Thursday, July 20, 2006

Latest Set - Bamboo

This is one of my latest sets called Bamboo and one of the few that won't be for sale. This one's MINE! :-)

I really had fun putting it together, although it was quite fiddly with the little connectors to line it all up and make it hang perfectly. The little square beads are a lovely greeny-blue and the green Myuki squares just a match made in heaven. I hung the whole design from lime green tigertail and the jade green daggers just give it that little extra. I love those and keep buying them from one of my favourite sellers on eBay 4Gorgeous Gear.


The bracelet below is made with more connectors, same beads but no daggers with a very pretty box clasp.I wanted the earrings to be simple since the colour is lovely all by itself. They look very pretty, twinkling and sparkling in soft greens.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

How to, Lesson 1: Tigertail

Tigertail is a jewellery wire that's normally used when string or silk would not carry the weight of the beads/pendant. It's made of several strands of very thin wire twirled around each other rather like a rope and then coated in nylon. The nylon can be lots of different colours or clear or silver or gold... the possibilities are endless. Beadalon is the most famous make of tigertail, although there are others.

I use tigertail in lots of different colours because it ties in nicely with the colours of the beads and because it's bendy, meaning I can create different shapes. It's not so good for very rigid shapes - e.g. the flower brooch, for this I used normal jewellery wire, which is also available in a lot of different colours and gauges.

For necklaces or bracelets you will need crimps and calottes. Both are readily available, although I've only ever found them in black(ish), silver, gold, bronze, and copper. The crimps are to clamp the tigertail ends and to fasten them within the little clamp shell-like calotte. Both make life an awful lot easier, although there are other ways to make fastenings.

For examples on how to use tigertail, check out the Daisy Chain, Aztec Gold, and Edwardian Green and Purple (pictures in the previous post), although there are many other ways to get creative with tigertail.

Another one worth mentioning here is the "invisible thread" which is great for "floating" designs. It's a nylon thread that is so translucent (and usually very thin) that the beads seem to be floating. The beads are either glued in place or crimps are clamped either side of the beads to keep them in place.

There are many suppliers for tigertail (and jewellery wire and invisible thread). Here are just a few:

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Newsflash - brand new items

I've been a busy bee today and managed to not just make two bracelets and one necklace whilst waiting for my son's (birthday) bike to be delivered, but I also took lots of photos of the jewellery I've made in the last few weeks.

All the new jewellery can be seen on my website, but here are a few tasters:

Daisy Chain:


Aztec Gold:
Frosty Morning:
Edwardian Green and Purple:


Fire Flower Brooch:

So much jewellery, so little time

The last few months since my last entry have been very, very busy.

I've had my first jewellery party which I felt was a great success and I also was very brave and had a stall at my son school's summer fete. This also went much better than I'd expected. I had to make lots of jewellery besides holding down a part-time job and looking after my family to have enough stock for both, so there was little time updating the blog, especially since I had to update my website for the jewellery party.

There are many new designs on my website (see link for Magpie Magic on the right) and more to come. Hopefully, I'll manage to add some more today or tomorrow.

Here's a little taster:


I've also been playing with lots of new designs, including leather and organza ribbon. My latest ventures are brooches and hair accessories, pictures of these can be found on my website.

The more jewellery I make the more excited I get. It's just so much fun and so creative! I'll try and had some how to's and info on suppliers and materials soon.

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