Soup is ready!

My apologies to those of you who visited on Saturday hoping to see my Bead Soup challenge piece - as I was going to be away for the reveal I scheduled the blog post - and managed to schedule it for the wrong weekend! Ooops! And I thought I was being so organised.... 

Anyway, I'm home again now so here it is....better late than never?!

To be perfectly honest I was a little bit worried when I opened the bead soup ingredients Deborah Read that sent me as, lovely as the lampwork and dichroic glass pieces, they were on the opposite side of the world from anything that I would normally use - but that's what this challenge is all about, right? If you'd like a reminder of what Deb sent me please have a look at this post from last month. I did my usual bead soup trick of putting all the ingredients in a lovely wooden bowl that sits on my desk and every now and then I pulled a few pieces out, added some extras in and generally had a play. In the end, however, I decided to use just a focal and one of the two clasps that Deb sent, and this is a little hint of what I did.

I took part in an Artisan Whimsy challenge last year that used a tutorial by to set a flat back stone or found object in prongs that started life as rivets. The rivets were pushed through holes drilled in the backing plate and soldered into place so that they were strong enough to be pushed over the object being set. I set a beautiful Botswana Agate cabochon in silver for that challenge, and loved the technique, so I decided to use it again to set one of the pieces of dichroic glass that Deb sent me.

And this is the glass set in place. I love the contrast of warm patinea'd copper with the blues and greens in the glass. You've probably noticed that I haven't used the clasp yet. I realised once I'd made the pendant that I didn't have enough of the leather I wanted to hang it from, so as soon as the postman brings it I'll be using a clasp, promise!

Please do go and see what Deb made with the ingredients I made I sent her  - you can see her post here, and for a full list of all the people taking part visit  http://lorianderson-beadsoupblogparty.blogspot.ca/2013/04/7th-bead-soup-blog-party-2nd-reveal.html

I'm actually away this weekend (T's taking me away to Barcelona for an early birthday treat!) so I've scheduled this and I will start visiting the other blogs taking part when I get home!

Non-stop Mayhem!

Or, as those of you without young children will probably call it - the school holidays. I do love having Ben and T home more and the mornings are definitely more relaxed without the school run, but this school holiday has left little time for any Daisychain business other than filling orders. Blogging and work on new designs etc will have to wait until school starts again next week! I have had time to plan out the next few months for the business though, and I'm going to be making a few changes that will hopefully make things a lot more efficient.

One of those changes, probably the most visible one from the outside, will be that I am changing my Daisychain Extra shop from one with a few ready-to-ship items and mainly made-to-order designs to one with just ready-to-ship items. At the moment I rarely have time to build up much stock because as soon as I make something it flies out the door to the post office - which is a good thing for orders but not so much for my creativity. So, each week or so I will be doing a shop update that will be partly current designs but also new designs -and I will be able to spend more time creating new designs as making stock and listing it all at once if more efficient than making smaller batches a little at a time.

I hope that all makes sense! Basically, what it will mean for you is that everything that you see in the Daisychain Extra shop will be available and ready for dispatch and you won't have to wait for me to make it for you. It will also mean that there will be more new designs available more often as I will have more time to make them.

I will be putting my Daisychain Extra shop in holiday mode for a few days as from Monday 15th April (next Monday) and open it up again with a shop update and new designs, so if you need to stock up on any of the current designs you have until Monday!

P.S. Orders placed from now until Monday morning will be processed on Tuesday as T is taking me away for a long weekend for my birthday!

AJE March Component of the Month

As I think you may have guessed by now, it was my turn to design something new for the AJE Component of the Month challenge, and I sent out lovely copper hollow beads to my team mates and to some of the AJE blog readers. Normally we have the challenge reveal on the last day of the month, but as we thought we'd all probably be a bit busy on Easter Sunday we'd do the reveal today instead.

And this is what I made....

This pendant is actually the third piece I made for the challenge. I kept thinking that I had to make something more elaborate as it was, afterall, a challenge with my own component, but nothing seemed quite right until I kept it simple. I've used a gorgeous lampwork bead by (of course) Mindy Macgregor (Moogin Beads), a palm wood square bead from Smitten Beads and a purple Czech glass bead. I've been wearing it strung on a length of purple silk from Marsha Neal Studios, but I think that this particular pendant will be better on a length of brown leather - which I haven't actually got yet, which is why I'm showing it to you like this!.

