Beads and Baubles

Jewelled Eyes Choker

Jewelled Eyes Choker

A simple pattern for you to follow this week. One of my favourite things about loomwork is the way it lends itself to graphed patterns like this. Of course, you can graph patterns in brick or peyote, but loomwork is, I think, the easiest. If you are a keen cross stitcher, check your books for patterns to adapt; border patterns work best. The diamond shapes look like eyes to me. I used AB finish and silver lined seeds in rich jewel colours, but feel free to substitute your own colours if you like. The picture shows only a bit of the choker, to give you a general idea of the pattern. You Need:

• Bead loom
• Bead thread
• Beading needle
• Seed beads, size 11:
• - Silver-lined amethyst
• - Silver-lined gold
• - Silver-lined Capri blue
• - Crystal AB
• 2 jump rings
• 2 callottes/beadtips
• 1 clasp (I used silver, but you can use a different metal if it woks better with your colours.
• Half-round or round nose pliers

Warp the loom with 11 warp threads and tie a long thread to the outermost warp. Begin weaving the chart pattern. Each square represents 1 bead, so the first row is 4 amethyst, 2 blue, 4 amethyst and so on (reading from top to bottom). You follow the chart in one direction only b; don’t zigzag like you would if following a knitting chart. Note: I made the chart as a word table so it would be easier to import into the blog. As shown on the chart, the design will be slightly elongated due to the shape of the seed beads. If you want a completely square design, use Delicas or other cylinder beads.

A	A	A	A	B	B	A	A	A	A
A	A	A	B	B	B	B	A	A	A
A	A	B	B	G	G	B	B	A	A
A	B	B	G	C	C	G	B	B	A
B	B	G	C	C	C	C	G	B	B
B	B	G	C	C	C	C	G	B	B
A	B	B	G	C	C	G	B	B	A
A	A	B	B	G	G	B	B	A	A
A	A	A	B	B	B	B	A	A	A
A	A	A	A	B	B	A	A	A	A

A = Amethyst

B = Blue

G = Gold

C = Crystal

Repeat the chart 15 times.  This will give a choker about 40 cm/16 inches.  If you want a longer one either add more rows of purple before beginning the chart, or use an extension chain on the clasp.  Alternatively, work fewer repeats and make a bracelet, or more repeats for a belt!

            Gently remove the beading from the loom and cut the knots off.  We need to attach a clasp to the beadwork.  To do this take each warp thread in turn and weave it through the first row of beads, coming up through the centre bead.  When all the threads are together in the centre, thread them up through the base of the calotte and tie them in a knot.  Close the knot cover and repeat at the other end.  The ends can look a bit raggedy, so take care doing this and push the beads together to create a tight fabric.  This is only one way of dealing with the warp threads but its advantage is that you don’t see much of the threads as they are hidden inside the calotte.  Attach a jump ring at one end, and the clasp at the other. I’m sure you know this, but it is important to twist the jump rings open rather than pull them.  If you pull them apart you’ll never get them to close properly, and the clasp will fall off.

            That’s it!  This is a basic choker; you can embellish it in all kinds of ways.  Use different colours (if you look closely you’ll see I swapped round the centre colours every repeat).  Add fringing to the bottom or a picot trim along the edges.  If you want to design your own patterns you can either do what I did and use a computer to colour a grid, or do it the old-fashioned way with coloured pencils and graph paper!

Easy-beady Loomwork Bookmark

This bookmark is an ideal project to begin with if you are new to loomwork. It is quick to do and makes an ideal gift for a bookworm. It also serves as a reminder that loomwork has many non-jewellery uses!

Note: I’m going to assume that you have never used a beadloom before and give as much detail as I can about each stage. If you are already use a loom feel free to adapt the basic idea and make up your own bookmarks.

You Need:

Beadloom (mine is the springy metal kind with wooden rollers)

Beading needle

Beading thread of choice. I used Nymo

Size 11 Seed Bead mix.
Using a Seed Bead mix means you can get beautiful variations without following a chart. You can buy they fairly easily, look for ‘Colour Mix’ or ‘Bead Soup’. My bookmark was made with a mix called ‘Dwarf King’s Desire’ from Beadfx.

