Brick Stitch Bloom!

Hello everyone!

Surprise! I expect you thought I'd given up on blogging, didn't you? Well what with Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Instagram it can be hard to find time to do any actual beading, but I do have a genuine top secret reason for my absence which I will post about in the coming months. For now though I wanted to drop by and let you know that the fabulous Jean Power has a new book out called "Woman's Weekly Guide to Beading". I was very fortunate to be asked to be a guest designer for this book and my project "Brick Stitch Bloom" can be found on page 150.

Jean has nearly a shelf-full of beading books to her name now and this is another great comprehensive book that has something for everyone from beginners up to the more experienced beader. It is neatly broken down into chapters covering the basics of beading, stringing, wirework and woven beadwork. My little flower brooch is in the woven beadwork section of course and it's much easier to make than it probably looks. I have to say that the illustrations in this book are some of the best I have ever seen and the art department has done a marvellous job with my original diagrams that now look really lovely and easy to follow. The UK edition of this book is called "Woman's Weekly Guide to Beading" and the US version is called "Beading Learn It. Love It" so although you might see two different covers (as shown below) they are actually both the same book.

When I was invited to submit a project for the book I was given a specific colour palette to use and the following project brief: design a small floral project that incorporates peyote or brick stitch with 17-19 step-by-step instructions. As you can imagine, this ticked a lot of boxes for me because it is just the type of beadwork I love to do and so I chose to make a 9 petalled brick stitch flower brooch and it took exactly 19 steps to explain how to make it! I used beautiful Preciosa Ornela seed beads in shade numbers 331 19001 46025 (purple) and 331 19001 63021 (green) and added a white glass pearl to the centre. This innocent looking little flower does actually hold a design secret, so if you want to know what that is - go and treat yourself to a copy of Jean's wonderful new book!

See you next time!

Kerrie ♥

New Year - new website!

Hello everyone!

After a hectic close to 2015 I'm finally back to update my sadly neglected blog and the big news is that I am starting 2016 with a sparkly new website! I created my original website back in 2008 using a template package and it was everything I needed at the time, but as things have developed with my little business I felt it was time to have something more professional and so I turned to the guys at Dijitul to help me. If you were familiar with the old website you will notice that the new one looks very similar in content (but hopefully a bit more streamlined!) but it now has a modern e-commerce store section to enable the smooth running purchase and delivery of my patterns.

The photo above is a screenshot of the new homepage but there is plenty more to see such as a new gallery page, an updated published work page and a handy 'Contact Me' box that appears on every page. The intent is for the website to be uncluttered and easy to navigate and so pages have been kept to a minimum with a menu at both the top and bottom of every page to save lots of going backwards and forwards. Most of the images are clickable to enable you to take a closer look and the published work page has clickable links to all of my free patterns that are available from Preciosa and Bead and Button magazine as well as images of all my other patterns. I also have some lovely shiny new buttons at the bottom of every page which will take you straight to my Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest pages, and if you visit the 'Tutorials for Sale' page and click on the image, title or 'More info' section of each pattern you can even like or share the item via Facebook or Twitter!

In other news I'm also happy to report that my Chilli Flower bracelet has been used in the Preciosa Ornela advertising campaign and appears in the latest issue of Bead and Button magazine. I've had a few requests for a tutorial for this design and there is a chance that will actually happen in the coming months but I can't give you any more information yet as we are still working out the final details of where and when.

So that's all my news for now. I'd like to thank you all for reading my blog and for following my beady travels throughout 2015. I'm not 100% sure which direction I will take in 2016 but I have lots of ideas in the pot so it should be another interesting journey and I hope that you can stay with me to see what happens next. I wish you all a very Happy New Year and I hope that 2016 holds many contented hours of beading for you.

See you next time!

Kerrie ♥