Oops. I did it again. I left the blog blog less for over a year.

So much has happened over the last couple of years. Our tiny grandson has become a terrific 3 1/2 year old, and we had an addition to our family. Our precious grandaughter who is already a year old.

Both are adorable. We have just purchased a motor home, so we hope to be able to take the kids on mini adventures over the coming months too.

On the bead front, I have discovered some very talented local artists who I have started to buy from, and my collection of beads and focal pieces just gets bigger and bigger. Stephanie Dieleman is one of these local artists. She makes beautiful lampwork beads, such as this one, which I kept simple, adding a gold coloured chain.

Elsie Smith is another local Artist. She makes polymer clay focals that are out of this world. I have quite the collection. Here's a piece I made with one of her beautiful creations

I, of course, continue to buy beauties by Lorraine Dowdle and Natalie Fletcher of Peruzi, and attempt to work my magic on these. Here's one of my latest pieces using Lorraines lampwork beads

And a piece using one of Natalie clay beauties. 

And of course I still make jewellery that use only seedbeads with crystals, pearls or fire polished beads. Here are a few of my latest that I love. 

I think that's enough for now.  We are heading out now to pick our grandson up for a 2 night sleep over :-)

Beading Inspirations challenge, July/August 2015

So, I didn't blog again. I have been enjoying lots of beading, creating some fine designer pieces which I will share with you later. But for now I wanted to share a free tutorial with you, by Jeanne Evans. Jeanne was kind enough to allow this tutorial to be used in a challenge to give people inspiration, in a group on Facebook that I am one of the admins for. I asked members if they would like to share a free tutorial that uses not too many bead types, that beginners and advanced beaders could use. Here is what Jeanne shared.

 

 

Welcome to my Lil Grandson, and to my new venture in Bead Embroidery

Oh Lord, its over a year since I last blogged. A lot has happened in that year. In July 2014, my gorgeous little Grandson was born. My little Landyn is now a few day of being 9 months old, and is a little star. He speed crawls everywhere, and is almost always smiling or laughing. His Grandad adores him, and he adores his Grandad - just this week they spent many hours pulling faces at each other - it was hilarious to watch. Landyn has made a huge difference in my life, and each time he goes home I cannot wait for his next visit.

On the bead front, I decided that I wanted to try something new. I attempted bead embroidery, and to date have made three pieces, 2 of them quite large and pretty spectacular for beginning attempts. I decided to challenge myself to make a piece a month for this year, and I did make Jan, Feb and March, but when I began April's, I forgot that I was going to bead embroider, and began bezelling the piece I chose, so it ended up a beautiful piece, but not bead embroidered. Unless I manage to do something in he next few days for April, I will have to forget a month and pick up my challenge in may.

I will finish todays post by showing you a few of my favourite pieces from last year, and although I am going to make no promises to keep this blog up to day, I am going to try.

Here is my entry for the Freeform Peyote Stitch Bloghop Challenge. Its my second freeform peyote piece, and it was only when it was finished that I realised it isnt really all that freeform at all. Its almost a traditional peyote stitched bracelet with embellishments, but I love it anyway, and its a learning process.

This is a follow on from the green piece, named 'Spring Green' in my previous post, and keeping in the seasons theme, I have called this one 'Summer Fun'. It shows the sea, glistening with 4mm bicones, there is a starfish just at the waters edge, and the sun shines in the sky, a faceted glass bead, with rays of bugle beads. This was fun to make, and now I have to follow up with fall and winter freeform pieces :-) Hope you like it.
Here is a list of all other entries to visit.
Mandi Ainsworth
Karen Williams
Bobbie Rafferty
Sarah Meadows
Katherine Gale
Leanne Kirsch
Jean Hutter
Nancy Dale
Judy Riley
Natasha Wiegelman
Pam Chesbro
Stephanie Woods
Romana Tschunko
Mary Harding
Melody Marie Murray
Shirley Moore
Marj
Sally Russick
Therese Frank
Tanya Goodwin
Christine Altmiller
Lea Paličková
Ivona Šuchmannová
Jennifer Chasalow
VanBenschoten
Tammy Bowman 
Lori Callahan
Tami Norris
SaraBeth Cullinan
Julie Schmidt Bowen
Bette Greenfield
Kay Haynes
Alisa Lehman
Tammi Clapper

I have started to try freeform Peyote stitch. To date I have made 2 bracelets, the first seemed to be a great success via facebook, in that it got lots of positive comments, and spurred me on to do another. The second, you will have to wait to see, its going to be revealed on 23rd of this month, as part of a challenge I decided to partake in. Heres the first, I call it 'Spring Green' since it is green and reminds me of spring. The next one is 'Summer Fun' but thats the one you have to wait to see. Call me a tease if you like LOL

My personal challenge for 2013 is to make at least one piece of jewellery each month, in that months birthstone.

January saw the start of this challenge with the Garnet. I made 2 necklaces, with garnet chips and ruby garnet 6mm rounds.

The first has silver plated bead caps, and a silver plated clasp, is a simple strung necklace, with 3 sets of 3 beads strung in between garmet chips.

The second features a pretty and complimenting lampwork bead made by one of my favourite artistes, Lorraine Dowdle. It has sterling silver bead caps either side of it, and is strung between garnet rounds and chips. This portion of the necklace was then added to some sterling silver chain. Its pretty cute in my own opinion

Here is a picture of the rest of my bracelets from my Bracelets for a Year challenge of 2012. I got waylaid with various things in life, and kept forgetting to post here. This year I am going to do y best to post and keep this blog up to date. I have become a member of a couple of beading/jewellery making blogs on Facebook, and have not only set my own challenge there, but have become a member of a couple different challenges too. Watch this space for those

So. I thought that as I am setting myself new and interesting challenges, I would get this blog up and running again. However, I seem to have lost some of the pictures from here. Anyone know how I can view thwm. I amso seem to have lost the ability to edit posts, I am sure there used to be an edit option. Is this the case. If I cant sort this, there is no point me blogging really, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance  facebook.com/janesjewels

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.