Mariana

It's the end of July already - which means it's time to show you what I made for the Brit Pack Beaders challenge!

A quick reminder..... this was our inspiration - Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Mariana' chosen by Teresa

And these were the ingredients we had to work with - Claire sent the focal, a beautiful polymer clay flower made by Pippa Chandler. There's a hole going across the back of the flower. Teresa sent the clasp - my favourite ingredient. Lesley made these gorgeous bronze clay components - the sweet heart and the leaf connector are my favourites of these. Rebecca sent the ribbon and cord, and my contribution was lampwork and Czech faceted glass beads.

And this is what I made! 

My first thought had been a bracelet but I wasn't sure how the focal flower would sit, whether it would twist round too much. Then I remembered one of the projects in my Macramé, Art Beads and Wire ebook (an instant download in my etsy shop if you're tempted!) and decided that would be a perfect way of making a comfortable bracelet that would keep the flower shown off on the top of my wrist. The big flower and the mixed metals makes the bracelet very different from most of the jewellery I make - but then that is the point of challenges, isn't it? I'm really pleased with it, especially as despite wearing it whilst working in the studio all day it hasn't slipped round and the marcamé knots in the silk at the back of the bracelet make it really comfortable to wear. A successful challenge I think!

I'm off to see what the others have made now and I know they'd love to have you visit too!

Lesley Watt - Thea Jewellery - www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.co.uk

Rebecca Anderson - Songbeads - www.songbeads.blogspot.co.uk

Claire Braunbarth - Smitten Beads - www.smittenbeads.blogspot.co.uk

Teresa Hulley - Bo Hulley Beads - Bo's Facebook page

Instant Downloads!

It's been a busy few days - but then again, when aren't I busy?! Not that I'm complaining - it's good to be busy when you're self-employed! We took advantage of the sunny spring weather at the weekend. I was teaching on Saturday so T and the boys went on a bike ride round our local park. Well, T and Ben rode their bikes - Jamie sat in style in the trailer attached to the back of T's bike! Sunday afternoon was spent putting new felt on the roof of my workshed, pressure washing the decking and generally tidying up after a long drab winter. Next up, pots of colourful flowers and maybe a lick of paint on the garden furniture!

Etsy have been doing some Spring cleaning and organising too. Virtual products such as my Macramé, Art Beads and Wire ebook can now be downloaded immediately after purchase - so now whether you order your copy through my website or through my Daisychain Extra shop it will be sent to you for you to enjoy 6 great projects straight away!

Snowflakes - AJE Component of the Month

As this is my first month as a member of the Art Jewelry Elements it's the first time that I've taken part in the Component of the Month challenge. The November challenge was set by Lesley Watt who designed a brand new component for the occasion - bronze snowflake discs.

I love the snowflake that Lesley sent me, but it definitely set me a challenge! As soon as I opened the parcel it screamed "Christmas ornament!" at me - which was not useful as this is supposed to be an art jewellery challenge. So, I sat it on my desk for a couple of weeks, laying different beads, pieces of leather, cords etc etc next to it and did come up with a couple of ideas. My favourite design had an enamelled ruffled disc in the centre of the disc with beads on twisted headpins holding it in place and a bail passed on this one going through the middle - and but the bail just did not sit properly without pushing the enamelled disc out of the way and I was worried that the enamel would get chipped as the wire rubbed against it. So it was back to the drawing board.

And all the time the snowflake kept yelling "ORNAMENT!" at me (in big shouty letters just like that), partly because I make my Mum a new Christmas ornament each year, and I knew that if I did make a piece of jewellery out of it I would only take it apart and make an ornament anyway......so that's what I eventually did! (I did check with Lesley that that would be ok first though)

I based it on the ornament I made for Mum with Mindy Macgregor's sweet chicken bead for Easter. I've used Lark's Head knots to make the loop at the top and Half Knots for the main section. The cream bead is Czech glass, the small round bead is a ceramic bead that I've had for years so I can't tell you who made it! The red heart is a lampwork bead made by Laura Sparling. I think if I made it again I'd probably leave the cream bead out, maybe add another red ceramic bead instead, but I'll let Mum hang it on her tree for a year first!

