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Friday 27 May 2011

In search of the perfect round

My daughter Arabella, 7 1/2 , has booked Sunday with me for learning how to make a round beaded bead. But guess what. I don't know how to make them. I have been searching around for free tutorials. I have yet not found any. You see, I don't want it to be one where you cover a bead. I haven't even found one I would have to pay for. Well, one I was tipped about by Patricia. Thank you so much! But I did think it was a bit pricey. Max 6 dollars is what I think it should cost. Max!

So what do you do at times like this? I am the kind who try to figure it out by myself. The acid yellow-green one and the green-white one are made from tutorials on YouTube. All the others are my own experiments. Made in peyote stitch. None of them are perfectly round. But they are rather sweet anyway.

By the way, have you seen the animated tutorials by Bead Animation? This is the one I used for the green and white bead.

I just love the style. Super clever use of Flash. (I used to know Flash, now I have "forgotten" it since I haven't used it for about ten years.) On YouTube there is a whole bunch of them. And it looks like they are opening a website soon. www.beadanimation.com

Please, if any of you have a good instruction or tutorial for a round beaded bead, please give me a call. It doesn't have to be made in peyote. Or if you can tip me on where I can buy a good one. I'd be ever so grateful!

Have a great weekend!
Malin

Tuesday 24 May 2011

I was chosen Designer of the Week at Art Bead Scene


Thank you so much Jennifer! This feels really great. I had a few days of feeling great doubt about myself and my abilities. For no particular reason really, just coz I do sometimes. I mean I question myself! Not feeling like I do enough, do interesting enough, develop, amaze, inspire and so on. I bet you all know what I am talking about. I've been given great support from dear friends and the community over these days. Wise things have been said. Thank you all of you! And now THIS is the icing on the cake! Feels great! :-)

Here's the link to Art Bead Scene.

It's a bit funny that I went through a questioning period, coz I am really thrilled about the design of this bracelet. I love how it looks, and it feels great to wear. And now I do wanna try the concept with other components. I guess the doubting is not related to reality and the now, but to how you feel inside. It's about the future, about longing, wishing, analyzing, developing, thriving, visions and so on. What's your thought on the subject?

Wow Give-Away by Barbara Lewis!

Just the color I am in love with right now. Acidic yellow-green! I wanna win them. If you do too, you should head over to Barbara Lewis's blog Painting With Fire and do what she asks you to. Good luck!

Saturday 21 May 2011

ABS May Challenge - Bracelet

My contribution for Art Bead Scene's May challenge is a bracelet. I named it "Hide and Seek", just like the painting by Berthe Morisot. Read about the piece and the challenge here.

I just completely fell for the color scheme of strong green, very light grey and touches of ochre in this painting. Or at least those where the colors that stood out to me as the ones I wanted to work with. A somewhat unusual combo in a jewelry piece maybe. But oh so yummie!
I am very pleased and excited about the solution with the three leather ribbons/bands going in and out of Round Rabbit's beautiful porcelain rings. They are playing hide and seek with each other :-) .

Look, I tried to take a Lorelei Eurto-esque picture of the bracelet on me. I really like her style when she photographs the pieces on herself. No one was there to help me, so I ended up with a bunch of pictures of the wall behind me and a little bit of my nose in one corner. I didn't bother with setting up the camera or programming it for delayed exposure. Simply held it myself with a stretched out arm. This one worked out ok anyway.

The pattern on the porcelain rings works perfectly to capture the romantic atmosphere in the painting, don't you agree.

The green dangle bead is a Swarovski milky green facetted round. The rest is copper components.


If you wanna see all the current contributions for the challenge go here.

And don't miss the blog hop about all the contributions that has been blogged about, starting at Art Bead Scene at the end of the month.

All my best! Have a great weekend. Mine will be very busy :-)

Thursday 19 May 2011

GiveAway at Art Bead Scene

If you haven't been there yet, you have to hurry over to Art Bead Scene and the most amazing giveaway with a chance to win L O A D S and L O A D S of gorgeous Art Beads. The picture above only shows a few ...

Swedish Lesson #6

Wednesday 18 May 2011

BTW - New Necklace

Necklace is finished!
Name: Let The Light In
Materials:
Handmade custom made focal by Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati
Pearls
Yellow milky Amber nuggets
Citrine irregular coins
Raw Baltic Sea Amber nugget
Prasiolit irregular mini coins
Czech glass beads
Chain


Sunday 15 May 2011

Please arrive soon!

Oh how I long for you all!
I've gone too far this month, I know.

