It is has been half term this week so jewellery making has had to take a back seat to all the other things in life, like washing school uniform, days out, having friends to play and had I already mentioned washing school uniform? I can’t believe they have so much stuff.
I bought a new jewellery tree to display my earrings. I think it is absolutely gorgeous and tree-like. I am going to get some brightly coloured stones to go in the dish at the bottom to help weigh it down a bit.
Now I just need to find a fair to sell all the earrings!
This week was week 5 out of the 6 week course. Yet again we had great fun with lots of chatting and drinking tea and eating biscuits. There was even time to look around the shop and buy more beads. I can’t believe that next week is the last class.
I made the bracelet in class, although the main aim of the class is to learn the knotting technique and not to actually make the jewellery I still manage to make a bracelet each week. I used 33 polaris glass beads in red and yellow as well as 3 wooden beads. The colour has come out really badly in the photo as the cord is the same purple as the photo below. The knot is the flat or square knot used previously but with beads threaded onto the cord before you tie the knot. You can put a bead on one cord as you knot in which case you get an alternating pattern of beads (as above).
The other option is putting a bead on both of the travelling cords before tying the knot, this gives a parallel pattern of beads. I had a go at this technique when I got home.
I used seed beads in 4 different colours and also put in a few spirals for decoration. The seed beads give this bracelet a completely different look, it is far more delicate. I even experimented with doing the spirals in opposite directions. It is a shame the button-hole is too big, I will have to see if I can sew it closed a bit smaller with some matching thread. It looks like getting the size of the button-hole right is going to take some practise.
When you put beads on the travelling cords it spaces the knots out and you can see the core thread between the knots. I think I will have to have a go a using a contrasting thread for the core to see what it looks like.
notanotherbead 