Tag: beaded beads

AJE Component of the Month Challenge – May Reveal

Published on by Lesley13 Comments
It’s the end of another month already which means it’s time for another AJE Challenge reveal and the components we had to work with this month were a pair of these pretty beaded beads from Susan Kennedy of Suebeads. 
I have a little stock of these beads and am very fond of using them for earrings because they are small and light but always pack a punch in terms of colour and textures – so that’s the route I took with his challenge.

This first pair are very simple but Sue’s beads were such a perfect match for a pair of ombre ceramic drops by Diana Ptaszynski of Suburban Girl Beads that I really didn’t want to add anything more than a little wire wrapping and some simple wires.

The blues of the elements work so well together and are such a natural pairing with copper.

For my second pair I picked out a pair of Polymer Clay heads pins by Heather Powers of Humblebeads. I fed the wire of the headpins up through the beaded beads and bent them round bail making pliers to make a loop and then fed them back down through the bead wrapping the wire around itself a couple of times. I then wrapped the tails of the wire around the tip of my round nose pliers to create a little coil and then stretched these out to create tendrils

 These are super light, really comfortable to wear and perfect for colours for summer.

Many thanks to Sue for the chance to work with these lovely fun beads. You can see what everyone else designed using the links below.

Next month’s AJE challenge is another themed event and this time it’s all about Fireflies with the chance to win one of Jen Cameron’s lovely beads so check out the this AJE post for all the details but do hurry – the winners will be chose tomorrow, Monday June 1st.

Guests
AJE Team

AJE Component of the month – November Reveal

Published on by Lesley16 Comments
The components we got to work with for this months challenge were a pair of the beautiful beaded beads made by the AJE ‘Queen of Seeds’ Kristen Stevens…

 
I chose a pair of lovely cinnamon coloured beads but I was also fortunate enough to do a little bead swap with Kristen so I actually received a whole selection of beads in beautifully coordinating tones and, because they went so beautifully with one of my patinated bronze leaf connectors I decided to use some of these too.

The beads reminded e of hedgerow fruits in various stages of ripeness and I wanted to try and portray that sense of abundance your get when everything is coming to fruition. I decided on a double strand necklace and combined Kristen’s beads with a selection of matching Czech glass, including some gorgeous vintage bronze faceted glass barrels.

The back of the necklace is made up of 2 strands of farfalle beads in a dark aubergine and olive green and a handmade bronze wire clasp. the final touch is a tiny flower bead hung from the bottom of the leaf connector.

I apologise for the photos not being the best in the world…for some reason I had great difficulty getting ‘unfuzzy’ photos and I can only put it down to my broken ankle…that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I hope you’ll join us in our little blog hop to see what the rest of the team and our guest artist did with Kristen’s wonderful beads.

Special Guest
Alice Alice Dreaming
AJE Team
Lesley