Don’t you just love the holidays? My mom sure does and her spirit is certainly infectious. This year she asked me to make some Christmas charms for her to give to our family on Christmas Eve. I really like what I eventually came up with and so I thought I would make a tutorial for any chainmaillers who celebrate Christmas (or want to give a small but handmade gift to someone who does.) These are also pretty fast so they make good last minute oops-I-forgot-someone gifts too!
Hello!
I have been keeping extremely busy with holiday preparations and picking out some awesome new products for the store (don’t you love the vegetable ivory? completely gorgeous and completely animal friendly). More new colors and styles are coming soon too!
For now we have something almost as exciting: new findings! All the little bits you need to put your beads together just how you want them, plus some cute little charms.
I hope you like them!
(We also have some gold ones.)
Before I return to my seemingly endless holiday crafting, here’s a necklace I made the other day with our new vegetable ivory heart pendants!
Welcome to our photography guide; first in a series of Do-It-Yourself Instructions to help you show off and sell all your beautiful jewelry creations!
The first post will walk you through the steps for building a lightbox, a simple tool for getting great lighting in unlikely situations; the second talks about how to use your cameras settings to achieve the look you want; and the third is a discussion of composition and background choices.
Part 1: DIY Lightbox Tutorial
Part 2: Aperture & Other Camera Settings
Part 3: Backgrounds and Composition
Part 4: Best Photos From the Blogosphere
Welcome the the History of Beads index! So far Suzanne has taken us through most of the Americas and soon she will be heading off to another continent to search out cool and interesting ways in which beads were part of the lives of our ancestors. I’ll be sure to update this index as she explores and shares her findings! Enjoy!
First off, check out this gorgeous necklace by Heather Cote of Azure Island Designs:
This beautiful piece was made using blue dyed bone beads that Heather won in a Giveaway we sponsored on The Beading Gem a little while ago. Isn’t it great? I love the way she has captured the various colors in the bone beads and the silver spacers really make the whole thing shine!
Beading Daily frequently has incredibly useful tips and suggestions and lately they have had a few great ones. Want to lengthen a necklace that’s just not long enough but don’t know how? Check out their Necklace Extension suggestions. They also have this handy post on how to properly clean chains. Finally there is a really good guide on how to choose the right wire gauge for your projects.
Melissa of Strands posted recently about her massive stash of buttons and how she has gone about including them in her jewelry designs – neat idea!
Also, take a look at Lisa of Lucid Moon Studio’s first jewelry tutorial – beautiful piece and nice, clear, instructions – good job Lisa!
The Rabbit Muse featured a neat bracelet today in which she used a skeleton key in a most interesting and creative way.
Pearl, the Beading Gem, has a great post about origami jewelry up today. I am in the process of trying to find some appropriate paper to make myself a bazillion origami stars!
And lastly (the blog world is taking a short break for Thanksgiving it seems) Sue Beads, TotusMel, and the wonderful people over at the Art Bead Scene are all offering various holiday savings so check that out before its too late! (If I missed anyone, apologies! Feel free to leave a note to let me know!)
First off, so sorry for the massive delay: we had a bout of swine flu going around and it took quite awhile to recover from, Mike is still sick although now with pneumonia! (What a week!) But we are all getting better, slowly, and taking it easy.
I am not one of those girls that gets hugely excited about fancy designer purses but, I have been looking for the ‘perfect purse’ (and spent a small fortune on them in the meantime). The problem is that I can’t seem to find one that matches my style and is interesting with enough pockets for all my stuff and so, it in spirit of DIY, I am making one exactly how I want it. This is the first of series of posts chronicaling my purse’s creation, complete with learning a few new techniques. Coming up there will be some knitting, felting, possibly some embroidery as well, and today: chainmail!
Enough blabbity blab – here are some pictures of the chainmail section which will eventually be a small, secure pocket for money or cards on the outside of the completed purse.
Tools of the trade: chain nose and bent nose pliers, black and blue 3mm anodized aluminum rings (approxiametly 1300 blue, 600 black total).
And the finished chainmail section which measures just under 3 inches square, the perfect size for credit card, ID, cash, etc. For some reason my camera thinks the background is pinkish… which it isn’t.. but you get the idea. This section took probably the longest of all and I am very relieved to have it done, micromail is so fidgety and eye-crossing.
In a couple weeks I will make the main section (knit) and then a couple weeks after that I will share the decoration (felted) and make some final decisions about the strap and extra pockets etc for the inside.
Thanks for looking, happy crafting!
Coming on Monday: part 1 of my first big cross-craft project! This one involves knitting, felting, and chainmail but the project will be revealed on Monday.
TGIF & Happy crafting!
Adding new products to the store is always so exciting! Right now we are testing some new tagua designs, if people like them we will get in a whole bunch more but for now we have only a few each of several new funky designs!
All of these designs are available in multiple colors too! Take a look at our New Arrivals section to see them all.
For a 10% off coupon code,
exclusive sales, free tips
& lots of beading inspiration!
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