Market on Saturday

Hi Peeps

This is just a quick message to say that the first Walkerville market of 2013 will on Saturday! So join us to get your lovely new years purchases and remember we will be there every Saturday!

To find out about activities at the market over the next year go to their website! All my new stuff will be there including the agate jewellery, hopefully I will get a few more takers!

A little closeup of one part of my display, its nothing very fancy. And this is a necklace and earrings set, bead embroidered that I absolutely love! Gonna be sad to part with it when it gets sold.

Ok so see you there and if not I will do a proper blog over the weekend.
Love Jet

Flame agate collection

Hi Peeps
I have had a busy week. I sat down with my supervisor on Wednesday (which is never a good idea!) to set a deadline for submission of my dissertation. We have decided to main for the end of February deadline rather than apply for an extension to March. This is good as the end is finally in sight, except that I still have a lot (and I mean a heck of a lot) of work still to do my my dissertation so the stress is now on! The consequence of all this is that I now need to knuckle down and focus my efforts on finishing and everything else (including life) will have to take a back seat. So I apologise now in advance if I become a little non responsive over the next month and a half. Please dont panic I have not died, although I think I will probably want to near the end!

Anyway I promised to show you the bracelet a friend ordered a few weeks ago.

I took the long tubular pearls -I just love the "oil slick" colour of these - and strung a double strand with some daisy spacers between pearls. Then on one strand, just off of center I strung the dove charm. In the end however the friend didnt take this bracelet, but took another I had just made, in a style that is becoming my best sellers.

Agate Bead Jewellery

 These are my absolute favourite beads. A local bead seller imports them. Flame Agates in a number of sizes and colours. I have made several different designs out of the blues shown below and have never hung on to any of them long!

 Here we have a princess length necklace in blue agate on blue string with knots between each bead. This versatile necklace has the class of a strand of pearls but with more flare and colour. The blue is absolutely gorgeous.

 The necklace if finished with a box clasp decorated with a crystal. and is one of those few designs that strays in place, the clasp doesn't slide forward around the neck. Needless to say I can't resist wearing this necklace at every possible opportunity!

To match the necklace I then made a double strand bracelet, also pearl knotted, with 6 mm agates and it was that bracelet that I sold last week. However two others saw the bracelet and then ordered more, and this one above is one of those orders. Below is a closeup of the agates in the bracelet, simply divine!

Having made matching necklaces and bracelets I then had to make earrings. First a stack of agates and then for those who like earrings with a bit of swing the dangle version.

 
You might have guessed from all this that blue is my favourite colour, the one I always gravitate towards but as I said this seller stocks many colours:
 

 First we have this gorgeous green that I have already started stringing with a soft green string.

Here is a trio of different colours, I am afraid this was the last picture I took and the colours have not come out particularly well. The bottom string is mixed shades of brown, black and white, which I want to mix with greens for an earth colour palette. Then in the middle is a soft, almost blue, grey colour. And finally the top strand are black and bright pink, the colour is called strawberry, and I think it would look great as part of a black and pink bead embroidery!
Damn! I'm supposed to be thinking about varsity not making up new designs LOL!

Well I think thats all I have time for today. Dont expect to hear from me before next weekend. Best of luck with everything.
Cheers
Love Jet
PS my first name is Brigette, but I prefer to be called Bridget, its easier. So the Jet for Jet's Creations (my mom picked out the name) comes from the end part of my name Brid-get.

News Flash! 
22Jan 2014
For anyone interested in purchasing an agate necklace go to my Etsy page!

2013 on a roll

Hi Peeps
The new year has got off to a bang. I have finished a draft of the first half my discussion and sent it to my supervisor which has been my mission for the last week and a half and which is why I have been so quiet recently!
On the beading side of life I have one new order which I will show you next week. It is for a good customer who phoned me up out of the blue saying she needed a bracelet for a good friend, a blue one. And that was it. So she has basically given me Carte Blanche to create. So I have made some thing with some gorgeous pearls I had lying around. I also have some other blue bracelets already in the collection which I will also show her so she has got some choice.
I am soo looking forward to this weekend as I have several pieces I want to make including some gemstone necklaces that are absolutely my favourites. I have also been reading some more new beading books and am itching to try my hands at some of the designs in them! Hopefully this weekend is good on the creative front and I will have some fabulous new designs for you next week!

Unfortunately I cant upload any pictures today as the internet here is being very tempermantal, but I will make up for it next week.
Cheers

Happy New Year!

Here is to a great 2013. Sorry I have been MIA for a few days, I went out to the farm for a break. It was great I did not do any work on my thesis and I did not do any beading even! I spent my time crocheting a baby blanket for a friend, although at this rate I will be giving this blanket to her next kid! and working on a cute dinosaur cross-stitch. So now I am back in Jozi and feeling fresh! (Wonder how long that will last ;)
Resolutions: Finish thesis, like I have any other option  LOL!
  and start looking for shops and other platforms for the jewellery.
   Also get my act together in finishing pieces and orders in good time - I say this every couple of months!

So to get us into the spirit of things here is some pieces I made at the end of last year:

Firstly I took this cool carved bone 'shark tooth' and simply strung it on a piece of fine chain, simple but kinda fun

I had this string of soft smoky quarts beads and I just couldnt bear to separate the beads so I strung them as a short strand with fine chain.

This necklace consists of a strand of hot pink pearls with this polymer clay flower sitting asymmetrically on the neck.

The wooden rings and wrapped green beads give this bold necklace a strong African feel.

And finally some fun cocktail rings

The base of the flower is smaller than the head of the ring so I stuck a piece of green ultrasuede to the ring base and attached the flower to the ultrasuede. I also put a bead edging around the ultrasuede just to finish the whole thing off.

