Sparkly Crystal Wheels

I'm working on series of beaded beads for Bead magazine and these sparkly ones will be the first published.
I began making them in lots of different colours but then ordered some violet crystals just for them to fit in with my new colour in the colour challenge- finally I am on violet (just 2 months behind now!)

I matched them with a lovely grey to keep them toned down. My previous use of violet was at the start of this challenge when I was working with yellow so I was looking for a subtler way of using it.

St Petersburg Pots

For the next issue of Bead I'm making little pots using St Petersburg chain- an old project I came up with a few years ago but never did anything with.
So of course I'm working them in orange, brown and yellow- trying to keep to the challenge!

Onye 2- (Tropicalimso)

Well, she's all done and I love her!

In the end I used orange, pink, teal and gold- sunshiny, happy colours.

This will appear as a project in issue 19 of Bead magazine.

Crystal Geodes

More beading today and despite the fact I should be getting on with my latest geometric piece I decided to bead something completely different.

I had the idea for these beaded beads over two years ago when I made my crystal charms and pendants- even though I played around with the idea at the time it's taken me this long to actually perfect the idea - I like to let ideas brew for a while sometimes!

They're easy to make and turn out nice and sparkly- I just need to turn them into finished pieces now and soon they'll appear as a project in a future issue of Bead.

You can see from the orange and yellow I used I'm still sticking to my colour challenge- I just didn't have enough yellow crystals in the size I needed to make them fully out fo those so instead added yellow in the form of some mustard yellow delicas.

Sand as inspiration

Recently I visited South Wold for a few hours and took some great photos of the sand there.
I have to bead a project for the next issue of Bead magazine and thought that using some beads inspired by the sand would look nice.

Here is the main photo of the sand


Here's a closer photo of the sand


Here is a palette I created for using the photo


Color by COLOURlovers

Here are some of the beads I'l be using in my work, obviously I'll be using a lot more of one tube than the others!

Yellow sculptural inspiration

On the way back from Arundel today after a few days working in the office on Bead magazine and on the way back we visited the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood.

It was a lovely place, well worth a visit and despite the rain I really enjoyed walking around the grounds and seeing all of the lovely sculptures in the natural spaces.

I especially loved Declination by Tony Cragg (perfect for my current yellow theme) and Eschaton by Paul Neagu- beads anyone?

More yellow- plato and archimedes beads

More beading with yellow today and as this isn't a colour I usually use, and think I hate, it was a bit of a struggle at first to get up any enthusiasm for it. But once I had I am really enjoying using it.

The main beading I have done with yellow beads so far is to make some of Laura Shea's Plato and Archimedes beads.

So far I've made 4 of them in preparation for my Valerie Hector class tomorrow.

But again, as I said about using yellow for my geometric beaded bead, I'm struggling with just using yellow and end up adding in some gold and violet beads.

I've also ordered some great crystal beads to mix with yellow Delicas for a new geometric experiment I'm itching to try out. I hope to get them Saturday so I can dive in and get beading.

To add to my chores I also now do a blog for my work on Bead magazine and if you're so inclined you can follow me on my 'day job' twitter.