Spreading the Prettiness!

I do feel like I've utterly vanished from the online world lately, however, I'm now back and ready to go!

My bracelet has recently spent a couple of weeks with Caroline who runs Red Moon on Folksy, a lovely place to go if you're looking for a unique gift.

With Caroline, the bracelet had an adventurous week, spreading its prettiness all around:
A trip to the park


A bit of football!


"It helped push my youngest son to school to pick daughter up, it did a bit of gardening, went for a Chinese, a walk in the woods, had a picnic and played a bit of football! My daughter also had a little wear."



Walking in the woods


Chinese!!!





















The bracelet is off on a new adventure now; if you would like to take part then leave me a message!

I love chain :)

I've been making some new necklaces lately, much simpler than my usual fully beaded designs but striking for all that. I'm trying hard not to just steal them myself...

Though to be honest one of the things I love about making jewellery is the ability to always make a piece of jewellery to match an outfit - even if it's only half an hour before I go out (which has been known!).

For the new necklaces I've been using sterling silver chains as a base and making a beaded pendant to go on it. Generally I'll choose a colour to base the necklace around; sometimes based on a particularly lovely bead that I want to include, and then build the pendant around that colour using glass beads, wire and chain.

This is one of my favourites:I love it partly because of the colour - I think the mix of turquoise and blue works really well, but I also love the little heart pendant that I added as a focal point. The chain that this one is on is a spiral chain; it's a bit more interesting that a basic curb chain and looks really pretty.

One of my other favourites is this purple one:My favourite thing about this necklace is the little cream dove pendant. It's so pretty and goes really well with the purple and white beads which made up the main part of the necklace. I hung this one on a snake chain; it gives a really different effect from the spiral chain I used above as it holds its shape more (you can see the way it curves around rather than hanging to a point) and makes the chain more of a feature of the necklace.

What do you think?

Help to Spread the Prettiness!

I'm looking for volunteers to take part in a bracelet walkabout...

I have this very pretty bracelet which sadly has been languishing at the bottom of a box for some time now. This is a very sad state of affairs as this bracelet's whole purpose in being was to be pretty and to sparkle on a wrist somewhere, and to soak up the admiration of everyone who saw it.

I feel it's time that this bracelet was given a chance to fulfil its purpose, but for this I need some help and that's where you come in...

Basically the idea is this: You get the bracelet for about a week, during which time you wear it somewhere nice and take a photo of it looking pretty and sparkly and generally doing what pretty things do best. Then send me the photo and a little write-up about where it has been that week and the prettiness that it has spread around, and I'll post it here so that we can all appreciate the prettiness.

Then I will send you the address of the next person in the list and you can post the bracelet onto them, and the cycle continues...

If you are interested then send me an email, a folksy message, or leave a comment here, and I will work out an order :)

Help to spread the prettiness!

New Bracelet Design :)

I was feeling very crafty this weekend and as a consequence I spent a large part of my time sat on the lounge floor surrounded by beads :)

I wanted to make a bracelet using a spiral rope chain but didn't just want to do a basic design. The spiral rope looks like this (right). There are two main parts to the rope, the core and the outer spiral. When making it, each stitch adds one bead onto the core and one 'layer' onto the spiral (I'm planning to do a proper tutorial for this soon).

I decided this time to vary the design slightly by making the outer spiral very big and floppy, adding a lot more beads than I normally would. I finished it off with a sterling silver toggle and fell in love with my pretty purple bracelet. It was so nice that I made a second one in blue the next day (which is in my Folksy shop) but the purple one is all mine!

My Folksy Favourites!

It's Tuesday again (the weeks are going too fast!) and I've been roaming Folksy finding more gems for you to feast your eyes on.

My first item this week comes from Niche, a gorgeous name for a fantastic shop. Stocking a variety of items, from amigurumi dolls to pendants to notebooks, this is the place to go if you're looking for something a little bit different... Being a sucker for stationary, one of my favourite items has to be this funky notebook.
My next item comes from Blue Fish Handmade, a little haven of crochet craft. With bright and funky colours that would brighten up anyone's day, if you're looking for something stylish to keep warm or decorate your home (like the little mice!) then this is certainly the place to go; take a look at these wrist warmers...
My final choice for this week is somewhat appropriate with Valentine's day fast approaching... Molly Moo Designs is a gorgeous gorgeous card shop, fantastic quality, great value and novel designs: what more could you want? My favourite card this week is this Valentine's offering.

I hope you like these, and there's plenty more!