The curse of the seed beads!

I've discovered i have a bit of a love/hate relationship when it comes to using seed beads. I love the sparkly-ness (probably not a word) and the colours and the versatility. However, there comes a moment when, after spending ages at the bead table making something fiddley with seed beads, you finally finish the piece of jewellery, stand up and it happens: the sudden cascade of seed beads EVERYWHERE!! This happened to me when i was making the bracelet in this post. I decided, stupidly, that i would pick up the bracelet, before i had finished it off, and have a look at it when WHOOSH, beads everywhere. And i mean everywhere. Rolling under the table, under the couch, under the tv and, as i discovered later in the evening, in my mum's wine glass. I'm not really sure how. I think seed beads do it deliberately. They wait until your focus starts to just slightly wane and they suddenly scatter. They even managed to hide in all the nooks and crannies in your clothes and wait until you stand up and then they scatter some more. I didn't even know i HAD nooks and crannies in my clothes. I'm rubbish at ironing though, so i'm not surprised. I hate seed beads...

They do look nice though, don't they?

Bits and Pieces

Ok, now that i am finally back at uni (yes, i really have been on holiday that long) I probably won't be able to make as much jewellery as i'd like to, but i'll still try and put up a post as regularly as i can. I've been trying out a couple of ideas recently that i've been meaning to for a while, but never got round to doing, like making a heart shaped, bead covered window hanging like this one:

I decided to use pearls rather than the crystals that are more normally used, to try and be a bit more unique, and i think it worked pretty well. So well, in fact, that before i had even finished making it, my sister had decided that, somehow, it will end up in her house, whether i liked it or not. And she was right, it did. I was also asked to make a bracelet in 'whatever style i liked, as long as it was hot pink'. So, i used some pink pearls, with smaller cream pearls and silver seed beads and threaded three bracelet strands, one pink, one cream and one silver, then joined the three together and loosely plaited them to come up with this:

I wish i'd taken a better picture, but never mind. I also managed to finish another Christmas order (Sorry for springing Christmas on you, you're probably hiding behind the couch screaming 'IT'S NOT EVEN HALLOWEEN YET!!!').

Every year, i think to myself 'I'm going to be really organised for christmas this year!' and every year i end up buying most presents on Christmas eve. So this year i'm going to think 'I'm NOT going to be organised this year!' You never know, a bit of reverse psychology might work...