To see what everyone else has created with their snowflakes, please visit:

Jennifer Cameron

Kristi Bowman-Gruel

Diana Ptaszynski

Kristen Stevens

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Lesley Watt

Francesca Watson

Melissa Meman

Joanne Tinley

Linda landig

Sue Kennedy

Jean Wells

Marie- Noel Voyer-Cramp 
Therese Frank

Macramé, Art Beads and Wire

6 brand new projects featuring art beads 

from Moogin Beads, Humble Beads, Starry Road Studio, Beads of Passion

50 pages

over 100 photos

step-by-step instructions for projects and macramé knots

inspirational gallery featuring work by 

Rebecca Anderson,  

Leah Curtis, 

Malin de Koning,  

Keri Lee Sereika, 

Sherri Stokey 

and Cilla Watkins

The book costs £12, which works out at only £2 per project!

It is available through my website and also through my Daisychain Extra etsy shop.

I hope that you enjoy it!

Thank you to the wonderful designers who contributed to the gallery 

and to Rebecca and my very own T for proof reading for me!

Call for Gallery Submissions

Thank you so much to everyone who emailed me some pictures - such gorgeous macramé work! I now have enough for a fantastic gallery, and the book will be out in the first week of June!

I've mentioned once or twice now that I'm writing an ebook on combining macramé, art beads and wire. I've been designing projects, taking hundreds of step by step photos of the projects and of the macramé knots, photos of tools and materials as well as writing. I've really enjoyed designing the layout of it all, and it's nearly finished! The picture above is of the front cover - well, the current front cover anyway as I'm sure I'm going to keep changing my mind about which projects to have on the front!

I've just got to ask a couple of friends to proof read it for me - and add one last thing.... which is where one or two of you will hopefully come in! I've got a gallery section in the book where I'm showing off not just more of my designs but some from other designers too, as inspiration to show what can be done with a few simple knots. And there's room for a few more. So, do you use macramé in your jewellery designs? I'm looking for designs that use macramé as just one element in the jewellery along with art beads and maybe some wire or other metal components as well - which you probably could have guessed from the name of the book!

If you would like to submit any of your designs, please email me at info@daisychainjewellery.co.uk with a couple of photos, a little bit about yourself (assuming that you're not someone I email already!), a little bit about the materials you've used and links to your blog/etsy shop/website. Photos need to be lovely and clear, and the macro setting on your camera is best for that. You will keep all copyright to the photos, and links to your websites and a little bit about you will be included in the gallery.

Thank you!

Happy Dance!

I know I've been quiet here over the last week, but it has been for good reasons, promise! I've been really busy working on magazine articles (can't show you anything to do with those yet though, sorry!) and the ebook that I mentioned last week. That's been coming along really well (well, I think so anyway, and even T thought it was looking good!), and I'm hoping to be able to release it in a week or so. In the meantime though, here's a quick sneak preview of one of the projects that's in it....

But anyway, I want to tell you why I've been doing a happy dance, or rather happy dances, around the house over the last couple of days!

A while back I posted that I'd was one of ten designers nominated by the Beads and Beyond readers for the Readers' Designer of the Year. This afternoon July's issue of the magazine arrived ......and I won!! I am so amazed, and so chuffed!! Thank you so much those of you who voted for me! It means so much that people actually like the projects I write. As much as I love working in my shed, hammering away, it can be pretty isolating, so this really does mean a lot to me. Hopefully you can see from the (poor, taken with my iphone) photo that my lovely friend Rebecca Anderson came second out of the ten - personally I think her projects are more appealing to a wider set of readers as they don't need soldering kit etc to do!

And the second thing - yes, there's more! If you can remember back as far as last June I wrote that I'd submitted a project to a book for the first time and that it was accepted - and the book is now available to pre-order! 30-minute Bracelets is one of Lark's lovely books, and has over 60 projects by some fantastic designers such as Erin Prais-Hintz, whose blog I love to read. I haven't had my copy of the book through yet as it's probably still flying over the Atlantic, but I've seen the front cover on Amazon, and that's what started the happy dance, as you see the smoky quartz bracelet with the oak leaf clasp on the front cover? That's mine that is!!