And this one was missed out from the above collage. A custom one that has been made in my own ring size! By Maire Dodd.

Saturday 14 May 2011

GiveAway at Gardann's


Can you believe it? I DID win them! Aren't I the luckiest. Come come come to me now my little darlings!

My my my, the yummies you will have a chance to win if you head on over to Gardanne's blog. I certainly wish it will be me!!!

Friday 13 May 2011

BTW - Bead Table Wednesday - 11th of May

Re-posting the pictures from my latest post that got lost in the recent blogger-trouble.

Gorgeous focal by Erin Prais-Hintz, alias Treasures Found, alias Tesori Trovati.

Idea for bracelet for ABS's May challenge. Porcelain Rings by RoundRabbit.
Enameled green beads by PaintingWithFire.

Tuesday 10 May 2011

What a Give-Away!!!!!!!

A new amazing give away collaboration at Lorelei Eurto's blog. This time it is Kylie Parry who has donated these totally super adorable charms.
Hurry over to Lorelei's blog now if you want to have a chance to win, it's only on for 24 hours.

For your information I myself really really want to win them! But did you even doubt that? I bow myself at Kylie's talent and skill.

Friday 6 May 2011

I got carried away

Heather Powers just listed the umbrella pendant in her husband's Etsy shop Jess Contreras. The pendant is a collaboration between her and Jess. I saw it 3 min after she had posted on Facebook about it. OMG! What do you do when you fall in love? as Dionne Warwick sang. I saw it together with Gaea's wonderful cloud which I've been wanting to get for some time now.
So there was no reason to hold back anymore. I had to get them both. Oh, and of course a few more things ended up in my carts ...

Does this happen to you too? That you get an idea for a piece just by seeing a component? It has happened to me a few times before. It's a wonderful sensation. Like you are in flow. I mean - I already know the name of the piece ...

Have a nice weekend!

In the middle of ...

P.S.
Now it's done!

... changing my lists of blogs I follow.

Some people have made me aware of that my blog loads more slowly since I changed it to have all the blogs I follow in one list in my side bar. That is of course not good. And now I am changing that.

I am trying to divide up the list, so I have one in my sidebar of the ones I am particularly fond of, and then a separate page with the complete list of all blogs I follow.

As I am still in the middle of this work you might find that your particular blog is not on my list anymore. No! I have not taken you away. It is just a little bit of a messy process, since I didn't think before I started to do the changes. Now I have to manually add some of the ones I took away first. Argh! Please hold on one or two more days.

I hope the final result is going to be a good one. And I am quite strict with the list of my absolute favourites. That list will also change here and there over time. I will try to keep a steady number of blogs there, so if I add one I'll take one away. But always all of them will be found on this seperate page.

Sorry for any inconvinience!

Thursday 5 May 2011

Box - a tutorial

Hi,
I thought I would share with you this awesome way of making boxes yourself. I learnt it at a jewelry camp two years ago from a lady called Tua Holmberg. Thank you Tua! She also runs a webshop for beads and findings. Tuas Parlor. All in Swedish though.
Tools needed:
Scissors, a pencil, a ruler, a weatherstrip tool (if you don't have one, use something similar, hard but not sharp, like a buttering knife for instance).

Time required: Once you know the process, a box with bottom and lid will take you around 5 minutes to make. I promise, it is supereasy!

TIP:
When you learn don't start with your nicest paper. Make one or more test boxes with a simple paper first. And Tua tipped us about using sell-out nicely patterned wallpaper for a budget version once you start on the real boxes. Great tip!
1. Start with 2 paper squares of a rather thick paper. One will become the bottom part of the box, the other the top part. The ones I chose are size 30,5cm/12 inches), which will create a fairly large box.

2. and 3. Mark the center point by using the diagonals of the square. Don't worry about the lines looking ugly. The side where you put this mark will eventually become totally covered, so the mark won't be seen in the end.

4. and 5. Fold over the corners so they meet the marked center point. Be thorough and careful as you are folding to make sure the corners meet as exactly as possible, and each fold will look nice. My way is to start by gently folding the whole corner without fully creasing it. Then I start at the center and go back and forth and outwards to slowly fold more and more until the edge becomes sharp. I then go over it again with my nail or a weatherstrip tool. It is not necessary to use a a weatherstrip tool to mark the folding line for this stage, since the important thing is to meet the marked center point.

6. Meassure a suitable size for what will become the edge/hight of the box. I chose 30 mm for this one. Draw with a weatherstrip tool as you would do with a pencil. This is to mark the folding line, and actually greatly simplify the folding that will be the next step.

