OUCH. I see that the last post I posted was week 12 of my challenge, its week 33 now. I have managed to make a bracelet for each week to date, and see that I need to get myself in gear and get a few posts together. I'll make a coiple collages, so that I don't bore you all to death LOL

WEEK 12, Bracelets for a year.

This week I was inspired by Lorraine Dowdle's work yet again. I bought a piece of her work, and with it, I received a spectacular hand torched glass bead from her. I requested permission to use her design, and she willingly allowed me to use it to make a bracelet for myself. I just LOVE the result. Almost lost my eyes in the process, using long lengths of wire as suggested by Lorraine - My version of long was a lot longer than hers LOL, and the wires kept twanging very closely to my face - Goggles next time I think. Anyway, the result is awesome, if a little rough around the edges. Lorraine has since given me permission to use the design in my work, which could prove to be expensive, since I think it has to utilise the gorgeous handmade glass beads yu will see in the next two photos. The first is Lorraines finished version. She called it her 'Galaxy Bracelet'. The second is mine, unfinished at the moment, because it needs a clasp, and I am uncertain as to weather to add a dangle from it as well. Feedback welcomed. 

WEEK 11, Bracelets for a year.

I discovered these awesome fancy jasper beads on sale and just had to get them. I paired them with copper, and was a little adventurous, using some copper wire to make my own links. The result is a bracelet that is approx 7 3/4 inches (20cm). Its chunky without being overpowering.

WORK AND 'REST'

This week at work was a strange one. I work on a urology and gynaecology ward, which is generally very busy, but this week, for my 2 days shifts, it was unusually quiet, but the days were good, plenty of time to actually get to know the patients and their needs. The night shifts were quite different altogether, back to being busy busy busy, and of course, with Saturdays leap forward in time to spring, we lost an hour with which to get the work done. It was a heavy couple of nights physically too. I recently moved away from a job in spinal cord injuries, because of a back injury of my own, and this week I ended up nursing a couple of patients with cord injuries, reminding me of the reason  moved away from the job I loved - that job hurts.

But I finished my shifts at 7o'clock this morning, and was thankful for that. I usually stay up and clean the house, then have an early night, but this morning I was so tired, I just quickly brushed the floors, and went to bed for a couple of hours, which turned into 4 hours. When I got up, I did a little bit of Facebook browsing, and ended up buying more beads - wait til you see them, then I asked my wonderful hubby to take me to the craft store, so that I could buy some more for an order I have this week. He duly did this, and I ended up buying a little more than I needed as usual. LOL

So to begin my week off, I have been jotting a few ideas down for jewellery to make this week, starting of course with week 11's bracelet, which is almost done. I just need to hand make a wire link to get a clasp on it.

I have a few other things to do during my this week of 'rest' too; a little bit of studying, perhaps a little bit of painting - that depends on how my back is, a little bit of walking, and a little bit of photography hopefully - I have a DVD to look through, which will hopefully give me some photography tips.

On my last set of days off, I walked 10km around a local lake, and thoroughly enjoyed the walk, so I fully intend to find somewhere to go this week, at least once. Hopefully the weather will hold up and allow this. I might even take my dogs with me.

I have not only been making bracelets. In between working shifts at Vancouver General Hospital, I have learnt a new skill. Using Peyote stitch, I wrapped a cabochon (a bead with no holes to thread beading wire through), and made a pendant from it. I used black and white beads to match the black and white in the beautiful Moroccan black coral cab. The ring is one I won from another beader. I think they will work pretty well together. I did make a 'chain' which I fitted to the pendant, but have yet to photograph that - pictures to follow.

                                     

Weeks 9 and 10 of my Bracelets for a Year Challenge

Week 9 was a simple, but elegant bracelet made with Night Blue Swarovski pearls and crystals on memory wire. I have made these before, and they have been a successful design. I can do these in any colour that Swarovski makes in the pearls, and can make with any number of links. This one has 3 links. The second picture is of a 5 link bracelet that I made as a custom order, in white pearls.

Don't you just love these? I can change the colours of both the pearl and the crystal to suit your needs.

