Absolute Beads Challenge Pack - March! (Including Challenge Bracelets #13 and #14)

I do like a good challenge when it comes to jewellery making. I like commissions where I have to incorporate random items into a piece of jewellery, or are just given a bag of beads and asked to make a necklace from them.

So I bought another challenge pack of beads from Absolute Beads. In fact, I paid for a 3 month subscription so I don't even know what I'm going to get before it lands on my doorstep. Whats the point of a challenge if you know what you are getting beforehand? And this is what I got.

I have to admit I was absolutely stumped. I took it to work to see if anyone could give me inspiration. They were quite stuck too. The charms were a bit too big for a charm bracelet. There was quite a  a lot of acrylics. And the dyed jade was just too big!

But then there was a plan! If I had a solid enough structure, then the charms wouldn't be too big. and the berry beads could be made into a beaded bead so that they sat well with the larger beads. Hooray!

But it was not to be. I couldn't get my beaded bead to work with the berry beads. More practice needed for that one. I just wasn't having fun on my chill out night in on my own but then I had another plan!

I knew I had a choker wire with a removable end ball so I threaded a few of the larger heavier beads on to the wire so that they were stable, and started wiring the other beads on using silver plated wire.

(The colours aren't right on my photo. I'm not the worlds best photographer and my camera not liking this colour is really confusing me. I want to list them in my shop for sale but can't as the colour isn't a good representation of it in real life and it would be far too misleading as advert.)

After I'd made a base row of wired on beads I wire on seed beads with a thinner gauge wire along the row, and then added the silver charms on the top. Lovely!

Next I wanted to tackle a large piece of the dyed Jade. This was just a case of stringing the beads on a wire, then adding chains and dangles. Voila!

There was still some more beads left though so carried on until I'd made a nice selection of items.

A macrame inspired floating style necklace using hand dyed threads from The Rainbow Girl

And a wirewrapped bracelet which matches the choker I made first off. I used a recycled bangle as the base and wire wrapped with textured wire I received in a  swap on Swap-bot

Black and White

The theme in Operation tackle that Bead Stash for January is Black and White, with the addition of Squares if you can manage it.

I haven't managed any squares yet, but have managed two necklaces.

The first is a zebra print heart necklace.

And then a semi precious gem selection in a black and white wirewrapped necklace.

Challenge Bracelet 4

A couple of weeks ago Jo and I made a bid for freedom in our lunch hour and toddled off to Bojangle Beads who we knew had a sale on. there was a couple of things in particular I was looking for to finish off projects, and who can resist a sale?

I found exactly what I was looking for to make the next piece of jewellery using the rest of the beads from the Absolute Beads challenge pack!

A lovely silver cuff bangle ready for wirewrapping!

I think it shows of the colours of the beads so well. I love it! I had to remake it a few times as I used 0.2mm wire to begin with which just wasn't thick enough to hold the weight of some of the beads, but the next size up was just perfect. but then I noticed that a few of the hearts were upside down, so I started again for the third time. Third time lucky!