TIP:
See that ruler I have. With measures going across also. I love that ruler. I have had it for many years and it is so useful. It is so easy to just place all the "cross-meassures" at the same notch and voilá, you have a perfect and straight strip. And since it is plastic it is absolutely forbidden to use with a knife or scalpel, you don't want to risk to ever create the slightest little mark on the edge. I of course use a steel ruler when I cut paper or card.
7. Now fold all the four sides/edges.

8. Unfold the paper

9. and 10. Cut a slit in all four sides as shown in image 9. They should sit pairwise opposite each other. Look at the pictures and I hope you understand what I mean.

11. Fold like in the picture.

12. And then fold the last side. The construction shall be self locking, but it might be necessary to put a little strip of double side tape to secure it. See fig 14.
13. Now the first box is done! This will become the bottom.

14. Repeat all the steps for the top box. Make sure the strip in step 6 for the edge is 1-3 mm less wide than on the bottom box. Exactly how much depends on the thickness of the paper and the size of the box. This so the top will fit nicely over the bottom. Mine turned out so perfect, it actually creates a wonderful almost sucking noise of a perfect fit.

15. The two boxes are ready!

16. and 17. To create a cushion for the jewelry piece I like to use tissue paper. I start by making it all creasy by making a ball out of it. Then I fold it to the size required.

18. Place the jewelry piece in the box and cover it with another layer of creased tissue paper. As you can see the box I made should be for a larger piece, especially if it would be sent by mail. You would want a tighter fit for that.

All my best,
Malin

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Mini beaded bowls

So while I've been off-line I have been busy with some different things. One of them being bowling ... he he. The result is three beaded mini bowls.

Number one is made in circular square stitch technique.
It all started when I saw this bowl below, made by Dustin Wedekind.
Marcia DeCoster wrote about it in this post on her blog MadDesigns.
I love that bowl. It is sooo attractive.
So I just had to try to make something similar. Of course I did! How could you not. I mean just look at it! The colours, and everything about it. But I tell you, it is NOT easy to create a nice beautiful curve for a good bowl shape. The one you see in the first picture of this post is a bit too steep in my own opinion. And I also had to create a bigger base so it didn't tip over.
This is my first attempt. Ha ha ... it did not work out too well. The colors came together nicely. But the whole structure became too wobbly and uneven. So I took it apart. Lesson learned is to not use triangular or cubic beads. But I actually used triangular ones in my second one anyway. Now I know they are not the best choice.
Then my son Conrad found a picture in one of my books, Mastering Beadwork by Carol Huber Cypher. The picture was of a structure called "Mandala". A circular peyote stitched round. Very pretty. He wanted me to make one. Being in the good old "bowling mode" I directly thought that I could use the same technique, but making a bowl instead. You just have to make sure your new rings are not big enough, so the structure starts to curve.
I couldn't hold back. Had to make one more. Very large seed beads in this one.
And here they are all three again, together. For scale understanding the white-pink one is about two and a half inches in diameter.
I believe I will keep making little beaded bowls every now and then when I need to keep my hands busy but don't want to put too much work into designing one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces. I think they are perfect for little gifts. I have mine on my beading table for now. But why not put them in the bathroom, by the sink, to put rings or earrings in. So they don't "roll" away.

All my best,
Malin

Sunday 1 May 2011

Disconnection

Hi,

I am so sorry! Over the last two weeks my internet connection has been down most of the time. I had a couple of days connected last week, but since then totally "dead". This is due to a badly handled move to another operator than before. It has effected also my mobile telephone, and I have been without that one for over two weeks constantly by today. So I have been basically disconnected from all my social media and ability to communicate to people. The information that has been given to me has been particularly vague and unclear during the whole period, and I have repeatedly been given the impression that "by tomorrow it will work again". I was also not informed in advance that the move would take place so I had not any possibility to inform or prepare in advance.

Again I am very sorry for any inconvinience or questions this has caused for any of you. I have not been able to check any e-mails or other online communication channels. I am saying that cause some of you might wonder why I haven't been in contact with you or why I didn't answer any mails.

Again I am so sorry. And I am extremely upset by this myself. It has caused me lots of stress and inconvinience. And by today I still have no idea when things will work again. I still don't get any clear information, and the persons who are responsible just don't take the responsibility you could expect. :-(

I am writing this on a different computer than my own. And I have only one hour. So now I am trying to take care of the most urgent things.

Please hold on! I'll be back!