Finally I made this cocktail ring after my trip to the Drakensberg a few weeks ago. Just got home and sat down at my desk and got started. I have never been keen on just making up a ring and gluing it to a ring back, glues can fail and rings tend to get knocked about, especially on my hands LOL.  So for this I beaded the stone onto lacy's stiff stuff with a peyote bezel. I then cut a piece of ultrasuede to the right size. I attached the ring backing to the loose ultrasuede with both glue and some stitches to make it nice and secure, and then I attached the ultrasuede to the Lacy's  I think it came out quite neat. A really nice ring, just the right size. Only down side is I am not sure what stone this is. I think its probably an agate of some kind, maybe moss agate (?) but I just dont know. That can be the problem with bead suppliers, often they cant tell you much about some of their products.
Anyway these rings were nice quick projects so I am thinking of creating tutorials or kits of them for the Centurion Craft Show later this year, where I will be doing some workshops.

Ok far too much talking, have a great first week of 2013...

Mother Love

Two days ago I saw a friend and colleague in the corridor. "How are you?" I ask. She shakes her head and then explains that her mom, who has been very sick for the past few months, died two days before. Knowing she was very close to her mom, I give her a hug. Reducing her to tears in a crowded corridor. As she is running out sobbing I feel so bad for setting her off. In a desire to cheer her up and apologise for upsetting her I proceed to design and make her a necklace. Who would have though guilt (or maybe its sympathy?) could be such a good inspiration! So I spent the whole rest of that day designing this necklace in my head and the entire evening and the next morning putting it together. Thus here it is my Mater Necklace.
Mater is Latin for mother.

The strap is made with ostrich egg-shell beads and amethyst rounds. Lucinda got the ostrich beads for me from the Bushmen of Botswana when she was there on field work. Whenever I use these beads I think of her.

I chose black for the base colour in the peyote tube with a star burst pattern in gold. I wanted the whole design to sort of symbolise mothers. So there is a dove, flowers, feathers and leaves, an owl for wisdom and a clock for time. The peyote strip says mom, I wanted to use the Latin, Mater (hence the name of the piece) but it would have been too long. From the beginning I wanted to use the amethyst heart bead (next to the dove) so that gave the colour palette, black, gold and amethyst.

Part of the inspiration for this necklace was Heidi Kummli's Peace necklace. I have been reading her book The spirit of bead embroidery and on reflection the thinking behind her beading gave a strong influence to this necklace. So thanks Heidi!

So this is for you Lucinda!

PS have a good Christmas break everybody I dont know when I will blog again, so happy new years if I dont get to it next week.

Crochet kick

Hi guys
Cant wait for the holidays to start. Not because I am going to relax and do nothing but because I have so many crafty tasks and stuff I have got to do at home ;)!

The latest Walkerville Market went reasonably well, I wasn't there I was hiking in the Drakensberg which was fun! So my poor mother had to hold the fort in my absence. On that note We will be at the Walkerville market on this Saturday 15 Dec, where the choir will be singing carols and on the  17 Dec (which is a local holiday) where there will be a beer making demo. The final Walkerville market for the year will be on the 22 Dec where Santa will be holding court of the kiddies. So make a draai out this way for something to do.

Recently I have gotten onto a crochet kick, which was a great way of making the long car journeys go further! I have been trying my hand at many of the blocks from Jan Eaton's book 200 Crochet blocks.I have been itching to get some wool and start trying my hand at a blanket but couldn't decide which patterns I wanted. Then I heard two days ago that a friend of mine just had her first baby. I am so excited for her! So now I am inspired I'm gonna make a blanket for her little girl. I still had no idea what I wanted to make so I hit the Internet looking for inspiration.



This is a blanket make from Jan Eaton's designs that will be my inspiration for my first crochet blanket
The details about this design can be found at The Purlbee

 This is where Pinterest really comes into its own. Yes its a great way to waste time and fun to look at all the pictures but what I really like is that you can pin loads of pictures from sites and go back to those sites later without having to remember web addresses or try and retrace your steps through the search engine, really Pinterest is a "social media" thing well worth using, and this is coming from someone that hates facebook!

I have found time in the last week or so to do some beading and I will get the pieces on the blog and website soon as I can, although I have already sold two of them!
See ya.

Sorted

I have spent many evening in the last few weeks sorting out my bead stash. It had gotten to the point where you couldn't open the cupboard without something falling on your head! All the beads were in shopping bags and shoved into any nook or cranny. In short, it was chaos! So I began to sort everything, all pearls together into one box, all gemstones into another. Having first spent a small fortune on plastic boxes ;) . All findings of a type (like earring findings) together in compartmentalised boxes. So now I have a perfectly (more-or-less) sorted bead stash, only one problem...I cant find where I put anything! and the cupboard is so full that to get out whatever box I need, I first have to take out another three! Sigh.

The show on Saturday wasn't great. I like the fact that it was a nice substantial show, but the weather turned unexpectedly bad and I didn't think to take a coat so I froze! I think perhaps the bad weather also scared off the crowds. So we didn't make many sales (one, in fact). But another stall holder, a silversmith, with some lovely pieces there, was impressed with my designs and asked if she brought me some pearls and gemstones, weather I would be interested in making some stuff for her, so I will be back there this Saturday to see what happens.

I sat down to make some new things one evening last week and had one of those sessions where nothing wants to work! I think the problem was that I had two different ideas in my head and no real plan about what I wanted to make. Sometimes sitting down without a plan can produce a great design but often all it produces is an unholy mess, that takes me several days to clean-up, in fact I still havnt done so!


Ok I have talked far too much again!
Keep well and stay sane while doing your Christmas shopping.Cheers




I dont know if I ever showed this to you. Its a bracelet I made for one of my best customers, she wanted something to give a friend for her 70th birthday.