OTTBS Earring Challenge - Week 3: Ellad Fan Earrings

Although slightly behind in this challenge, I am enjoying perusing the many tutorials on offer by some wonderful designers.  This weeks designer is Ellad2.  She has an incredible arrangement of tutorials on offer and each one comes with detailed instructions and loads of photos so that if you are a visual learner like me you can easily follow the directions.

Following on from my experimentation with Preciosa Super Duos and the Twin Beads earrings from Weeks 1 and 2 - I decided to try Ellad2 fan earrings tutorial.  These were fun to make and I could see that I would have fun with this design in the future.  Here are my Bronze Fan Earrings.  

Silver Cuff Series - Mini Cuff

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies ... Aristotle

I am lucky to work with a group of lovely ladies - they are warm, generous and kind - who possess both inner and outer beauty and are good friends - it makes going to the office a pleasure.  We share many fun times and every morning spend 5-10 minutes together for a quick coffee and time out session.


One of these lovely ladies recently had a birthday - to celebrate I made her a mini-cuff ,,, her response was overwhelming ... yes she loved it!

Design:  Caron Michelle
Technique:  Erin Simonetti Warp Management Technique
Materials/Concept:  Channel cuff with Swarovski Crystals, miyuki delicas and beads and S-lon cord.

First day ...

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time ... Thomas Merton 

The past couple of days have been crazy ... literally!  I felt like I had returned to my childhood and it was the last few days before Christmas ... then Christmas Eve arrives and there is no way you can sleep - it has been that type of crazy! 

I awoke bright and early on Friday morning ... checked my displays, that I had labelled the cuffs correctly,  made sure I had every thing ... then repeated the process again *grin* ... finally after what seemed like an eternity - it was time! 

Incube8r is wonderfully delightful gallery - the senses go in over drive with the array of Artisians that share the gallery space.  Vicki (the owner) and Anna Margot are very welcoming, making you feel immediately at home and a part of the family. 

It was refreshing to be able to sign up with someone that has an understanding of what you are experiencing, Vicki took the time to explain everything, I was introduced to other artisians who were also signing up for the first time - who enthusiastically shared the same anticipation and excitment at being accepted in this fantastic gallery!

Here is my display and my cube!  For those who are local, I hope you visit Incube8r - with Christmas just around the corner you will be guaranteed to walk away with more than one present ... I already have!

Bead Looming Cuff Swap
The looming group I am a member of is holding a cuff swap, these are great fun as you don't know who you are receiving a cuff from until it arrives and you get to know other members of your group.  Our deadline is 31 July so I have to get organised ... this is the pattern I have designed for my swap partner ... hope they like it!

It is titled Butterfly Wings ... and I have a few plans yet for the design finish!

Loomed Beaded Bangle

My latest challenge was to create a loomed beaded bangle.  Inspired by some of my loomy friends designs, I decided to push my boundaries and try size 15/o Miyuki Delica beads (these are much smaller than my usual sized beads).  My next challenge was to create a pattern that would flow and have consistency throughout the design.  This is the result ... enjoy :)

Pattern of the week

As mentioned previously - my beading group has a challenge in progress.  The theme being Art Deco.  I love spending time playing with the pattern programs - it is satisfying to see a picture transposed to a pattern which will in turn be created into a fabulous design.

This is the latest pattern that I have created, it is titled 1920's vogue!  I can't wait to see the pics of this one!

Whats in a pattern

One of my favourite past times is creating patterns - I have a wealth of them sitting on my hard drive which I really need to share .. but (and there is always a but) hold back because they need some adjustment.

This adjustment is called "cleaning up" a pattern.  I use BeadCreatorPro 6 for my pattern designs - this program  has amazing design concepts allowing you to develop the depth and dimension of a design.

I'm involved in a facebook group "Bead Looming Intervention" and our first challenge is to design a an Art Deco inspired piece - this can be in the form of a cuff, necklace, hanging, etc which had some caveats attached to the design.  My piece was taken from this picture:

To commence the process, I worked in Adobe Photoshop to sharpen the image, cut back the unwanted areas and enchance the DPI.  When the pattern was first converted, it had over 100 colours and looked a little like this:

You can see that there is a lot happening in the image, it looks patchy, there are a lot of shadows that the pattern program has picked up and the overall picture doesn't blend.  Imagine looming that!  After many, many hours (I think 5 in total) the colours were blended together, I compared the "real" colours to the ones picked by the pattern program and the final "cleaned" up pattern is reduced to around 35 bead colours and now looks like this:-

If you scroll between the two pictures you can see there are  more clean lines, depth and dimension to the picture and the Art Deco Lady stands out more.

My beads have arrived and I'm now off to stage II of my cuff - the actual looming ... stay tuned.