Spend a little make a lot, Seed Bead Necklace

Spend a little make a lot is my motto for this post as I've made a necklace that uses only £1 worth of beads.

You all know what I mean when I say that I'm drawn to packs of beads with lots and lots of colours in them. They shine and seduce and when you get them home you wonder what on earth to do with them. Well, this is what I've come up with. I'm in the process of doing the Video clip but for now I'll content myself with showing you the piccies.

I used
20g 6/0 Glass Seed Beads, Dyed Colors, Round, Mixed Colors, about 4mm 1 pack
6 Alloy Chandelier Components, Lead and Cadmium Free, Antique Silver Color, 34mm just 2 of these
Tibetan Silver Toggle & Bar, Lead Free and Cadmium Free, x 6 sets just 1 set

100 metres of Monofilament 0.35mm I used less than 4 metres.

12 crimps

2 jump rings

Here's the video to explain how to do it.

Tropical Orange Necklace

I made this today with some of the beautiful beads in our vibrant orenge selection of big beads. Although I tend to wear a lot of silver I love gold and I teamed it with these oranges to make this statement necklace.

If you want to make one you will need: You will not need the whole pack of any of them.

Spray Painted Acrylic Beads, Oval, Orange, Size: about 25mm long, x 8 for £1.20

Spray Painted Acrylic Beads, Tube, Orange, Size: about 19mm long, 12mm wide, x 6 for£1.00

Orange Handmade Lampwork Beads, with Stripes, Heart shaped x 5 for £2.00

Golden Color, Metal Bead Spacers, 4mm x 100 for £1

1 Metres Side Twist Chain, Lead Free & Nickel Free, Golden Color Size: Links: about 5mm long, 4mm wide, 0.9mm thick. £1

Tibetan Style Toggle & T Bar Antique Golden, pack of 4 sets £1

Tigertail 

Golden jump rings I used some from this pack:

20g assorted Golden, Jump Rings, £1

Golden Colour Brass Crimp Beads, Nickel Free, Barrel, approx 200 crimps £1

Spend less than £10 and you will have enough left to make another necklace. Perhaps not an identical one but a similar one.

Statement Necklace

I've been looking at the necklaces in the shops recently and I've noticed that big, statement, necklaces are all the rage. With this in mind I decided that I was going to design some from the fabulous beads that I have in my stash. You all know the sort that I mean. The ones that you buy because you can'r resist them. Now I have the inspiration I decided that 'resistance is futile'.

This is my necklace:

It is fabulous shades of golden olive. The findings are metal and the necklace has a good weight.
It is for sale on Craft Fairy.

Fair at Margam Orangery

Last weekend, together with tow of my beading buddies I had a table at the Glamorgan WI Craft Bonanza.

Lest you get confused that's not me in the photo but one of my buddies. I was behind the lens as usual and not in the photos.

We decided to go for a white theme this time as we have discovered that the cloths supplied by the WI are a dark green that kills the colour of the beads. These cloths are old ones that I inherited from my late mother so they have been well used and were perfect for our backdrop. One of the other advantages of using old tablecloths is that they tend to be big enough to cover the large tables that are used in the fairs. Big families needed big tables and hence big cloths.

A bit of a close up of the table.

We also decided that this time we would go for a colour theme. In the past we've put our own jewellery in sections but in the spirit of harmony and the fact that we know our own pieces we went for colour co-ordination where possible and I believe that the table looked better for it too.

My only bug with this table is that the cloth was not straight at the front. I thought that it was before we started but as we moved more and more things away from the front of the table we could see that it was slightly skew. Unfortunately, short of taking everything off the table it had to stay as it was. Lesson learnt. Next time have noting in front of the table when we decide if the cloth is straight.

Montersino Rules for Bread. Whoops this should be on my Food Blog!!!

These may well be 'Montersino Rules for Bread' but for me Montersino really does rule over the kitchen. So when I was watching one of his Accademia Montersiono programmes on Alive TV
( Italian language only) I gleaned several things form him that I think are important to note down here before I forget them.

1. The longer the raising time the smaller the quantity of yeast needed.
2. A biga must be left to develop for 18 to 20 hours. 
3. Add the salt at the end of the kneading process as the salt crystals make the gluten strands rigid and inhibit their production.
4. The amount of salt in the mixture affects the time that the dough takes to prove. If you want to lengthen the proving time of the bread add extra salt. This has to be within reason. I didn't quite catch the rule so I'll watch the programme again to get the formula right.
5. Use a medium gluten content flour if you want to have a crisp crust. The protein in the flour absorbs humidity and makes even the crispiest crust go soft.
6. When making a high humidity bread add the water a bit at a time. This can take up to 10 minutes. (Yes really)
7. There are more so I'll add as I go along.

Make a gift box - tutorial

In the last post I gave you a video on how to decorate gift boxes, and this one is on how o make them. It should have been the other way around really but that's femail logic for you.

So this post is on

How to make small gift boxes

It's a video tutorial again so I hope that you enjoy and learn and make lots of boxes.



Get your supplies from

www.craftfairy.co.uk

Enjoy and please let me see the boxes.

Tutorial on Decorating Gift Boxes

I'm a member of a local WI and this weekend I'm going to have a table at a craft show that they're organising at Margam Country Park. We are going to be in the Orangery so, if you are around then please come along.

Now why am I prattling on about the fair when this is a tutorial about decorating gift boxes? The answer is quite simple in a femail logic sort of way.

I am going to sell some of my handmade jewellery and I need some boxes to sell alongside the necklaces and bracelets so I though that I would get on and make some and make a video a the same time.

This is a very simple way of decorating boxes, but don't knock simple as it comes in handy at Christmas when you've lots and lots of packaging to do.

Happy Crafting

Yvonne

Tutorial - Midnight Blue Crystal Necklace

I've finally been able to get this video on Blogger. If you click the link below you will see the video. It's only 5 minutes long.

http://www.youtube.com/v/rK2I0RnMRxo?version=3&autohide=1&autohide=1&feature=share&autoplay=1&attribution_tag=WgZ2EHdDnJFjnWjtE5X_qQ&showinfo=1

Midnight Blue Necklace Tutorial

Boy was I pleased with the outcome of this necklace. It's one of the things that I like the best:

Minimum work, maximum impact.

So what I did was simple.

I made up a set of connectors with a crystal through the centre to make them really pretty.

I used:
Tibetan Style bead frames, x 8 (2 packs)
100 Eyepins, Plated Silver Color, Nickel Free 30mm long, 0. 7mm thick, If you use this size you will not need to do any cutting.
Glass beads - 6mm Abacus 
10 Silver Colour Lobster Clasps, Nickel Free, 15mm
6mm Silver Color, Iron Jump Rings, Closed but Unsoldered, x 120

Tools required:

Round nose pliers

You will have lots of things over to make the next necklace.

Thread an eye pin connector making sure to put a crystal in the centre. Using a round nose pliers finish the other side with a loop.

I made 16 of these.

Connect the crystal elements with a jump ring until you have  a necklace of your desired length.

Finish with a clasp and your necklace is ready to wear.

Here's the video, or there would be one if Blogger would caaept the code. Try this:
http://youtu.be/rK2I0RnMRxo

Grab Boxes now Live

Just had to share this with you. We have the perfect Christmas gift over on Craft Fairy.

A picture speaks a thousand words.

Get them here:

http://www.craftfairy.co.uk/grab-box-590-c.asp