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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Another beading challenge

Wow, I was selected to be one of the four beaders to get a selection of beads from Crystal @ Bead Happily Ever After. She provided Lori Anderson (our Bead Soup guru) with 5 identical kits of beads. We are each going to make something and post our creations on November 10.

Here are the four lucky participants. 

I now have two packages on beads that I am waiting for.

Stay tuned for my holiday bling reveal on October 6 and the arrival of my Pantone swap beads (which are coming from Indonesia) and these great beads from Crystal.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Side Project

As I was working on the complete teal "Rita" zigzagged rondelles that Maria had requested I ran out of the small rondelles. I will get more from her on Tuesday, so I have time to work on a side project for myself.

Having spend time working on the complete teal piece, I was in the zone with the pattern, so I decided that I would make my own colour variation. I had some great large rondelles from Silver Dawn Jewels, but no co-ordinating smaller ones. Searching thru my fire-polished drawer I found some 3mm clear crystals. I added silver and purple seed beads to round out the needed supplies.

Supplies laid out 

Once I got going I love the way it looks. The silver and purple are a great reference back to my pieces that I made for the Designer Style Challenge. This will be a great necklace to wear to the Gala on the Saturday on Creativ Festival.

Iris Zigzag in progress

Saturday, September 22, 2012

“Rita” Zigzagged Rondelles

Creativ Festival is only 3 weeks away. It is the 25th anniversary fall show. To honor the celebration Maria of Rypan Designs has designed a beautiful necklace named for the founder Rita Gramsch. The design is based on her basic netted zigzag design.

When Maria started working on the anniversary design, I suggested working in Rita's favorite colour, teal. Starting with the zigzag pattern, Maria swapped out some seed beads for tiny rondelles. With teal as the ground colour and silver as the accent the addition of larger rondelles on every third picot made this the necklace a stunning design.


I have made a display sample in black and silver. But Maria has now requested a complete necklace in the teal. So here is my working piles of beads.


This is a beautiful design that is best as a collar length necklace. Maria is teaching this project at Creativ Festival. I hope to have time to make one for myself soon.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Sneak Peak - Holiday Bling Blog Hop

Yesterday was a great day. As I was leaving to head to a presentation for work, I was happy to see a small package in my mail box. It was from my Holiday Bling swap partner Monique Urquhart. I put it my bag and headed off to the presentation.

Working at the library allows me to be surround be one of my favourite things, books. The presentation yesterday was publisher representatives telling us about some of the great fall book releases for children and teens. We are given advance reading copies of some titles, but get to hear about many books we can share in storytimes, class visits and with our customers. I always leave these presentations with many titles added to be TBR (to be read) list.

I carried my package from Monique to the presentation, back to my branch and then home without opening it. I was very tempted but I wanted to record the opening to share here.

So here is a peak of the opening of the package. You will have to come back on October 6 to see what is inside. I can tell you it is amazing!


Saturday, September 8, 2012

A New Swap - Pantone Fall 2012 Bead Swap


I have joined another bead swap. This time it is to share beads that match up to the Pantone Fashion Color Report Fall 2012. This collection of 10 colors are the hot fashion colors for the season.

From Pantone website
Once we are partnered up with a fellow beader we get in touch so we can agree what we are interested in getting and sending within the Pantone Fall Colors. We have until September 17th to pull together and mail out our beads.

I am looking forward to finding out who I am partnered with tomorrow!