What a week!

Crazy busy!


My biggest accomplishment was completing this freeform peyote cuff bracelet, which I have named Firewheel. I started it several weeks ago, completed half of it, then put it down and just couldn't make myself pick it up again. Not sure why - I had never done freeform peyote before, and it was a lot of fun! Maybe it was because I felt pressured to finish it - it was designed for the April EtsyBeadweavers Challenge, and the deadline was fast approaching! The theme this time is Fire and Flower, and voting will begin April 7 @ the EBW Blog. I hope you'll visit the blog and vote for your favorite (me!)

It took me over 45 hours of beading to complete Firewheel, and it is now available in my Etsy shop. Other challenge entries can be seen on Etsy by searching the tag and title section for EBWC.

I made this gorgeous beaded necklace this week, using lampwork discs from bluhealer and fabulous mint green vintage lucite beads. I also made a cute pair of matching earrings. I will probably list these as a set either tonight or tomorrow - I have never listed my matching earrings and necklaces together before, and the earrings always sell, leaving the necklaces behind. Thought I'd try pairing them up this time.


In addition to finishing the freeform peyote cuff, I have been a busy busy beadweaver this week. I have been on a right angle weave kick, and made this copper-colored cuff on Thursday, listed it on Etsy that night, and it sold on Saturday afternoon!



I made and listed this gorgeous woven cuff on Monday - it is another right angle weave, this time with shell-pink freshwater pearls, hot-pink metallic seed beads, and mauve Czech fire-polished crystals, and complemented by an antique-look button. This is a knock-out combination of colors and textures!

I also taught a spiral beadweaving class on Friday afternoon, and ended up with a great bracelet myself - green and blue matte square and round seedbeads plus grey-green Czech crystals. Haven't listed this one yet, but it is a great casual bracelet for jeans.


I took another wire-wrapping class last Sunday, this one on rings. We did two very different techniques.

One involved cutting several pieces of wire, then binding them together with more wire, then forming the loose ends in the bundle around the stone. This makes a great looking ring, and the technique can be adapted for either a bead or a cabochon, but I am going to have to work on modifying the pattern a bit, because it calls for having 8 wires in the bundle, which makes the shank 8 wires wide, and that is too wide for my short stubby fingers!

Remember how I posted awhile back about having found a tutorial on the internet on making a wire-wrapped ring, but I wasn't happy with the way mine had turned out, so I was going to ask the wire-wrapping teacher about it? Well, I had asked him about it a couple of weeks earlier, and his answer had been "practice, practice, practice." So, I was really surprised when he changed his mind about the second ring style he was going to teach on Sunday, and decided to teach this very ring that was be-deviling me! He taught it in a different way from the tutorial, and I achieved a better result, and got quite a few pointers along the way.

These are the 2 rings I completed in class on Sunday. The one on the left is the second technique. There is a lot less formal wire-wrapping in this style, as the wire is more casually wrapped around the base of the bead.




I took my new knowledge home, and made this cute ring - now available in my Etsy shop.

And that's it for my week. Whew!