Tree Wings Studio Blog Hop and Challenge

If you're looking for my Bead Hoarders Blog Hop reveal piece, I'm sorry, I couldn't get anything finished. I had a case of Heat Exhaustion and haven't been able to finish my pieces. I'm still working on them and hope to post them soon.  In the meantime, please read about my Tree Wings Reveal piece which I had already finished before this happened. Thank you so much for understanding.

Recently I signed up for a chance to win a set of polymer clay beads from Rebekah Payne of Tree Wings Studio.  I love her beads. I have a set with the most adorable little pony and some additional beads and I haven't had the time to make up a bracelet with them. It will be for me, since I love horses.  Just need to make the time. Anyway, I got chosen to receive one set of a large and small round bead.  I was overjoyed.  I love the colors in them, to me very earthy and rustic.  And as usual, forgot to take a picture of them before I started.  I knew I wanted something very rustic, but since there were only 2 and they were different sizes I had to figure out how to use them.  I had started hearing/reading about Chinese knotting and this intrigued me. It seems to be very similar to macramé which I used to do in the 70's and have been starting to re-add to my repertoire. (See my macramé anklet here and a fused glass piece I did a couple of years ago and added a small macramé hanger to it and sold in my shop.) 

 
As I perused the internet for ideas and information about Chinese knotting I found a knot I like, the Chinese coin knot, I think they called it, also known as the Celtic knot a and thought it would make a great bracelet with the larger bead as the focal and the smaller one as the clasp.  I found some hemp in a neutral color that matched the main color in the beads and then some wonderful 6/0 seed beads in the coordinating colors in the bead to add as pops of color.  I set to work tying off a knot with a small seed bead as a stopper for the small round bead for the clasp. Then I started tying Coin/Celtic knots and adding the seed beads in between each knot. I was hoping both pieces of the hemp would go through the seed beads instead of having to put a bead on each piece, but it didn't work.  I figured out how long I needed the bracelet and added the larger focal bead. Then I finished tying off the rest of the knots and the seed beads.  Finally, I tied another knot, left a loop for the small bead/clasp to slide through, tied another knot and then 2 small seed beads on the end.  I love the way it turned out. Very earthy, rustic that would go with so many things.  The only thing I'm not fond of is the way it turns. I think I should have reversed the strings I was using working from left to right and then right to left as I would in macramé to keep it straighter. However, the tutorial I found didn't say anything about doing that. Next time I'll try it to see if it helps.  Anyway, tell me what you think of my Chinese/Celtic knotted bracelet.  Hope Tree Wings studio thinks I did justice to her beads. Here's the bracelet and a closeup of the larger bead/focal.  Thanks for letting me play.  Be sure to check out what everyone else did with their beads on Tree Wings Studio.

For more of my Wire-wrapped, Beaded jewelry or Stained Glass, Mosaics, Fused Glass kreationz for your Home or Garden, check out my shop, KayzKreationz.



Here's the participants:

Rebekah Payne - http://www.treewingsstudio.com/

Stephanie LaRosa - http://stringaholic.blogspot.com/

Kathy Alderfer - http://artfulaccents.blogspot.com/

Kay Thomerson - http://kayzkreationz.blogspot.com/ (you are here)

Anklet Blog Hop Reveal

(If you're looking for my AJE reveal with SueBeads component, click here)
Well I managed to sign myself up for 4 challenges/reveals within a month time. When I was doing this they all sounded like so much fun, I wasn't paying attention to the time frame.  This is the 3rd of the 4. The last one comes on June 7th.  Sadafulee had posted about having a blog hop with anklets.  I like anklets and have a few, but always forget to wear them.  And I've never tried making one. (Or if I have it was a LONG time ago)  But I figured it couldn't be that hard.  Plus, I used to make macramé jewelry back in the 70's when it first became popular in small town Missouri where I lived and had been trying my hand at it again little by little.  I made a macramé hanger for one of my fused glass pieces and incorporated small shells. I made a macramé guitar strap for my son for one of his guitars, so I thought, what better than to make a macramé anklet.  I had won some great little tube beads a while back and had some macramé cord left over from the 70's that would go great with these beads. Plus I dug through a stash of other beads I'd won and found some great Onyx beads in the brownish/orange color in the beads and that would go great with my macramé cord.  So I picked out my orange and beige waxed nylon cords and the beads and got ready to start. I also knew I wanted to try a sliding clasp for this anklet as I'd been reading about these and had just seen one on a friend's bracelet, so found a tutorial about how to do it and got started.  I couldn't finish it like she suggested as I didn't have any needles that would go back up through my knots, but I just knotted and tied off like I used to and I think it turned out great. This way I can open it up to slip on over my foot and then adjust it to fit my ankle and have little dangles.  I used some small Czech faceted glass beads I had for the dangles in a coordinating brown color.  I love it. Now to get to wear it. And best of all I still have 3 of the tube beads left to make something else or another one to sell, give away or something.  What do you think?  Do you like macramé?  Would you wear this?

 

I never realized how hard it is to photograph an anklet or anything while wearing it, but I wanted to show it on the ankle. Check out all the participants and see how each one met the challenge of creating an anklet/anklets.  I only had time to create one anklet due to time constraints.  However I will be creating more.  For some reason I can't get the list of participants to post properly, so please visit Kashmira's Blog and see what everyone else created.

And if you're looking for some of my other Jewelry, Stained Glass, Mosaic or Fused Glass Kreationz for your Home or Garden, be sure to check out my shop, KayzKreationz.  Thanks for stopping by.