Week 10's bracelet left me a little disappointed, but it gave me some practice with wire work. I have since dismantled it, and in the process chipped one of the beads :-(

The beads were from Peruzi, made by the very talented Natalie. Peruzi can be found on Facebook. Look her up, her beads are lovely. I have another set here to work with, and a few on order as well.

I would love you to share your ideas with me, if you can come up with a design that will work with these beads.

Weeks 7 and 8 of my Bracelets for a Year Challenge

Oh my word. Time does fly. This week is week 11 of the challenge, yet the last bracelet I left you with was week 6. So here we are playing catch up yet again. You might remember me saying on my last post that the week 7 bracelet was going to be for my niece made with lampwork beads that I had made for me in the colour of Gemma's horse. Well here it is - take a look at the spacer beads too, they work really well with the focal beads. I loved the result. I need to add a topaz dangle to this - but have yet to find one. Let me know what you think.

Week 8 brought out my Tila beads. These 2 holed beads are 5x5mm square. I bought them in 3 colours, and made this next bracelet in a pale green and cream. This is a design shared by Miyuki, the makers of the bead. I decided to use their design the first time I used the beads just to get a feel for them. Due to copyright laws, this cannot be sold for profit, but that's OK, because I love it, and will find myself wearing it for much of the summer I am sure.

WELL, I Think that this week is week 7 of the year - where is it going? I have not made my bracelet for this week yet, as I have been working. I am on nights tonight and tomorrow then off from Thursday at 7am. I will be making it then. This weeks is going to be a special bracelet for my niece. She has a horse called Domino, and I shared one of her pictures with a glass lampwork bead maker - you may have heard of 'Bastille Bleu' LOL. Well, I shared this picture with her, and asked her if she could make some lentils and spacers I the colours of the horse. Wait til you see what she came up with, and I only just realised yesterday, that the spots in the beads sparkle. They are awesome, and the spacers are pretty cute too. I hope that I make a bracelet that does justice to the beads. I have bought some cream Swarovski pearls to go with them, and think they will look good together.

Moving away from beading altogether for a few minutes, I want to share the story of my 'birthday shift' at work.
My birthday was 7th Feb and I worked a night shift on 6th. All was well, my 5 patients were settled quickly for the night, and I was able to sit and get some charting done before midnight. Once that was done, my co-workers and I got together for some birthday munchies - and I stuck to my WW points too. It was turning out to be a nice night.
Then midnight struck, and my co-workers sang (quietly) happy birthday to me, out of tune, but awesome. Minutes later 4 of my patients used their call bells. The first was easy to deal with, heartburn, gave some milk of Magnesia. Second, sitting on the toilet, pooping and puking. Call doctors for an order for anti-sickness meds, draw them up and give them, settle patient back t bed quickly to go sort the others out - more complicated.
Patient 3 is having palpitations, quickly do vitals, she has a heart rate reading 18, attempted to confirm this by palpating her radial pulse - its too quick to count - she is feeling crappy - call the doctor, get ECG and bloodwork stat. Done, meanwhile the 4th patient is in hospital for urinary retention - I put a catheter in her earlier in the evening, and now she feels it isn't draining - it is, but I do a bladder scan anyway, - it reads that she has about 500 mls of urine in her bladder. Hmmm, what to do with this one. Some one else offers help so that I can go to see the patient with heart difficulties. After a bit of trouble shooting they decide to take her catheter out and the patient refuses to have it back in, but still cant pee.
The third patient has her ECG and a heart rate of 160-80 is confirmed, patient is getting more and more agitated, and anxious, heart rate definitely not improving - doctor is here, calling the cardiologist on call. Patient wasn't to take a med that she takes at home (cos she has these episodes at home, and they work for her) Guess what - the hospital don't stock them in tablet form, only IV, and if it is given IV, the patient needs to be on a cardiac monitor - we don't have them on out gynea-urology ward. It takes 3 hours to get her a bed on the cardiology unit - 3 hours of attempting to reassure an anxious patient who cant have meds  (we did give her an alternative medication, but it did not really have the desired effect, but helped a bit)
Once a bed was available, I took her to the cardiology unit, and handed her over to the experts.
Moral of the story - DON'T WORK ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!

