to redo it....

same bezel with glass cab

So far you can see that I've tried adding paint both directly to a cab and to a bezel covered by a cab. You really should do the latter and I'll explain why. First look what happens when I flip the big glass cab from the photo at the beginning of this post:

Whatever pattern there is on the surface won't be on the bottom. When painting the back of transparent glass cabs, it's the bottom of the paint you will see once the cab is being used. It's at least a small comfort that the Fantasy paints have a mica shimmer that makes them nice to look at even when you fail to get the effects desired. These two cabs are still useful even if they're so far from what I wanted to make.

One last fail, which I don't really see as a fail is what Cookson Gold in their tutorial call an amalgamated effect: if you wait too long (like, a minute or two) to add a second or third colour, the new colour will be engulfed by the first one and the result will either be a marbled look (bracelet) or just one colour on top of the other (copper connector). If filling multiple bezels it's better to add all colours to one bezel before moving over to the next. Pébéo doesn't tell you that on the package so be sure to remember this!


But enough with failures -- I've had some very successful results too! And for every failed piece (almost) I've learned something.

These two glass pebbles -- that I made before realising cab painting was a dead end -- might not look very special, but I'm including them as they were my first two successful attempts at using Prisme. You can see the front of the eggshell white and purple cab above.

For most of my tests I've been using 2x2 cm glass mosaic. They're a good, handy size and will hopefully be very useful and versatile when it comes to actually doing something with them. In the samples above I've used two colours in each (except in the apricot tile in the middle of the top row), mixing Prisme with Prisme, Prisme with Moon or Moon with Moon. The only real flop was the red one in the upper right corner: the lighter red in the centre is Prisme, which should've turned bubbly as in the rest of the samples.

I've also filled both tags (need to be careful moving those) and bezels. Here are two examples of that, both using two colours of Prisme and as you can see they've fused together on the brass round in a way they didn't do in the bezel (part of a bangle).

My final samples are both made using Vintaj brass tags. In the first one I mixed three colours of Prisme. Nothing fancy, really. In the second piece I wanted to see what happened when you have a relief. As you need a horizontal, flat surface would the paint migrate from the relief (in this case decoupaged thin cardboard leaves)? Except for the edges, the paint did cover the embellishment well, though I'm not sure it was a good idea to paint on a sealed pendant considering the Fantasy paints are solvent based. Not sure if that explains the lack of pattern in the Moon paint or not.

Now, when I say that the paint is dynamic and moves, it doesn't just mean that it'll flow on a surface that isn't horizontal. It means that the paint changes, morphs during the time it takes for it to harden. The patterns develop up until the paint is dry, meaning the results are unpredicatable. A fun surprise. Below is a photo I took of the pendant above just two hours or so after applying the paint (never occurred to me to snap one right after dripping the paints on the charm). Notice the differences, both in pattern and the proportion between the colours. (The harsh shimmer, however, is due to the artificial light and camera flash as this photo is taken indoors at night.)

It's not a paint for control freaks -- but for everyone who loves unpredictable results and find morphing paints exciting, it's heaven!

Peek at Pébéo

I'm blog hopping today (Challenge of Travel) and waiting for the Pébéo Fantasy paints to cure fully before taking photos, but I just had to post a little sneak peek of my first try at these paints.

This is what you can see on my worktable right now, hidden under a plate to dust, paws and fingers from the drying paint. A couple of the first test pieces failed miserably as I didn't adhere to the instructions well enough (flat, horizontal surfaces really means flat, horizontal surfaces, not somewhat horizontal and mix well doesn't just mean shake the bottle), but the good thing is that the paints have such pretty colours even failed pieces look nice and usable.

As with all effect paints there's a little learning curve and you need to read -- and follow -- the instructions in order to succeed, but it's such fun paints to play with that it's well worth it! I got back down to the bead room more than once because I just had to make one more. And then, later, I went back several times just to look at the paint. It's like the paint's alive, it grows and moves and you can't be really sure what the finished result will look like. It might just be my bad newbie technique, but when mixing colours the final result is always different from how I envisioned it. In a good way, a very good way.

 

Be warned, though: painting a piece goes fast -- especially if combining colours as you have to do it right away to avoid the amalgamated effect seen in the bracelet -- but the paint dries slooowly (and hardens fully first after 72 hours) and it's easy to be tempted to pick up the piece and look at it before it's dry. Don't! I did, fumbled and put my thumb in the copper bezel on the left... Nothing to do, but wipe it clean and do it all over again... Lesson learned -- admire them on the table the first and do not touch until after at least 6 hours (2 hours for Moon and 6 for Prisme to dry on the surface according to Pébéo, others say 24 hours), but preferably more just to be on the safe side. 12-24 hours before touching the paint surface is probably a good rule of thumb.

But this isn't the post for paint tips. Stay tuned for a more in depth look at my first experiments and what I learned from it!

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!

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.