Falling Leaves

As you are aware I am an Artbeads Design Partner and take part in their blogging program.

Their recent themes have been Spring and Summer and you guessed it the current theme is Fall.

It's actually Spring here in Australia so I am surrounded by beautiful flowers, buzzing bees and the air is filled with pollen and the scent of native blossoms.

Reflecting on Autumn I have named my piece

Falling Leaves

As soon as I saw the gorgeous ceramic pendant I knew I had to have it!

The peyote "butterfly bail" was created using a gorgeous pattern from Kassie at The Beading Butterfly and is the first bail I have stitched of this kind.

The pattern for the bail called for delica beads but to compliment the St Petersburg necklace, which I think is reminiscent of falling leaves, I used size 11/0 seed beads instead.

To compliment the black diamond within the pendant I added some black ceramic beads.

I think the Butterfly Bail pattern is more suited for round pieces such as a donut as it tends to sit better but I think I tweeked it enough and it works well!

 

The open diamond toggle was created using a pattern from Diane Fitzgerald's inspiring book,

Shaped Beadwork.

This is the first time I had attempted 3 dimensional peyote (other than a round toggle) and I am super excited with the final result!

I was a little apprehensive about trying this technique as the steps always seemed a little advanced for me so I was really surprised to discover how easy it was. I will definitely be making more!  

The pattern for the open diamond also called for delicas but again I felt matching the beads to the necklace provided continuity.

 What do you think?

I think the piece has a little Japanese feel to it.

♥

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Disclosure: I am a reviewer of Artbeads.com products and a participant of its blogging program. I received all the components free of charge. This post reflects my honest opinion and Artbeads.com is not compensating me for my endorsement as it pertains to the products received and reviewed.

Fashion Colorworks... done and dusted

Well I feel very relieved to have finally emailed my entry for the Fashion Colorworks competition ... fingers crossed the email goes through ok and I have met the deadline taking the time difference into account.

I ended up choosing the Turquiose, Amparo Blue and Pink Champagne colour combination

I am pretty happy with my final piece but unfortunately I had to photograph it at 11.45pm so my lighting was obviously rather bad and the picture quality isn't the greatest which won't help my entry any. I got home tonight and took some better photos but they are not much better...

Anyhooo I feel good in myself that I finished the piece as I was feeling really low that I had been slack and not worked on it.

So without further ado here is my piece which I have titled 

Shoreline Romance

I made the glass fused cabochon using one of my friends broken lampwork beads. 

The piece includes St Petersburg and Peyote as well as simple string and bead embroidery.

St Petersburg set

I recently made two pairs of earrings in designs called Evergreen and Spanish Fan (see L♥ving cube beads post) which were stitched using a stitch called St Petersburg.

I loved the beads that I had used in those earrings so much that I really wanted to make a bracelet to match.

So here it is...

Stitched in St Petersburg stitch using 3mm and 1.8mm cubes as well as size 11 seed beads.

I think this set now needs a matching necklace... what do you think?

Mastering St Petersburg

St Petersburg is a stitch I have wanted to learn for some time now. I have always been a little hesitant to try the stitch as it just always looked so difficult and time consuming!

I mentioned this to a friend of mine at my latest bead meet in December and she was kind enough to teach me. I have to say I was really surprised at how quick and easy it was to learn.

So here are the first two pieces I have created. I managed to stitch my second piece in just under 2 hours!

My first piece is a simple bracelet stitched in gorgeous matte black and root beer seeds.

My second piece has been stitched with my favourite bead at the moment - topaz lined seafoam with matching drop beads and gorgeous bronze beads.