My Toothfairy Purse

I like to do peyote stitch. I learned to do this type of beading stitch from my sister, Kotya. Her daughter Jenni has a beads and beading patterns business, Polar Beads. Jennifer has been an inspiration to me since I first, finally sat down and picked up my first beading needle and beads after severe coaxing by my sister Kotya. (Well it was!) Check out Jenni's site for incredible patterns and great prices on beads!

I have shown this completed purse before online but wanted to include it here on this page, as I will be showing a lot more of the completed work I have done here. This is going to be a fun blog!

I am trying to upload the backside of this purse but Blogger is not cooperating today. I try to make my files smaller and they still don't work so that must not be the trouble.

I purchased the bead pattern design software from BeadcreatorPro a long time ago to work up some designs I had in my head. I have found the program to be frustrating to use. I know that the designer is working on it all the time and always am excited to download his latest fixes.

I know my niece, Jennifer of Polar Beads, uses Beadscape, which is a program that will run only on Mac's, so I could not purchase that software. It appears to work great to create patterns to print out for sharing or selling. Jenni has created so many beautiful designs. She has been sharing in the magazine Bead & Button for a while now. I love seeing her work in that magazine.

Ah ha! It worked! This is the backside of the Toothfairy purse. I had fun creating and beading this! The youngsters are holding up their missing teeth.

I'm not sure if I still have this pattern ready to print out but if you would like to bead it I can try to send it to you as a PDF file. Just email me!

I will be posting more of my work soon.

IT BROKE Frustrations!

I have been deciding what stringing material to use for making a necklace using a "RARE Natural White MoMo Coral" of graduated branches and Austrian crystals that I had purchased. The coral are 99% white, but have a few hints of pink in them. I wanted to use white coral since I wanted to sell it as bridal jewelry.

My daughter Karla is a wedding coordinator (Karla DeLong Weddings) and as we were looking through a bride magazine we saw a necklace made with coral that was so stunning I decided I wanted to try to create one myself.

After doing some online reading about stringing material and getting my mind in a jumble about it all, I wrote to Beadweaver's Sue for suggestions on what type of stringing material to use. I appreciate the time she took to share her expertise with me and after thinking about it and playing around with the coral for months now, I sat down to sting it all together.

I decided to use SoftFlex beading wire size .019. It's suggested use is with glass, mineral and metal beads.

I have strung and taken it a part three times already and now I have to do it again! The sterling silver cap end I was using just broke! boo hoo Maybe I need to consider using some other way to end the necklace?

So anyway, back to the beading table...

Beadwork Blogging

I decided I need a place just for beads, just like in this house of mine. A place where only beads go. Easier to share projects that I have done.

So, here is where I will share pictures of beading.

I hope you enjoy and feel free to share your beadwork links and ideas and projects and give me pointers! I am a beginner at beading.