Decide on the finished length of your bookmark Mine is about 15cm (6in) including the tassels. Cut 10 lengths of thread to this lengths plus 30cm (12in). It will look like you have way too much thread but you need the extra length to wind onto the rollers. If you are using Nymo as I did you will need to stretch it to get rid of the kinks. Tie the bunch of threads together using an overhand knot (like tying the neck of a balloon), at one end

Look at your loom: on mine there is a wooden roller with a screw in the middle of it at each end. If yours is different look at the instructions that came with it; if it’s the same read on!

Slip the knot over the screw so that an equal number of threads are on either side, and bring the bundle of thread over the separators (on mine they look like large springs on each end of the loom)

Begin turning the roller to wind the threads onto it.When you have enough thread left to go across the loom to the other screw plus 10cm (4in) stop turning and tighten the wing nut on the roller to hold it still. Tie another knot in the loose thread ends, slip it over the screw on the other roller and turn it until the thread is taut. Tighten the wing nuts. Using the tip of your beading needle, guide each thread into a separate channel in the separators, making sure they are spaced equally.

Congratulations! You’ve just warped the loom. The warps got along the loom; the wefts go at right angles to the warp. When instructions say ‘warp the loom’ the above is exactly what you do It looks long-winded, but gets quicker with practice.

Now, the weaving.

Cut a length of beading thread, how long is up to you, just use what you feel comfortable with. Stretch if needed. Thread your beading needle and tie it to the warp nearest to you with a double knot.

I work left to right, so position the loom with the roller with the most turns of thread on the right. This allows you to slacken the treads and wind more thread into the middle of the loom should you need to make the bookmark longer. I didn’t need to but obviously I don’t know how long your loom is!

Pick up 9 seed beads (SB). Don’t choose the colours, just do it at random. Slide them onto the thread and down towards the warp threads. Bring the needle up and under the warp threads (i.e. away from you) and with your spare hand push the beads up into the spaces between the warp threads, making sure each is in its own little space. Thread the needle through the beads, this time making sure the thread goes over the warp threads, thus keeping the beads in place.Pick up 9 more SB and repeat.

That’s it, basically. Carry on weaving until you get to the length you want. Every few rows push the beads up against each other, so you get a nice snug fabric.

If you decide you need a longer bookmark, undo the wing nuts at both ends and wind some more of the warp threads into the centre of the loom before tightening them again. This might mean you wind the beadweaving onto the roller, but don’t worry, it won’t come to any harm. When you’ve finished, work any thread ends into the beadwork and clip the thread.

Unscrew the wing nuts and carefully unwind all the warp threads, lifting the beading off the loom. Now you have to deal with all those warps, which is the worst bit in loomwork! In this project we’re going to make them into a fringe.

Take a pair of warp threads and thread on 13 SB. Tie several overhand knots in the thread next to the last SB. It might be a good idea to put a drop of glue on the knot to make it extra secure. Repeat with the other pairs of warps to give 5 tassels at each end.

Finished! I hope you’ve enjoyed the project. It looks long because I’ve deliberately given very precise instructions to help those who’ve done little or no loomwork. Really it takes very little time-it took me longer to type this out! If you have any questions post a comment and I’ll try to answer them.

Penny

Frit Fantasies

The secret to these fabulous beads is twofold: First, you need frit. Second, you need silver leaf or silver foil.

These beads are made with "House of Blues" frit from Val Cox. Val changes frits regularly on her site, and as of this writing, the House of Blues mix was not available, but keep checking if you like it...it may return!

Frit, quite simply, is ground up glass. You'll see things marked as "reduction" frits, which means that they change color when put into a propane-rich ("reducing") flame. Reduction frits are always 96 COE. You can use a small amount of 96COE glass on the outside of Moretti/Effetre (104 COE) or Bullseye (90 COE) glass, but you should never encase it unless you are using 96 COE glass. There are comparatively few colors of 96 COE rods and stringers, but if you can get used to using fusing glass and cutting it into strips to use for lampwork, you'll have a pretty much endless palette.

