Over the holidays I had some fun time cruising the internet and looking at some off shore bead sites. I found some really wonderful sites in France, and had a great time trying to translate things. I liked them so much I have subscribed to 2 of them. They have wonderful patterns on them, and I am amazed at the professionalism of the patterns and the quantity.
Like Japanese sites, they use a lot of 2 needle techniques. I am slowly getting the hang of this, but it is still awkward. Bead-patterns.com has a good instruction sheet by Chris Prussing that I have found very helpful.
Take a look at a couple of these sites:
Les Perles de Frany has wonderful links to other sites in France and elsewhere.
http://lesperlesdefrany.canalblog.com/
See the Pumpkin Bead Pattern on this site:
http://mimilg.skynetblogs.be/tag/1/Creations
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Easy Necklace
This is a necklace from a pattern on the internet at http://membres.lycos.fr/perlesenchantees/gothika-gb.htm
I made it for my son's girlfriend Liana. It is really easy and can be varied considerably. I used czech seed beads and 4mm firepolish beads. Liana is a professional musician and has to dress up for concerts, so hopefully she can wear it!!
I love making fancy necklaces, but in our casual lifestyle today they are not always easy to wear.
The new book Mastering Beadwork by Carol Cypher has an idea that I find useful, it is to have a mantra that reminds you of the pattern. The mantra for this necklace was "4 on top, skip one, 5 on bottom, skip one". I am finding that writing this on th pattern sheets really helps when there is a gap between when I start something and the next time I work on it.