May Favourites

As the month of May is almost over, I wanted to share some of the pieces I've created during it. So, without further ado, here goes...

A sunny bracelet with glass beads and bronze coloured details.
I made the chain myself form these bronze hoops that had just been lying around for a while now...
just one of those things you're not really sure what to do with once you've got them.

A set of a necklace and matching earrings. I made the primrose blossoms out of
polymer clay already in January but only used them now. I matched the blossoms with
light yellow or perhaps creamish glass beads with a structured surface.

Here I used up another set of polymer clay beads I made in January.
I decided to spice the necklace up with seed bead covered glass beads and silver-plated
findings. Also, on each clay bead, one of the blossoms is set with a shiny rhinestone.

Here I decided to try my hand at making brooches. Though bead embroidery is
time-consuming and sometimes quite irritating - especially when the thread tangles up and
it's too dark in the middle of the night to untangle it -, I find myself getting hooked on the technique.
I used Japanese Toho seed beads and some glass beads that had been lying around for ages.

And this set is my absolute favourite from May. Turquoise and gold coloured beads
- faceted, crackled, bicones, Czech seed beads and what not -
make for a fabulous pendant and earrings and all in a simple brick stitch.
Simple, yet intricate, don't you think. And I've never sold a set that quickly.

And here are some earrings as well. As I create quite a lot of earrings, I decided to put them all in the same image - less scrolling that way. 

See the red+copper butterflies in the upper right-hand corner? Those are mine :D

I think posts like this one might become a monthly thing. I'm much too lazy to post over every individual thing that I feel that I especially like and it might become boring for others as well, so this is a good solution.

Blue as Summer Skies

Today I would like to share with you the story of a necklace I made over the last weekend. It started off with me playing around with some blue glass focals and the desire to do some bead embroidery, which, note please, I have only used twice before and only to create some very simple pendants. 

You might notice that the blue pebbles have strings of white in them. They kind of remind me of clouds. 

So I drew the outline on paper and transferred it to the felt. After that I glued the pebbles on and started encompassing them with seed beads. And after filling up the surface (with a few mishaps like cutting the wrong thread or being exactly one bead short - let's see who can find where that happened), adding the ribbon, and adding all the necessary finishing touches to it, here is the end result. This was my first project with bead embroidery on this scale and I hope you like it :)

Summer Is Coming

It's super-warm here and plants and trees are blossoming behind my window. So here, have some roses to go with that :)

I used various shapes and sizes of glass beads, bronze-coloured details and these wonderful pink acrylic roses I found last week in the local bead shop. Not my usual style, but I'm feeling very dreamy today.

My First Blog Hop

So, I promised to tell you about the blog hop I signed up for.

Leah Curtis is hosting a history themed blog hop down at her own blog Beady Eyed Bunny - isn't that the most adorable name ever? The idea is to choose a period of history and create a few pieces of jewelry inspired by that. You can get all the details by clicking on the button on my sidebar. 

The period I chose is English Romanticism - having studied that period in depth in my BA program, I should be able to whip something up. To get my creative juices flowing, I've been simply googling for pictures and here are some of my favourites...

Inspiration for the upcoming History Hop.
I don't own any of these images or the objects in them.

I've also been doing some sketching and shopping - honestly, any excuse to go to the nearest bead shop, right? Everything should work out nicely...

A Brave New Blog and Introductions

Hi. My name is Gerda and after surfing the net for hours and hours I decided to create a crafts blog of my own. Other people just seemed to be having so much fun and I didn't want to miss out on that. This was already a couple of weeks ago, but now I decided to actually start typing.

I thought I'd start by saying a couple of words about myself. I studied English and got my BA last spring and now I'm in the MA program. However, I decided to drop that - it was just toooo dry - and am now in the process of dropping out of school - and this gives me a lot of free time (so why not use it to start a blog, right?). In July, I'm going to enroll in the Tartu Healthcare College to study 4,5 years to become a midwife. So there's a change of course for you - hence the title for this blog.

I've been making jewelry for about 2,5 years for now. I don't really have a favourite medium (if you don't count beads as such, heh), but I love to learn new techniques and try different things. I've tried the basics such as wire work, polymer clay, beading, etc. I guess I just work in phases. For example, in January, after my last exam period at uni, I sat on my table for five days straight and created these little Estonian ethnic pendants from Fimo. (Oh yeah, did I mention that I'm Estonian?) I sometimes make other stuff, besides jewelry, as well. Buttons, for example. And last year, after seeing how expensive they are in shops, I made a jewelry box for my mum for Mother's Day. But yeah, this blog will probably be mainly about jewelry. And since tomorrow's Mother's Day again, you can have a peek of the earrings I made her this year: 

Bronze-coloured details and semi-precious chips (not exactly sure, what).

You like?

Other things I like include TV-shows, books, cats and nature in general. 

I think that's enough for my first post on this blog. I was working in the garden all day and I'm tired. Tomorrow (or on another day quite soon), I'll tell you about Leah's History Hop that I signed up for :) (Look at the button, look, look!)