Kumihimo

And for the last of this months workshop weekends I made another bracelet!

For today's venture I went to the Half Moon Bead Shop in Poundbury - I can find the bead shop without satnav which is a bonus, if you know Poundbury it's something of a maze.

Val at Aquarius blog did some lovely work with this braiding at a demo day last year and it was flying off the shelves.

I decided to have a go after seeing this bracelet in the shop - I loved the sample one so much that I used the same colours.

It's very therapeutic - we did wonder what we were letting ourselves in for as it takes longer to thread all the beads at the beginning but true to her word Louise taught us well and we did indeed finish a full bracelet in the time.  I have added a magnetic clasp to this too which is rather nice.

The next thing is I want more colours now and they also look effective just with the size 8 seeds beads and no magatamas like I used in this one. hmmmm.

Jewellery

Had a lovely relaxing week at Center Parcs. One of the non-sporting activities you could book was a Jewellery workshop one afternoon so felt obliged to have a go!

It was lovely and relaxing.

We had a lovely choice of necklaces and fab packets of beads, it was really hard to make a choice and I have many more ideas logged away now for the beads I already have at home!

I chose this necklace as it was a bit different to anything I already have with the 3 'dangles' at the bottom. The example necklace had clusters of beads on the wire but the beads I had left didn't lend themselves to this so well but it is something I might try with another experiment. The main string are lots of seed and tube beads in different colours, with a few swarovski crystals now and again for a little sparkle!

Just some little ear-rings to match, they could of been more elaborate but I don't wear many dangly ones.

It was a very enjoyable afternoon and lots more ideas on the list for if I ever get any time!

Something Different

Apologies for lack of posting this week - not really done much crafting! Spent lots of time thinking what I might quill for the next demo days but not much action!

Anyway, have made this necklace and bracelet set for a present. Not very complicated admittedly but I've had the beads for ages. I think the gemstones might be Rhodonite (also not sure as had for ages), there are 3 different sizes of these, broken up with sterling silver beads.

Really must crack on with some quilling now!