My summer holiday and my not two-faced pendants

First of all I have to warn you this is going to be a LONG post. 

So, my summer holiday happened to be this weekend. No kidding. It was not planed or anything and I did not even leave my flat other than getting stuffs from the local store but I had the laziest 3 days since I moved back to Hungary. On Saturday I even watched two of my favourite films: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. On Sunday I partially watched life of Brian. Meaning: my sister was watching it and to see the parts I particularly love I rushed to the living room every 10-15 minutes. You can guess not much work was done that day... 

But no doubt, magic happens because beside all the laziness + my sister being here on holiday + my Babe is going slightly hyper because of the heat I still managed to do some beading. Okay technically nothing new (only the colors), but you don't have to know about that, do you? Did I mention my mission about getting the tutorial done for all my pendants?

I will start with the end result, and than the story how I got there:

You may remember this pendant I uploaded to my blog some time ago: I used to call it Brigid but I just could not get used to it, so I had to find a different name. More about this later.

I started to bead a second color version for the tutorial. That was particularly hot day so I went for the cold colors. It turned out like an ice cube pendant. At this time I noticed how different the front from the back. Funnily enough when I uploaded it to my Facebook page I got most of the nice comment on the BACK of the pendant :)

I thoght maybe they can't see the front because all the similar color beads. No problem, I have more beads to use. The result is below:

Now they (my FB friends) liked Both side. From this moment my pendant did not have a front and a back side, it had two front sides instead :)  I turned to Allan and said I'm in trouble with the name. I REALLY can't call this "Two face", can I? It is just so negative... Allan said why not call them Gemini then? So let me introduce you to my new pendant

GEMINI

This is the last version, with all opaque beads. The closest to my heart right now. (I gave up sayin "my favourite" a long time ago. I had too many...) I did this to see wether I could use Swarovski cubes instead of Miyuki. It worked out as you can see :)
This is the first front side:

And this is the second front side:

I think this last version shows how different the two sides are.

Right now I'm working on the tutorial, I'm about half way done.

Hope you will like Gemini and will be fun and joy to bead it up :)

Have a great Tuesday!

Viki

Artfire collection - with my pendant!

Guess what! I was just checking my inbox on Artfire, and noticed that I have an unread message I completely overlooked in the last two weeks or so. 

Anyway, the message cheered me up immediately:

I was included in this fantastic collection on Artfire!

Well, to be more precise, my Gothic style Asteria pendant was included, not me as I'm not selling myself...

ArtFire Beadweavers Guild Reds

You can check out this very cool collection curated by KraftyMax 

(thank you, thank you, thank you KraftyMax!) by clicking on title under the image.

Please feel free to rate and don't forget to leave a nice comment :)

I'll be back soon as I have a few new pendants to show you :)

Have a wonderful day!

Petals and cubes

This sweet pendant started as a logical decision to do something with my Miyuki cubes. I really love them, in fact I love them so much I have a whole box of them in all different colors and finishes. But be honest: beside the fact that they don't look that good in a plastic box I really intended to use them. 

Sometime. Somewhere.

I started to play around with these pretty cubes back in May, just before we moved and I managed to come up with the idea of the petal, but really did not like how they were around the rivoli. Now I'm on a mission to finish the tutorial for ALL of my pendants I designed this year (yep, I'm addicted, once I'm beading, hard to stop it to make tutorials...) and found this little bit ugly looking flower pendant.

I really loved the colors together so decided to give it a facelift. Literally. As I moved the petals one row lower in the bezel the rivoli looked bigger and more dominant. Really loved the result:

After I finished the purple-pink rather girlish flower I wanted something elegant, and really loved how the frosted teal flower turned out. These frosted colors go so very well with the sparkling rivolis, don't you think?

I could have been satisfied with these too, and start to work on the tutorial but I felt something was missing :) After the fashion-pink and the elegant-teal I just had to try this one to satisfy my joyful "Me"

Mission accomplished!

I was really happy with my new pendants and also got good comments on my Facebook page so it was time to open my graphics program to do all the diagrams and drawings. I was surprised how easy it was now, that I knew every step by heart. I should not postpone the tutorials in the future, it is so much easier to do straight after the beading part is done! Always learn something new, don't we?

Yesterday night I managed to finish the tutorial and listed it in my ETSY shop, here:

Rhea Beaded Pendant Tutorial

But that's not all to it. I also decided to run a 15% off discount in my tutorial shop to celebrate that me and my beads found each other again. To receive the discount for your entire order in my tutorials shop use this code:

LOVETOBEAD

Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday.

Viki

Phoenix

This little sparkling square pendant kept me busy in the last few days.

I just finished the tutorial, it's now available in my ETSY shop:

PHOENIX

Soon it will be also available in my ARTFIRE store and on few other sites

to keep those beady fingers busy.

Hope you will like it as much as I do.

Have a great day!

I could not resist anymore

I had to touch my beads. Looking at them did not satisfy me any more. In the last 2 months I had way too many things in my life to deal with and even more stuff on my desk to finish (or start...) Unfortunately non of those things on my desk related to beading. 

Yesterday (I could have predicted that before...) my addiction won. I decided to tide up my beading trays. All 6 of them. 

Of course packing beads usually ends up beading. (Hope I'm not alone with this.)

So I thought I could make a copy of a pendant I made about 2 months ago, but - of course - forgot to take notes while I was beading. It is SOOOOO me...

Anyway, it seemed quite a simple task, but after I did the bezel around the rivoli I managed to miss-bead something. Well, the  pendant did not look like the original at all, however I liked the result so much that I started to work with it.

Here is my first born:

I know I went crazy with the colors, but we had horrible dark and cloudy day and tried to make up for the weather.

And why should I stop after one pendant when I can bead two? Two is always better than one, right?

My second one worked up faster after I picked the colors. However I spent more time to choose the right shades than to bead it up... If I don't like the colors together I will hate the result too... And I don't like to hate my own beadwork, so sometimes (usually...) spend more time with the color picking than with the actual beading...

And here are the twins together. They don't even look like they are related... Incredible how the colors effect the (optical) shape of the pendants.

I have not got name yet, so they are called twins just now.

If you have any good idea, don't be shy and share it with me :)

Have a great Monday,

Viki