Wedding Fever!

There seems to be a wonderful happy atmosphere here in the UK at the moment.  After an unusually cold and snowy winter, spring has arrived and now we seem to have been rewarded by endless sunny days of perfect blue sky, trees wearing fresh green leaves, woodlands filled with the scent and colour of bluebells, lanes lined with cowslips, gardens bursting with lilac and laburnum, birds singing their little hearts out and butterflies dancing from flower to flower.  We have two holiday weekends in a row, people are hosting barbecues, neighbours are catching up, children are laughing and 'most' people are smiling - it feels like we have come out of hibernation.  And then there was 'the' wedding yesterday.  We watched The Royal Wedding on a big screen in our local town centre, sat in the market square surrounded by cheering families waving flags and beaming broadly and it felt good.  Talking of weddings ...

(Photo courtesy of Make Jewellery magazine)

... E-Beads recently asked me to design a wedding themed project (using materials from them) to appear in a special wedding issue of Make Jewellery magazine and with perfect timing, this issue of the magazine was published yesterday.

My 'Lace Flowers' use brick, peyote, netting and ladder stitch and (as usual) can be worn in a number of ways.  I used Swarovski cream crystal pearls, tiny seed beads and organza ribbon to create a set for the bride of a choker which can also be worn as a headband, a wrist corsage which doubles up as an anklet (think beach weddings!), a hair comb and a ring - all of these can be made using just the one flower design.

I also made a couple of extra pieces in gold and burgundy to show how easy it is to make jewellery to match the bridesmaids outfits as well as the bride.

Wherever you are in the world and whatever season it is, I hope you enjoyed the spectacle of  'the' wedding and that the romance of the occasion filled you with beady inspiration!

Bye for now!

Another Creative Challenge!

Do you remember last year when Beads Direct gave me a beady challenge?  I really enjoyed that experience of being stretched creatively when asked to design something different, and yet  being bound by certain constraints (such as a particular size and colour of beads to work with) and so I was very happy when a couple of weeks ago E-Beads threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to make their logo using beads!

I knew straight away that the basic 'dandelion clock' would be fairly easy to create in beadwork and I set about using a combination of Swarovski crystal pearls and seed beads to get the look I wanted.

It still took me several attempts (and many hours!) to get the bead count right so that my piece had exactly the same number of large beads in it as the logo and to ensure that it laid flat without too many ruffles.  As I worked, I kept wondering how on earth I was going to create the 'flyaway petals' included in the logo . At first I tried turning my dandelion into a brooch and attached the petals with wirework, but I didn't really like the look of it.  Next I tried creating a flat piece of beadwork with the beaded dandelion and petals attached to it, but I couldn't really see how it could be worn as it would have been quite large.  Then I noticed an image of a little bag with the logo on, on E-Bead's website, and that's when I came up with the idea of embellishing a bag with the logo and so I beaded the nine separate petals and attached them to the bag and then added a narrow beaded handle and some surface decoration.

As I had already created the dandelion and stem, I thought it would give the finished piece an added dimension if I also made that part of the logo wearable and so I attached a brooch/bail to the back of the dandelion so that it can be pinned to the bag, or removed and worn as either a necklace or a brooch.

Below is a picture of the original logo that I was working from and both myself and E-Beads would love to hear what you think of my version of their logo.  Leave a comment on my blog, or email E-Beads via their website or become a 'fan' of their Facebook page and leave a comment there.

Let me know what you think and what your solution to including those tricky 'flyaway petals' would have been!

Bye for now!
Kerrie ♥