Bracelet of the Day: Presa Linda Variation - Terracotta & Chocolate

PRESA LINDA BRACELET VARIATION

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• 6mm 2-Hole Cabochons "Chalk White Gold Luster"
• Pinch beads "Matte Dark Bronze"

After making the "Camille Bracelet Variation" that I blogged about yesterday, I thought I'd see if 2-Hole Cabochons would work with Carole Ohl's free "Presa Linda Bracelet" pattern instead of Silky beads. They work perfectly and I think they make an adorable little bracelet. "Presa Linda" is a variation of Carole Ohl's "Presa Bracelet" pattern, which you can buy HERE. "Presa Linda Bracelet" is a free pattern and you can download it from THIS post. 

When you buy 2-Hole Cabochons, I recommend buying more than you think you'll need. I've been buying them in bags of 12 beads and there is often one or more defective/deformed beads per dozen. 

Bracelet of the Day: Camille Variation - Chalk Blue Luster

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Kheops® Par Puca® beads "Full Dorado"
• 6mm 2-Hole Cabochons "Chalk White Luster"
• 4mm Czech bicones "Aquamarine Celsian"

I've blogged about my Silky bead variation of Puca's "Camille" pattern many times but this time I did something different. Instead of Silky beads, I used 2-Hole Cabochons. As you can see, they work great. I love that they can be outlined with seed beads just like the Kheops beads.

You can buy the original "Camille" pattern in Puca's Etsy shop HERE (this pattern is no longer available). You'll find the bicones at Red Panda HERE. I have links to places to buy Kheops beads and 2-Hole Cabochons on the right side of my blog.

Free Graphics - Seed Catalog Calendar Series No. 3

I still haven't had a chance to take my bracelet photos. Yesterday we had a big storm and the power was out all afternoon. In the meantime, here is another page and coordinating images from my Seed Catalog calendar. Read the details about this series HERE.

I will post more of these seed catalog pictures periodically when I don't have any beadwork projects to blog about. Feel free to use them to make greeting cards, computer desktop wallpaper, calendars or scrapbook pages, etc. but please do not sell them or post them for download.
 

Free Graphics - Before & After

In my previous life, before I learned to bead, one of my favorite computer activities was editing digital graphics. I loved to clean up vintage pictures that I found online and use them on my greeting cards.

I have three new bracelets to blog about but I haven't had a chance to take photos of them yet. In the meantime I thought you might like to see before and after examples of a couple of vintage pictures that I've fixed up. I don't remember what techniques I used to clean these up, but I did the work using Paint Shop Pro.

BEFORE

AFTER

I cropped the picture above to A2 greeting card size. A card this size will fit in an "invitation" size envelope.

I thought that this picture would make a cute jigsaw puzzle so I made one for you to play with. I made the puzzle using BrainsBreaker, which you can buy HERE, but you don't need to buy the program to do my puzzle.

Download the puzzle HERE.

Before:

BEFORE

AFTER

I used the above picture on an anniversary card a few years ago. It was actually an online greeting to a friend and her husband. The picture below is how the first page of the "card" looked in a browser. Clicking on that picture took them to the next page of the card and so on.

 

Bracelet of the Day: Bisaneta's Bracelet - Turquoise & Burgundy

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Light Bronze" (457L)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Light Bronze" (457L)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Light Bronze" (457L)
• DiamonDuo beads "Pastel Burgundy"
• SuperDuo beads "Pink Luster Turquoise"

I don't remember where I first saw Bisaneta's bracelet but it was probably on Pinterest. You can see the original on her Facebook page HERE. As far as I know, there is no pattern available for this bracelet and I don't see anything in the comments on Facebook that suggests that there is one. I followed the link to her flickr page and learned that she lives in Valencia, which I assume is in Spain, but found no other useful information. If anyone knows of a pattern, please let me know. 

UPDATE: I found a YouTube video tutorial that shows how to make a bracelet nearly identical to this one. The only difference is the way that they added the seed bead embellishment along the outside edge. The video is in English and you can watch it HERE at Spoilt Rotten Beads.

I just happened to have some of the same bead colors that she used in her photo so I made the sample below while I was figuring out how to make the bracelet. Because I used Toho seed beads to make the sample, I had to adjust the number of seed beads in the arches. With Toho beads, three seem to fit the best and four work best with Miyuki seed beads. The results are a little neater with Miyuki beads as you can see in my bracelet above.

• 15/0 seed beads Toho "Bright Bronze" (221)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Bright Bronze" (221)
• 8/0 seed beads Toho "Bright Bronze" (221)
• DiamonDuo beads "Chalk Lumi Purple"
• SuperDuo beads "Turquoise"
• SuperDuo beads "Opaque Olive"

Pinterest...

Did you notice that they completely changed the look of Pinterest yesterday? I don't know what they were thinking but it looks terrible, especially the gigantic title at the top of the page. All that white space with very little in it looks very bad and is wasteful. The overall look is very messy and poorly designed. I like being able to set a cover photo for each of my boards but they've messed those up too. I checked and they still haven't added back anything that indicates if a pin has comments. They broke that during a previous update and it's still broken. Because their notification system is so screwed up, I rarely get email notices when someone adds a comment to any of my pins. So, goodness knows how many comments I'm "ignoring" because I don't know they are there. It would be nice too if they'd add an option to make the text sizes a bit smaller so that the board titles are readable again.

