French Bead Sites

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

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.

Red Corralling Technique Necklace

I have long admired the beading of Vavara, a Russian beader. She has written a few books, and this is the first necklace I have tried. It is available from bead-patterns.com, and is called "Coral III Necklace". The branches are really easy once you get a rhythm to them. I used two colours of size 10 (from a Czech company who has smallish size 10's) and size 8 seed beads for the main section as fill in's. The main colour was light opaque red, and the contrast (end of branches) was dark opaque red. The original pattern has longer centre branch sections, however I just made all the branches the same length. I also added larger size 8 seed beads to the starting band to make it a little more substantial. This is a really fun technique, and went fairly quickly once I got the hang of doing the branches. I will try some more contrasting colours in the next one. I brought this in progress to a Christmas cookie party, and got rave reviews. I plan to try another one for me. This one was a Christmas present for my daughter. Because she did not want a choker length, I am adding a 5" strip of adjustable back extender.

Black Necklace for Christmas

I made this necklace for my daughter for Christmas. She liked it but wanted a longer catch so she could wear it NOT as a choker. I added a length of adjustable beads to do this.
I used a pattern by Sherry Wayt that I downloaded from readytobead.com. I adapted the design to make it symmetrical.
If you haven't seen this website they have some good patterns for instant download.
I tried to make the centre hang lower, but due to the irregularities of the seed beads, next time I would increase by at least 2 bead increments. This was a fun pattern to do, and I plan to try some further variations.

Baroque Necklace

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These necklaces are from a pattern on Bead-Patterns.com by Charlene Hughes. The silver one on top is the full motif in the pattern. The mauve necklace on the bottom is simplified. This is a right angle weave technique. A free pattern for the technique by Kathy Rice is available on the Fire Mountain Gems Website. This is a great way to use the 4mm square beads.