To start, lay out a small pile of frit on a marver surface, and put a a small strip of silver foil to the side where you can access it easily. (If your frit is ground small or powdery, be sure to wear a dust mask when you're using it--enamels and powdery frits will get into your lungs.)

To make these beads, make a small barrel of transparent violet glass, then heat it and roll it in the frit. Melt the frit in and roll the bead on a marver again into a smooth barrel.

Place the foil strip on the marver, heat the bead, and roll it up in the foil. (Whenever you use silver foil in beads, you must be sure that you have ample and not just adequate ventilation, since the fumes from the silver are even more toxic than those from the glass alone!) Heat the bead again until the silver balls up.

Keep the bead warm, but let it cool down slightly so that you aren't going to smear the underlying glass, then encase it. These particular beads are encased in a color called "neon orchid", which is a color-change glass. It looks light purple in some lights, light blue in others.

Pop it in your kiln, and make some more!

Here's the really cool thing about adding silver to glass:

Glass colors are not created with dye. They're created, in many cases, by adding various minerals to the silica. Thus you get colors like "Rubino Oro" (fuchsia pink) by adding gold. Silver, naturally, changes this composition somewhat. When you coat Rubino Oro with silver, it turns to a very gold color, which I can only assume is because the silver draws the gold out of the glass. If you look at the picture of these blue beads closely, you'll see that each little silver dot is surrounded by a ring of gold. I assume this ring is from the purple base and the purple casing since both of those must also have some amount of gold. True blue glasses don't get this effect, as you can see here:

And the neat thing about frit is that you get a different reaction between the silver and each color of frit you use, so you can get really wild variations. Experiment!

Garden Bracelet

I have been asked several times how to make this kind of bracelet, so I thought I would start out the new blog with a tutorial. What you will need:

100-140 headpins

Approximately 200 assorted Czech leaves and flowers

10 6mm round fireploished beads

Austrian crystals (more for more sparkle, less for less sparkle!); shapes up to you, but you will need two small round ones (4-6mm)

Decorative clasp

Softflex, Beadalon, or something similar

Crimps

If you want to add the choker part, you'll need 10" of silver chain and a second, matching clasp.

Step 1: Take all your headpins and start making dangles! To create each dangle, you want to put at least one flower facing down so that the open part of the flower faces down toward the flat part of the headpin or a leaf with the pointy part facing down. Then wrap a "hangman's loop" (like the loops in this tutorial). You're going to need about 120 dangles for a standard-sized bracelet. Vary them--layer flowers with flowers, crystals and leaves, crystals and flowers...the possibilities are endless. You will want to reserve at least 5 headpins unwrapped for the last step.

Step 2: On one end of your beading wire, string a crimp, a round crystal, and one end of your clasp.
Thread the wire back through the crystal and the crimp, then crimp shut. (Not sure how to use crimps? Check out this tutorial.)

Step 3: String on three dangles, then a 6mm firepolished round, then three more dangles and another round. Push the rounds next to each other closely, which will make the dangles pop out. Continue this pattern until you have enough to fit around your wrist (you won't be able to tell from length because the bracelet is so chunky--you just have to keep trying it on to see whether it fits).

Step 4: When the bracelet is long enough (you're going to have some room added by the clasp in this last step, so account for it), end with a round firepolished bead, then add a crimp, then the second Austrian crystal round, then the other end of your clasp. Put the wire back through the crystal, the crimp and the round, pull tight (but not so tight that there's no room for the bracelet to flex! be sure that it can easily be made round) and crimp.

Step 5: Take three of your reserved headpins, and carefully wire them on over the last crimp to disguise it. This is probably the hardest part of making this bracelet because you're working in tight space, so give yourself time.

If you want to add the adapter to make this bracelet into a necklace, take the chain and attach it to the clasp by taking the last two of your unwrapped headpins, creating dangles, and hooking the clasp and chain into the loop before you close the loop.

Have fun! By the time you finish this project, you'll be an EXPERT at creating wrapped loops!