More bracelets

In my more recent online ordering I bought more Soft Flex beading wire. I picked out another trio and a few single spools. For these bracelets I used seed beads, and crystals. The large seed beads are size 6 while the small ones are 8. The funny thing is, some of my 8s have bigger holes than other 8s. For some of my beads it was snug getting the two strands through an 8 while others there was enough space for another strand.

Anyways, here is what I made having fun with a loop pattern to show off the color combination of the beads and stringing wire. The translucent matte seed beads make me think of those "jelly" shoes / sandals that used to be popular when I was younger.

Warm summer nights:




Spring Blossoms: (bracelet, and earrings)





Sparkle:
This is the first one of these loop designs I tried out, and I hadn't used enough Soft Flex. Instead of restringing it and having a random piece of wire, I decided to work the design differently. This is a fun piece to wear with the loopy crystals and the contrasting seed bead strands.

The crystals on this one are Swarovski, 6mm bicone. I also used copper bicone beads from Rings and Things in this bracelet.

Bracelets

Quick post of quick posting, I mostly wanted to show off some more recent bracelets I made (about a month ago). I still have to photograph my most recent stuff (really fun strung bead floating bracelets).

I used Flickr for the images - so click the thumbnails to go to the Flickr item pages, and the "all sizes" icon to see the largest view.

Bracelet 1 - Soft Flex, with crystals and cats eye beads:

I doubled the stringing wire to get that design. I'd originally wanted to use all crystals, but the ones I have on hand wouldn't fit 2 strands of the wire through. But I like the look of the cats eye with the crystals.

Bracelet 2 - Chainmaille stretch

For this bracelet I used a Japanese 6 in one design, the smaller rings being rubber. The rubber rings are small, but they have enough stretch so this bracelet doesn't need a clasp. This bracelet is one continuous piece of weave, which kind of shows up in the photograph. It gets a bit tricky to join the ends together since only the larger rings can be opened.

Working something out

Awhile back I purchased a glass locket pendant from Rings and Things. When I had ordered it I had in mind making polymer clay discs to place in it (which I still might try). But when it came I had fun picking through my bead stash and trying out different things inside it.

The large pink bead is a 10mm glass fiber optic 'cat's eye'. Because that bead is larger than most of the locket, it floats in the center section where the glass is curved out. I think it lends for a neat effect.

I also have some seed beads in there. While they add some interest I don't think I will keep them in there. See, the locket opens, and it's easy enough for these to fall out being as small as they are. I've already picked them up once or twice while playing with the pendant.

So yes, short post is short, but I wanted to show a little work in progress.

Earrings with Beading Wire

 

 (Click image for larger version)

Earrings are something fun to make, especially when I have random extra beads leftover. This weekend I made a bunch of earrings, using bead stringing (beading) wire instead of headpins or regular wire. These are all made with Soft Flex brand, using their Trios packs (3 colors sold together). Most of these I used the Tranquility pack, and a little bit of the Serenity pack.

Bead wise I used a variety of beads. The large dark blue ones are resin, which I picked up awhile back at my local JoAnne's. The other blue beads, both light and dark are glass fiber optic "cat's eye" beads, which I purchased at Rings and Things. I also used some Swarovski crystals which I've purchased from both Artbeads and Rings and Things.

Finding wise the lever backs I purchased from Artbeads, and the colorful French hooks I bought from Rings and Things. The French hooks are niobium, a metal which people with nickel allergies can wear. Though buying the niobium findings is also nice because of the variety of colors available.

These were really easy to make, and would be a great project for someone learning to bead, or anyone really. It's also a good opportunity to practice using crimps. For most of the pairs I simply looped a length of stringing wire through the earring finding, folding it in half. I then slid a larger  bead on both strands and up to near the earring. To keep this bead from sliding down I used a crimp underneath. Then I put various beads on the bottom of each strand.

Soft Flex Tranquility Necklace

I finally got around to photographing a necklace I made about a week and a half ago:

This is the necklace I had made when I posted about the various numbers of strands of Soft Flex that could be strung through seed beads. I used the Tranquility trio pack (shades of blue) for this design along with various blues and purples of seed beads.


The design started with the pendant, which was a gift from my mom awhile back. I'd first wire wrapped it with coiled wire which I wasn't to happy with. Then after I had picked out the Soft Flex blue beading wire I figured that would work well with this pendant.


Here is a closeup of the strands of beading wire with the beads. The little blue beads are size 11 and fit over one strand. The purple lined blue beads are size 8 which fit over two strands. And finally, those large dark purple/blue beads are size 6 aka "E beads" and fit over all three strands.

Note on the images: I used my Flickr account for these, clicking the images will take you to the picture's own Flickr image page. If you want to see the image full size, click the "all sizes" icon above the picture. It should default to full size, but if not click on "large".

Materials:
Stringing wire - Soft Flex Tranquility .019 inches in diameter
Crimp tubes - Size 2 base metal variety pack
Size 11 beads - ToHo Silver lined dark aqua
Size 8 and 6 beads - Most likely ToHo's as well, I've had these in my supplies awhile.
Pendant - Glass doughnut, was a gift.

Bead strining wire and seed beads

Yes, no pretty picture for this post, and it's a short one to boot. Sorry about that.

Anyways, I recently was stringing three stranded necklace with a pendant and seed beads. I used different sizes of beads which gave the necklace a fun look. I figured it would be good to share how many strands could fit through the various bead sizes, which is handy to keep in mind while planning a design. Especially if you would need to buy supplies. (Having stuff on hand it is easy enough to quickly check what fits).

For the stringing material I was using Soft Flex, their Tranquility trio. The wire has 49 individual strands and is 0.019"(0.49mm) diameters thick.

For the seed beads I was using my current supplies, and I'm pretty sure all of them are Toho brand (the 8 might not have been).
Size 11 bead - fits 1 strand of stringing wire
Size 8 bead - fits 2 strands of stringing wire
Size 6 (aka "E") bead - fits 3 strands, with a bit of wiggle room.
(For seed beads the larger the number, the smaller the bead)

With the design I have all three strands holding the pendant, and aside from by the pendant and to finish the ends, I didn't use any crimps. The strands themselves I strung through various numbers of beads *points up*.

New look soon

Quick post of posting. Pretty much I've been thinking about giving this blog a makeover to move away from the Blogger template (the dots do make me think of beads though) and have something that fits me and this blog. Maybe next week I'll start working on something, which might make for some interesting colors/fonts while I'm in the process of updating. At least I have an old private blog I can test stuff on.

I started with my writing blog, seeing as how I already had some graphics to work with from my writing web site. Not that I'm going to go to graphic heavy, but I do want to have something fun.