Bicones two ways

This one is lovely - in real life it's totally sparkly and fab. I like the red and black thing, very smart. It's on red tigertail, and very simple. I made the dangles by making wrapped loops from eyepins, as the hole in the hearts was too wide to use any jump ring. It was fiddly, but I think it actually looks really good. The matching earrings I debated for ages whether to make them with red or black bicones. I might do the opposite colourway too, and get some more of these beads. The hearts are 30p each (from Beads Unlimited) but that's pretty good compared to Swarovski.

And here are some super-sized bicones, lampwork ones. Pretty.

Copper, suger and charms (as Hawkwind never sang)

This is a charm bracelet, my first experiments with chain. It's easier than I thought, and looks cool, I think. The charms are all ones I had from something I took apart ages ago, and I think they look much better on the bracelet. It's fiddly, mind.

These beads I bought because they look like they're covered in sugar, which can only be a good thing in my opinion. the design is similar to one I did a few years ago, made by twisting the beads onto strands of wire and twisting the strands together. The seed beads are loose so they move freely.

And another one I love and didn't want to give away. Copper lined pale blue beads, on memory wire with blue and copper seed beads, and little stars. I haven't got any more stars left now so I can't make another just like it.

Multi-coloured swirly discs

A fab bright, bold necklace and bracelet set. the necklace is 2-strand, on red and blue tigertail, and the bracelet has a similar sized toggle to the beads. I love these and may make some for myself.

New beads for Xmas

Look at these! In fact, I used most of them straight away, took them to work to sell and they all went immediately. But I shall post them anyway.

Shrinkles!

Looks a bit Christmassy, doesn't it? It wasn't meant to be. This is a memory wire bracelet made with those square beads I've had forever, interspersed with wooden and fire-polished glass accents, and SHRINKLES! I got so over-excited about having Shrinkles again. I used to love making them as a child. It's basically plastic that you draw on, cut out, whatever, and then you heat it in the oven (or with a heat gun, as I did) and it shrinks seven times smaller and seven times thicker. It's fab and looks amazing. But if you heat them with a gun, they do tend to blow about the place so you have to be careful - I think using the oven is easier, but you have to watch them so it helps if your oven has a glass door, which mine doesn't. Incidentally, Shrinkles seem to have got hard to find. Fenwick's used to sell them but were unable to locate any last time I asked. Mine came from trusty eBay.

Solid links

This one was made with these nice oval rings. They've been sitting about on my desk for ages because I couldn't find anything good to do with them but then I made this. As they're just a solid ring, they have to be linked with jump rings, and the in-between links are from Yum Yums again - they're wire wrapped beads, mostly black but with the odd dark blue one mixed in.

This necklace is similar, but the rings are twisty. Instead of jump rings to link them, I made links with eye pins - just put a few beads on and turn the non-bent end the same as the other end. You could do it with plain wire, of course, but using eye pins means half the work's done for you. The clear cubey beads were from eBay, they were a measly 99p for 100 with free delivery! They came from Hong Kong as well, so I can't imagine postage was that cheap.

Sweeties!

They look a bit like sweets. To me, anyway. It's not that clear in the photo but they're strung on two colours of tigertail, blue and black. Here's a similar one with purple and pink where you can see the colours. The bumpy ones make me think of the everlasting gobstoppers in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (yes, the 1971 film, in which they for some reason made the gobstoppers which you suck forever in a shape which would be most uncomfortable to suck).

Spotty glass bead bracelet

These beads are from Yum Yums too - I did quite well out of that one visit. It's a bit hard to tell in the photo, but the spots have a sort of metallic, petrolly effect which looks very cool on the clear glass. It's just strung on silver tigertail with small blue cuboids in between. I tried it with blue tigertail, but it stood out too much.

Works in progress

I need inspiration. These beads look better on the ends than the sides, which means they won't look good just strung, so I need some creative kind of stringing that shows them off.
And this is a bracelet that I made and don't like. The balance is wrong. So I need to remake it, either as a bracelet or something else, but I'm not sure how exactly.

Big bead bracelets

I've gone bracelet mad! I've been making millions of them, I can't get enough. These are all made with Elasticity. The beads for the ones in the top two photos are from the wonderful Yum Yum beads in Leeds, where I went a bit mad buying loads of stuff when I went the other day. They know how to run a bead shop - they have all their beads in little trays, and little tubs for you to gather them up in yourself. Le Beado could learn a lot from them. Which is where the beads in the bottom photo came from, actually - much more expensive than Yum Yum's, at 55p each (the ones in the top picture were 40p each on a multibuy deal).

And I made two more of the bumpy bead bracelets with the rest of the beads, so I got three bracelets out of that £4.50 pack, and a few left over. Not bad.