Monday, September 28, 2009

SATeam Promotion Preview and New Earrings

This holiday season, the Etsy SATeam is having a fun promotion! The details are still being worked out, but the basic idea is that everyone who purchases an item from a participating shop will be entered in a drawing for a bracelet containing many different charms made by members of the SATeam. The bracelet is still being constructed, but here's a sneak peek of the charm that I contributed:

I also made a matching pair of earrings, which are currently available in my Etsy shop. This pair is included in a gorgeous treasury curated by TwoSilverMoons!


I also listed two additional pairs that use the same construction but in different colors. I sold a similar pair in this style recently so I decided to make another pair. I like how these earrings are festive and elegant, yet not so holiday-oriented that they can't be worn year-round:


I just love the shade of the green Czech beads in this pair:



I have some ideas for other pieces using these three color schemes. I can't wait to try them out!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Double Bubble Pearl Experiments

After my successful pearl experiment in which I was able to incorporate peacock pearls into one of my Bubble Box beaded beads, I decided to dig into my stash to try drop pearls in my Double Bubble Jacks beaded bead design. I found three strands to try:


For my first experiment I tried the small, light blue pearls. These are slightly smaller than the Czech drop beads used in the original design.




I wasn't too happy with how this beaded bead came out for a few reasons. The irregularities in the shapes of the pearls made the resulting beaded bead irregular, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because this can look neat if it's the desired effect. The main reason why I'm not satisfied with this bead is that it's too squishy for my tastes. I like my beaded beads either completely solid, or with less than a millimeter of squish when squeezed on two opposite sides. This one has about five millimeters of squish.

For my next experiment I tried the shiny peacock pearls, which worked quite well in my Bubble Box design.



This bead came out much better. It's a little irregular, but it has a much more acceptable level of squish for my tastes.

For my last experiment I tried using the purple pearls. These are wider at the base than the Czech beads in the original design, but they're still about the same height.



I was really happy with how this beaded bead came out. It's very solid, regular in shape, and it's also a bit bigger than the original design. The drop pearls in this beaded bead do not have high luster, so I compensated for this by using matte metallic seed beads. A big advantage of using these pearls is that they have larger holes than the other two types that I experimented with, so I was able to pass through the finished bead multiple times to stabilize it.

I liked this beaded bead result so much that I made five of them and incorporated them into this necklace, and put it up in my Etsy shop.



So, to summarize, I found that the drop pearls that work best in the Double Bubble Jacks design are regular in shape, slightly larger than 4 x 6 mm Czech drops (especially at the base), and have larger-than-average holes. I also found that since pearls can scratch very easily with say, the tip of a beading needle, I had to be careful to avoid scratching them when I weaving the beaded bead.

I'm looking forward to using freshwater pearl beaded beads in other pieces!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Bead Origami on Craftgawker!

Have you ever checked out Craftgawker? It's basically an eye-candy festival of crafty items from Etsy, Artfire, blogs, Flickr, or pretty much anywhere crafty images can be found. One of my SATeammates mentioned it on the SJA forums, so I decided to submit some of my work to their site. I quickly learned that they are very picky about the quality of the images that they feature, but after doing some editing two of my photos were accepted to their site!


Both of these pendants are available in my Etsy shop.

Have you ever perused the work on Craftgawker? If so, how do you like it?
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