Farewell 2013!

Hello everyone!

Well it's that time again, the end of another year. At this point in time I like to stand on an imaginary threshold and look over my shoulder reviewing the past year while taking an excited peek at the coming year. For me, 2013 was a year of incredible highs and terrible lows with one event that very nearly stopped me beading, it nearly stopped me breathing if I am honest but I am hopeful that 2014 will be kinder to me and that nothing will ever take the shine off my beads. Looking back I can see that I have been blogging for 6 years now and written 152 blog posts. My work has changed and yet stayed the same but my confidence has grown and I have formed some strong relationships with various people and companies in the bead world and although I carry a lot of sadness right now I find myself in a good solid place ready to move into the new year and to bead on. There are lots of plans in the pipeline which I will share throughout 2014 but before I put the lid on 2013 I have a few links and pictures to share - December has been a busy month!

The first piece of news is that one of the Kumihimo pieces I created for Prima Bead has been published in the latest issue of Bead & Button magazine and it made the cover! Looking at that cover really makes me smile and appreciate the good things that happened in 2013 as although I designed the project, it is very much a collaborative piece involving some of the people and companies that I have joined forces with: the tools and the push to learn Kumihimo were provided by Prima Bead, the grey seed beads fit in with my Midnight Garden collection and came from my friend Kandra at Kandra's Beads, the silver flowercup beads are by Preciosa Ornela and came from www.yorkbeads.com, the beautiful clasps came from A Grain Of Sand and of course the project was published by Bead & Button magazine.

In the same issue of the magazine there is also an 'Artist Profile' featuring my recent work and in it I talk a lot about my collaborations with Prima Bead, Preciosa and York including my recent work with striped seed beads and many of the new bead shapes on the market. The hard work of the recent couple of years seems to have come together beautifully and I am very grateful to all of these people and more for giving me the opportunity to show what I can do.

 

Just a few days prior to the Kumihimo project and profile being published in the magazine, Bead & Button also released another one of the projects I created for Preciosa Ornela as a FREE digital download. This time it is a quick and easy bangle that uses the new Pellet™ beads and all you need to do is to click on this link and then either sign in or register to download the pattern.

And a few days before that, issue 7 of Digital Beading Magazine (another favourite of mine) was released and I have two designs in this issue, one of which was shown on the cover of the magazine. Holiday Hearts (shown above) was created for Preciosa Ornela earlier this year as part of my striped seed bead collection but we decided that these quick and easy rustic looking hearts made perfect tree decorations and so I made a few more to decorate the editor's Christmas tree!

The other project that appears in Digital Beading Magazine is one of the designs I created for Preciosa using their exciting new Thorn™ beads and the project includes instructions on how to make these eye-catching bracelets and rings.

So that is how the year ended and today I am reflective and thankful but tomorrow I will begin working on the glittering pile that beckons me and seeing where the path of 2014 leads me.

Happy New Year everyone!

Kerrie ♥

The sparkle shower continues!

Hello Everyone!

Remember in this blog post how I talked about the sparkles that are currently appearing in my life? And how I had decided to adjust my previously carefully mapped course and instead to raise my face, open my arms and dance in the sparkle shower while it lasted? Well, one of those 'sparkles' is my work with Preciosa Ornela and I have to say that not for one moment do I regret welcoming this particular shining opportunity into my life. My first 'assignment' was to show ways to use their Twin™ beads, next came the striped seed beads followed by the neon beads and my latest work for them uses the brand new exciting Thorn™ and Pellet™ beads.

 

As you know, up until recently I have been a hardcore seedbeader and so other bead shapes always make me scratch my head and wonder how to use them, but I had no problem at all with the Thorns and Pellets as they work so well alongside the seed beads. For my first design I used some silver Thorns and mixed them with some plain black seed beads to create the dramatic and spiky looking Thornstar ring and bracelet set.

The shape of the Thorn beads looked so much like petals that I thought I had to try making some flowers with them. So still mixing them with seed beads I made little flowery Thorn Daisy components and threaded three onto black satin ribbon to create a wrist corsage style bracelet. I loved the fluffy look of the centre of these flowers and they were so quick and easy to make that I also made a set of three Thorn Daisy rings.

There are lots of other experiments I would like to do with the Thorn beads but  at that time they were very new and I only had a small supply and so I moved onto playing with Pellets. I soon discovered that despite their unusual shape (kind of squat with a waist) they have LOTS of design potential. I went on to mix them with other beads but for my first piece I wanted to show how they look on their own and so out came Pellet Bangles. I love the way these beads snuggle together!

After all that dramatic beadwork I was ready to try something a little more feminine. So I chose some pale Pellets and mixed them with matte gold seed beads and pearls and a length of cream organza ribbon to create the softly romantic looking Pretty Pellets.

By that time more Pellet beads were available in a greater variety of colours and I was really drawn to the opaque red. I always love the look of black and red together and the way that the seed beads curved and ruffled around the Pellets really reminded me of a flamenco dancer's dress - hence Flamenco Pellets for my next piece.

Having discovered what nice little circles these beads make, I was keen to try them in different colours and rather than making interlocking circles I added a lovely shiny black glass pearl in the centre of each component to make the Pellet Wheel bracelet. In this piece you can really see the way the Pellets nestle into each other's waist.

Moving on from the circles I thought it would be nice to try using the Pellets in a different way and so although they naturally want to nestle, I stood them up straight and edged them with seed beads to keep them in place. There are many different colours to choose from but I thought that these turquoise and silver beads worked really well with black beads and silver findings. Diamond Pellets are very simple to make and they work up into very lightweight and easy to wear bracelets and earrings in no time!

By that point my deadlines were approaching but I still had so many beads and ideas that I had to squeeze in one more design to show yet another way to use these new beads. I also thought that I had used rather a lot of black seed beads so far and so this time I chose opaque blue Pellets and mixed them with silver seed beads and glass pearls to make the Pellet Star bracelet.

And then everything had to be quickly packaged up and sent back to Preciosa for photography. Although I try very hard to take decent pictures, I could never hope to achieve the results that the Preciosa photographer does and  I am sure you can see why I am very happy with our collaboration and why I am looking forward to my next 'assignment'. I have only used a small selection of Preciosa's photos for this blog post, but you can see the full set here. I hope you have enjoyed looking at my beady experiments and I also hope that perhaps these ideas have inspired you to purchase some of these exciting new bead shapes to see how you can incorporate them into your designs. Many of the designs shown above are destined to be shared as magazine projects in the next few months and I will of course give more details about when and where as soon as possible.

 

So that's it for this week and now I am off to catch another sparkle ...

See you next time!

Kerrie ♥