I laugh now, but was not laughing on the night xx

Bracelets for a year challenge

So, like I said I set myself a challenge, and this involves making (at least) one bracelet per week for the 52 weeks of 2012, and so far, I am on target. The first 2 weeks I made bracelets from beautiful hand-crafted lampwork beads made by the very talented Nikki at Bastille Bleu Lampwork (week one), and the equally talented Lorraine at Lorraine Dowdle Creations (week 2) The work of both these talented artists can be seen on Facebook, and also on Etsy. They each have their own websites as well.


Week one incorporated HoPpY the frog, some matching flower beads, and copper, all brought together into a beautiful and rather special little bracelet. It has now sold, and I have to say, I am a little sad that HoPpY has gone.





Week 2 is a beautiful bracelet, using a set of 3 gorgeous beads made by Lorraine. They have purple, pink, and green as main colours, with a couple more colours thrown in. To me, it looks like sea creatures caught up in the glass. Again, this one is sold. The first person to see it, bought it. She is a friend of mine. The bracelet is made with the beads wrapped in sterling silver. I would have been very happy keeping this one for myself ;-)

For the third week I made 2 similar bracelets, similar in the way that they each used 8mm Swarovski pearls, an 3mm  spacers. The first used tahitian look pearls with sterling silver beads and clasp, the second used rose pink pearls with copper spacers and clasp, making two strikingly different bracelets. They are both for sale, the silver for $30, and the copper for $15. Yes silver is that much more expensive, I can see why there are lots of artists out there using alternatives to silver these days. For me, I only just started using sterling silver anyway, so I have not had to adapt too much.

Week 4 was a challenge in itself. I decided to get my wigjig out, and try to make some fancy links, as shown on 'wigjig.com' The lnks worked well, but the bracelet was a little on the large side - about 8.5 inches, hehe. So I turned that into a necklace, and using the same type of bead made a bracelet with one bead, and 3 strands of silver plated chain, with a fancy silver coloured clasp and I loved the result. The beads are red faceted glass - nice for valentines day.

For week 5, I used up some old chain links that I bought a long while back to make Alex's hearts bracelet (see post written on         ). I added a clasp in the same gunmetal colour, and hung a lampworked glass heart from it. The heart was purchased from Bastille Bleu, the same person who sold me the beads for my HoPpY the frog bracelet. It is a simply made bracelet, that, in my opinion, will give its wearer many favourable comments, and a whole heap of pleasure.

Here is the  bead in close up - I am sure you will agree that it is lovely.







And so we come to the current week. I was feeling a little uninspired to begin with, so when I went up into my 'studio' - did I tell you that I now have a studio? well, its a space behind a curtain in my spare room, more than a studio, LOL, but its what I like to call my studio - feels a little more special that a closet then, hehe.

Anyway, where was I - Yes, a little uninspired - faced with a wall of recently purchased beads and wondering what to do with any of them, so I plucked these rectangular beads from the wall. I love the mixture of greens and beige in them, and put them together using silver plated wire, and 6mm twisted jump rings. From the jump rings I hung Swarovski bicones in two sizes (4 and 6mm) and two colours. I cant remember what the beads are, they are dyes something - I need to take a trip to the beadshop, and find out - oh woe is me!!! I will let you know as soon as I get it checked out - unless of course any of you know. Well, here is the finished item.

More next week. X

Wow, its a long time since I did anything on here, maybe its time to get back into my Blog. From sunday morning, I have 6 days off, I am going to get a few recent pictures on here, and start Blogging again. I have done a lot since my last post back in 2010. Changed jobs, got a page on Facebook to display my jewellery, still not selling much LOL, but I keep some of it for me hehe.
It was recently the 25th anniversary of the day I met my husband - he bought me a beautiful diamond engagement ring. Lord knows, he has a job on his hand now, to top it in July 2014, when it is our 25th wedding anniversary hahaha.
Well peeps, its 11pm, I am off to bed for now, but make a promise to start Blogging again next week. S
I will start with sharing the challenge that I have set myself for the year.
Watch this space X