Well, I think that's enough excitment for one day. I'm off to give Jamie his late night feed - that'll bring me back down to earth!

Tutorial Tuesday - Heart and Flowers bracelet

 

Here is the tutorial I promised you for the Heart and Flowers bracelet I posted on Sunday. It uses one of my new embossed heart connectors with colouful micro-macrame - if you still think of macrame as being something that should be left firmly in the 1970s with potted plant hangers and spooky owl hangings then you obviously haven't seen the beautiful knotted work that designers such as Malin de Koning and Rebecca Anderson have been producing! You can tie macrame knots with ribbons, silks, cords, wool, leather as well as good old string, but my favourite is C-Lon, a nylon cord that is just under 0.5mm in diameter. I love it because it comes in an amazing range of colours that don't fade and it's easy to work with. The first few knots that you tie with it may slip a little, but this slipping disappears as you continue working and each knot is held firmly in place by the next.

So, you will need the following:

You will also need round nosed pliers, nylon jaw pliers, wire cutters, scissors and either clear glue or nail varnish to secure the last few knots on each side of the bracelet.

Click on any of the pictures to see a large view of them in a slideshow.

1. Use your fingers or nylon jaw pliers to curve the heart slightly. Turn a wrapped loop in 0.6mm wire and thread this through one of the holes in the heart. Thread a bead onto the wire and turn another wrapped loop. Repeat for the other two holes. Use wrapped loops to attach another bead so that it links the two beads at the top of the heart together as shown.

2. Wrap the cord around your wrist and cut this length off the reel. Cut another length that is 8 times longer than the first. Hold an end of both pieces together and fold them to find the middle of the shorter piece. You will now have three short lengths and one longer one, much longer than you really need but it's better than having too little left at the end! Tuck the fold at the middle through a wrapped loop and pull the ends of the cords through the fold to tie a Lark's Head knot.

3. The three shorter cords are your filler cords, and the longer one (the working cord) will be knotted around them with a Half-Hitch knot. To start pass the working cord over the filler cords....

4. .....and then tuck it underneath and through the loop formed.

 5. Showing you the Half-Hitch again from a different angle! Tuck the working cord over and around the other three and back up through the loop formed and pull the knot tight. Try to keep an even tension - like knitting, this will come with practice!

6. You can see that the knots have started to spiral around the filler cords. They will spiral in the direction that the cord is pointing as it comes through the loop. If you make a mistake and tie the knot in the wrong direction C-Lon is easy to undo. Keep going until your knots reach to the mid-point underneath your wrist as you hold the bracelet in place. Don't cut the cords yet!

7. Cut the same lengths of cord as you did for the first side of the bracelet. This time start the Half-Hitch knot with the working cord tucked underneath the filler cords and then back down through the loop.

8. This will make the spiral turn in the opposite direction, a nice (but optional) touch for the two opposite sides of the bracelet.

 9. Finish knotting when both sides of the bracelet are about the same length.

10. Thread the clasp onto all four cords at one end of the bracelet. You may wish to trim the longer cord so it's the same length as the other three to make the rest of the knots easier to tie.You will be tying a Square knot around the end of the spiral to hold the clasp in place. A Square knot is just a double knot that you use to tie your shoe laces but with something else (in this case the spiral) in the middle of the knot, and is knotted in two halves.

11.  Divide the cords into pairs. Pass the left pair over the spiral and under the right pair of working cords. Pass the right pair under the spiral and up through the loop formed on the left (over the left cords) and pull tight. Hopefully the lines and labels make that easier to follow!

12. To tie the second half of the knot, pass the left pair under the spiral and over the right pair of working cords. Pass the right pair over the spiral and down through the loop formed on the left (under the left cords) and pull tight. Repeat the last two steps with the ring at the other end of the bracelet. Glue the knots and trim them when dry.

And there you have it!

I do hope that you enjoy making this bracelet, or your own version of it. Please do let me know if you post pictures of this or anything else that you make with one of my tutorials as I'd love to link to them! I've also got a Pinterest board where we can show of anything made with any of my Daisychain Extra supplies.