I'd love it if you could take the time to visit the designers taking part in this month's challenge - I am really looking forward to seeing what they all made with their beads!

The guest designers this month are:

Carolyn (Carolyn's Creations)

Jess Green
Niky Sayers

(Kathy  (Northern Light) hasn't been able to take part due to her mother's illness -
I hope she gets better soon Kathy!)

And the AJE contributors taking part are:

Jo Tinley (me!)

Jennifer Cameron

 Jenny Davies-Reazor

Susan Kennedy

Linda Landig

Melissa Meman

Kristen Stevens

Francesca Watson

Lesley Watt

Making Hollow Beads

 Have I mentioned before how addicted I've become to making hollow beads?! I think I may have mentioned it once or twice! The components I made for the AJE Component of the Month challenge for my turn this month were the copper hollow beads that you can see above, and if you'd like to see how I made them click here to see the post I wrote for the AJE blog today!

P.S. I'm currently working on a limited edition batch of these beads to go in my Daisychain Extra shop!

Tutorial Tuesday - Armful of Flowers

The April edition of Beads and Beyond magazine came out last week with a flower bracelet that I had lots of fun with. My starting point was discs of silver and copper - well, they started out round discs, but that was before I hammered them into submission! Each stem of a flower links behind the next like a daisychain.

And there's more! Each two page project in the magazine includes a varation, another way of using the design idea. The variation for this project is a brooch, and I've written a blog post for the Beads and Beyond magazine blog - www.beadsandbeyondmagazine.blogspot.com - with step-by-step photos of how to make it. You can find it here, and if you have a go I'd love to see what you make!

Good old fashioned bartering

Source: Uploaded by user via Joanne on Pinterest

A good friend of mine makes absolutely gorgeous polymer clay jewellery, including beautiful large hollow beads. She and I have just spent a lovely evening in my workshed where I taught her how to make her own sterling silver ear wires and simple clasps, and she swapped her son's old car seat for the tuition - I posted about the earrings she made a couple of weeks ago here. Her son had grown out of the seat, we needed another for T's car, and it's perfect for Jamie.

I'm a hopeless gardener. I'm forever optimistic about it but once I get out in the garden I don't know where to start, especially as the garden got out of hand while I was in the last few months of pregnancy with Jamie and then I was so ill after he was born. I perfectly happy weeding and cutting the grass but heaven help me when it comes to the rest of it, and what with the business and the boys I don't have the time to get the garden back into order. But another lovely friend of mine is has a small gardening business, and when I asked her if she could fit me in she suggested swapping gardening for jewellery. She gets so much more done in an hour than I could in a whole afternoon, and I get the time for jewellery making instead!

And then there's Brenda, she of the amazing stones that I've used in quite a few of my designs, such as here and here. She, and her husband Paul, regularly come for jewellery tuition, which she partly pays for in cash from stone sales in her etsy shop or in stones that she lets me choose from her stash. And, of course, they use Brenda's stones in what they make with me too! One of the rings that Paul has made Brenda is pictured above.

Three win-win situations - three situations where we swap our skills and goods for other skills, three situations where both parties are delighted with the deal that they've made. Good old fashioned bartering at its best! And I'm sure that my friends and I aren't alone, especially as websites, usually locally based at first, are now being built to help people link up to swap their services. So, have you turned your time and skills into useful goods or skills for your household, or treats for yourself even, without purses being opened?

Soup's ready to cook!

There was a sigh of relief on both sides of the Atlantic last week when the Bead Soup ingredients that my partner Deborah Read put together for me arrived safely. They had actually arrived in the UK over a week before that but I was out when the postie tried to deliver them so I came home I found one of those lovely "while you were out" cards. Unfortunately the sorting office had put my parcel in such a safe place that it took them a week to find it!

So, here at last are the wonderful goodies that Deb sent me! She has been so generous.

 

At the moment I'm leaning towards using one of the dichroic glass pieces to use as a focal - but knowing me I'll change my mind before our reveal on 6th April!

If you want a reminder of what I sent Deb, have a look here and here. We actually sent each other similar colours!