I also noticed another issue with Pinterest this morning. When you visit someone's board, there is nothing at the top of the page that says who's board you're on. That information is only visible if you're on their main board. And, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to get to someone's main board. You have to click on their avatar at the top of the page. That wasn't obvious the first time I looked for it because that person's avatar was the Pinterest "pin". Time will tell if they make some tweaks to the new interface to improve the choppy appearance. I really hope so because they're making Pinterest less and less user-friendly.

End of rant. Now go and play with your beads!
 

Jigsaw Puzzle - "Easy Earrings"

Here's another digital jigsaw puzzle and this one has a beading theme. I made it a little easier to solve than the previous one in that the pieces don't need to be rotated. I think it would have been too difficult to figure out which direction to rotate them because of the busy background.

This puzzle was created with BrainsBreaker, which you can buy HERE, but you don't need to buy the program to play my puzzle. 

Click HERE to download the puzzle.
 

Where to buy Silky Beads

WHERE TO BUY SILKY BEADS

Aria Design Studio Etsy

Artbeads

Auntie's Beads Direct

Bead House (Netherlands)

Beadaholique

Beads Direct (USA)

Beads Mine (Italy)

BeadsOfBohemia Etsy

Bead Passion Studio

Bello Modo

Charlene's Beads

Eureka Crystal Beads

Fofinhas Perlenstuebchen (Germany)

Fusion Beads

GCSuppliesTexas

Goody Beads

HauteHobby Etsy

Highly Strung Beads (UK)

Lima Beads

Marina Beads

Over the Rainbow (Australia)

Pärlsystrar (Sweden)

Perles de Cristal

Potomac Beads

Red Panda

Robin's Beads (UK)

Rockin Beads

ScaraBeads

Spoilt Rotten Beads (UK)

SupplyEmporium Etsy

Total Rocailles (French)

Jigsaw Puzzle - "Romantic Notions"

I got the idea for this puzzle from a comment by Angie Martin. She suggested that the collage that I blogged about yesterday, HERE, would make a nice puzzle. That reminded me that I have a program on my computer that can create digital jigsaw puzzles that can be shared. The program is called BrainsBreaker and you can get more information about it HERE.

The BrainsBreaker version that I have is VERY old so I can't say for sure if the puzzle that I've made will work on newer versions of Windows. It does work on Windows XP, which is what I'm using. The latest version of BrainsBreaker works on Window 10 and also on Mac. What I don't know is if the latest version can open puzzles created with an older version like the one I have. The old version saves the puzzles as EXE files that can be opened by anyone, even if they don't have the program on their computer. Puzzles created with the latest version require that the program be installed but you don't need to buy a copy of it to play a shared puzzle that was created with the new version. You can run shared puzzles using the free trial version according to what I read on their website. It remains to be seen though if old free-standing puzzles can be opened through the free trail version that's currently available.

So, if you want to give my puzzle a try, click HERE to download a ZIP file containing a stand-alone EXE puzzle. Let me know if you are able to run it on a more recent version of Windows. If you're using a Mac, you'll probably have to buy the new version and I don't know if my puzzle will open or not. Let me know how that goes, if you do try it.
 

Free Graphics - Postcards & Notions Collage

I created this collage for my Facebook header and I also use a portion of it for my Pinterest avatar.

Feel free to use my pictures to make greeting cards, computer desktop wallpaper, calendars or scrapbook pages, etc. but please do not sell them or post them for download.
 

Tara Earrings - Milk Chocolate & Mauve

TARA EARRINGS

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Duracoat Galvanized Dark Mauve" (4213)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Duracoat Galvanized Dark Mauve" (4213)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Duracoat Galvanized Dark Mauve" (4213)
• 6mm 2-hole cabochons "Chalk White Gold Luster"
• 2-hole Crescent beads "Oxidized Bronze Berry"

I made this pair of earrings yesterday to go with the "Sandra Silky" bracelet that I blogged about recently HERE.

Although I had already made myself a pair of "Silky Deco Chain" earrings, I wanted something a little larger than those tiny earrings. I used the same seed beads for the earrings but the colors of the other beads in the earrings aren't really quite the same as what I used in the bracelet. However, I think that the overall color tone is very close to the same. The Crescent beads provide a hint of mauve and the color of the 2-Hole cabochons is similar to the rusty color of the SuperDuos in the bracelet.

In these photos, the cabochon color looks similar to the "Chalk White Vega Luster" cabs that I used to make the earrings that I blogged about HERE, but these aren't at all purplish. They're a sort of terracotta color. Below you can see the two cabochon colors for comparison.

Chalk White Vega Luster

Chalk White Gold Luster

You can buy Ellad2's "Tara Earrings" pattern HERE. You can find these Crescent beads at Red Panda HERE.

 

Links are fixed

Please let me know if you run into a broken link but I think I've fixed them all.
 

Google Drive problem...

I just discovered that my Google Drive has broken nearly all of the links to my pattern downloads. I'm working on fixing the links right now but I don't know if I will get to all of them tonight. Please bear with me. I will fix them as quickly as I can.
 

Free Graphics - Mother & Daughter Collage

Today's collage is from a Mother's Day card that I made in 2009. I'm also including a few of the collage elements that might be useful for scrapbooking, etc.

I finished the last birthday bracelet yesterday but I still need to make at least one pair of earrings. If I can get them made today, I'll have time to do some fun beading very soon.

 
Feel free to use my pictures to make greeting cards, computer desktop wallpaper, calendars or scrapbook pages, etc. but please do not sell them or post them for download.