A funny necklace

Today I want to show you a funny necklace. I made a lot of sparkling beads out of clear glass and murrini and some spacer beads in matching colors. Half of them are covered in pixiedust to achieve a nice little shimmer. Then I strung the beads on beading wire. 
Here are some pictures:

This beautyful necklace is available in my Dawanda Shop.

Some BHB available at Dawanda

Hello again,

Yesterday I promised you that I write a new entry today. I put some Big Hole Beads in m Dawanda shop.

Here is the link to my Dawanda Shop

And here are some of the listed items:

Go to my Dawanda: Happy shopping!

It has been a while...

...since I posted the last time.
Winter and spring are over and I had no new post. Shame on me.
My husband and I are building a new home. It is interesting to see how the house is growing. But it is also very time consuming.

Making beads brings me my inner balance. For now I show you some of my latest bead sets.

A set of petal beads

Lightly swirled white/green beads

Funny set of millefiori beads

Small striped lentils

Big set of small beads

I will show you more of my beads tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Finished!

After my thumb had healed I was able to torch. But unfortunately the weather had changed. It was freezing cold and snowy. To cold to go to the garage and do some lampworking.
I can´t wait till next year. My husband and I going to build a new house. There will be a seperate room for me and my torch. Yay!!!

The custom order I received is now finished and has been sold already.
Here are the pics.

 

No beads yet

I´m so frustrated.
After I received a lot of custom orders for BHBs I felt really good.
But then I cut into my thumb. It was a bad cut, and I had to go to the doctor. A huge bandage restrained me from torching.
Now it is about two weeks later and I am ready to go to the torch. But in my mind is a big hole. I have to finish a big order this week and I can´t come up with a design yet.

So of to the torch - playing. Hopefully the muse come along!

New big hole beads

Hello there,

I just wanted to show some big hole beads, that I will list in my dawanda shop.

They will be available this evening. 

Scary

I know, I have made suggestions to upload some stuff to my dawanda shop. 
But I didn´t manage to take good photos of the beads. The sun is hiding behind clouds and my little camera needs much light to make reasonable photos. 

The last days I spent making big hole beads. They become a weired addiction to me. At first I really hated making these, but now I have to remind myself that I need to make something else. 

As soon as can do the photos, I will post them here and list them in my shop.

It´s cold outside!

Hello there,

I´m doing business as usual. That means that I´m doing my daytime job and make beads. But, as the title says, it is freezing cold outside. And since I´m torching in my garage I can only manage to make very few beads at a time. Then my fingers get to cold and I have to go into the kitchen and take a big cup of coffee or tea to warm me again. 
The other thing with this season is, that I can´t take good photos. The sun is not as high as in the summer, which gives a weired light. So I have to spent some money to get a light tent. Propably I could make up a cheap one by myself, but then I have no good camera. I will have to get a new one. Decisions, decisions!

BHB and a little tipp on floral beads

This is just a showcase for my latest BHB in, as the title says, ink blue and amethyst.

Tell me, which do you like more, the amethyst or the ink blue ones.

amethyst bubbles

amethyst flowers

amethyst waves

amethyst encased triangles

ink blue unencased triangles

ink blue bubbles

ink blue flowers

inkblue flowers on white

In the last picture you can see, that the ink blue fades away when you use it in small amounts. This happens to every color, that is on the pale side. 

TIPP: You can avoid this, if you use an mathing opaque color instead of white as petal-base. In this case I used periwinkle blue

Sneak peak

Today I have few photos to share. I hope I manage to list this little beauties in my Dawanda Shop later. These are not all of the BHB I made last weekend, but the others still need to be photographed. I am hoping for better weather that I can take photos of them. In my opinion natural sunlight is the best way to achieve a good photo quality.

Last weekend I liked to play around with amthyst, white and a little black.
At the end of my last torching session I discovered a really nice looking effect. As soon as I get the beadies photographed, I will share it with you.
Stay tuned.

New layout

I proudly present the new layout of my webpage. A very good friend of mine had put it together. 
I am an absolutely idiot when it comes to the techinique thing. If my computer doesn´t run, I am o my heading of to my darling husband and beg him to fix it. Same with my cell phone or my little camera. 

So all I have to say now is:

THANK YOU!!!!

Oh, if you want to see her blog then follow this link.

The beginning

Hi there,
The last post is getting old and I have nothing new to tell. Oh, that´s not right. I have something new - but I haven´t took photos. I promise I will take some next week.

As long as this isn´t done I show you somethiong I found in the deep of my computer.

This was the beginning of my passion. I set up a little table in the corner of our kitchen. Can you see the baking plate? That was my suggestion to an fireproof surface. The photo was taken as I upgraded from my little torch with nice little gas cans to a hothead.
If you have ever used these little torches you can find at hardware stores you will love the hothead. 
I like this torch - but if I have enough money to buy an oxygen-propane torch I will surely do it.
Imagine the possibilities...

strange cat

I really love my cat. He is 11 years and stays at our home since 2004. We found him at the local animal home. He was a very strange cat. He jumped at our laps and curred. In the next moment out auf nothing he began to hiss at us. Very confusing. Now he is a really cuddly cat and watch TV with my husband and me. But sometimes, yeah sometimes, I want to launch him into outer space. That are some rare moment e.g. when he brings us rats (2 last week). But then he is the cutest thing I know.

Can you find the cat on the following photo?

This photo was taken while our sweet cat ran across our home office.

Here are all the shots I have taken with my phone.

chainmaille and pain

These are necklaces I made a couple of years ago. As I searched the web for any information about making silver jewelry, I found a site with instructions and tutorials about chainmaille.

I thought I should give it a try. It is a very nice technique and is easy to learn. But if you do for a couple of hours you can´t do anything with your fingers.  This is because you are holding your tools all the time. One pair of pliers in your right hand, and one in your left. I highly recommend a lot of breaks while you are working.

Take a cup of coffee or tea (for me coffee – but my hands doesn´t begin to shake from it).

This is something I would advise every craftswomen or –men. Because if you are working with tiny material, you want to get closer to your object. Then you round up your shoulders and this can cause pain. Take a break – stretch your entire body (stretch your hands, too) and then go back.

Have you ever had problems because of torching a quite a while?

New set

I finally managed to make a whole set. I have some struggle to finish them. Everytime I begin a set, soon I loose myself in experimenting.

Mhmm… What if I add this color. Normally I would do some dots… But today I want scrollwork.

And then I have a set that is not finished and a lot of beads that are born by an experiment.

This bead set I am very proud of. It combines some nice petalbeads and half-and-half designs with a lot of dot patterns and a little bit of srollwork. All together there are 20 beads in this set. Normally I would make some spacer, but this beads are on the small side. So I am not going to make any spacer. The measure     from hole to hole and      across the thickest part of the bead.

I named this set cream on top because I reminds me of butterscotch toffees or a big Latte Macciato.

Knotting a necklace

The last few days I was busy to knot a necklace for a customer. 

Her necklace with amathyst gem stones broke one morning and all the pretty little gems flew around in the bathroom.

It was strung on a thin silverwire and the rough edges of the gems weakened the silver and it broke.

I used pearlsilk to string it and made a tiny knot after each little bead. This is very time consuming, but the result is great.