Dragon Bangle

After about a week of frustrating beading I can finally show you my finished 

Dragon Bangle designed by Nancy Jones.

This bangle was a huge test of my patience and as I mentioned previously I nearly did give up on it!

I went against the advice of Nancy's pattern, and closed the seed bead section of the brick stitch and then joined the two ends together. Not sure if this was a great idea but I was having so much trouble joining the ends first that I thought I'd try something else.

Overall I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. I adore the combination of colours I have used and think they look rather special together.

The bangle still has a tendency to twist - it will sit very flat on a table but once it's on my wrist it twists about. You can actually shape it which just adds to the character of the bangle itself but in terms of sitting stiff and round like a regular bangle then this is a huge fail! I am not sure if I have done something wrong or if this is the way it comes together as it is hard to tell by the picture with the tutorial as the bangles are sitting flat!

I've already had a friend ask me to make another of these in the exact same colours but have told her I need a bit of a break from this design. I took it to work today and another lady has asked me to make her one...aahhhhh!

 As much as I adore the long magatama drops I am a bit sick of looking at them but I can hear them calling my name ever so softly so they will just have to be patient for a few weeks!

If you have made this bangle I'd love to hear your comments!

♥ 

My Creative Space

The past few days I have been working on Nancy Jones' Dragon Bangle which is on the cover of the Feb/March 2011 issue of Beadwork.

I've adored this bangle ever since I received my copy of Beadwork back in late January and thinking this looked like a pretty easy pattern as I feel pretty comfortable working with brick stitch, 

I thought I'd give it a go.

Well.... really struggled getting this piece going. 

The pattern says to keep the tension loose however as you are stitching you naturally want to keep it as tight as possible as the beads are wobbling all over the place.

I've used brick stitch in many designs before but for some reason I just couldn't get the rows to sit well.

Perhaps it was the long magatamas that were making the difference.

I had about 6 or 7 attempts at starting this piece and was nearly going to give up but I am one very determined little cookie so kept persisting with it and voila!

I will admit that I did unpick it again as the size 8/0 seed beads were not sitting nicely which I think is  pretty important as they really are the backbone of the bangle.

I am glad I did because as you can see now they are sitting beautifully!

If you are going to give this piece a go then my advice is that if you are having trouble starting off... 

...stick with it.

Once you have worked 3 or 4 rows the piece starts to sit together quite nicely. 

Be sure to pull your thread as tightly as you can, not loosely as the pattern says and I found that as I was stitching the first few rows, holding the beads down flat on the table with my finger as I weaved through the existing beads seemed to help hold the beads in place a little better.

Also I found adding a stopper bead at the start of the work  helped hold the first few size 8/0 seed beads to sit firmly and not move about.

This bangle is certainly greedy when it comes to beads!

I am only about 3/4 through and my tubes of magatamas are starting to look a little empty so I am thinking that this bangle is going to take more than the quoted 28gm but I  might be wrong.

How's your creative space looking this week?

♥