Rings and Files

I was meant to be working on this amulet bag last night but the light was all wrong so I ended up making 3 rings and a tiny silver tree. I will take photo's and set up some form of gallery eventually.

I really need to find myself a cup bur and an anvil so I can make my own earring hooks and head pins.

eeek! beading is slowly taking over my life. I don't seem to sleep properly unless I have made something with beads or wire. I wonder if there is a Beadaholics support group out there somewhere? Although I could never give up the habit. One day I will get my own shop. Until then I guess I will have to remain reliant on what I can find at the few beading shops available here in Adelaide.

I really must get back to work now. My list of things to do before holidays keeps growing.

Amulet Bags and Thread

Hi

Welcome to The Bead Forest blog.

My name is Amanda Forster and I am the owner of The Bead Forest (I own the business name). The Bead Forest is not yet a physical shop but I am still making beaded and chain maille jewellery for sale.

I will add pictures of my latest creations here as I complete them.

I was just this morning telling one of my friends about my latest project. Here is what I told her:

Mum has given me this really neat foam mat thing [a Beadalon product] to put on the stable table for beading. It is meant to somehow stop the beads from rolling away. I haven't had a chance to test it yet though. That reminds me I seriously have to keep working on the little amulet bag I have to finish before Jan 24th. A friend of my brother's partner ordered it two weeks ago. I had got 8 rows done when my thread got so tangled I had to abandon it. So I cut off the thread, turned the bit I had done into a ring base and went hunting for better thread. Two proper bead shops and one combined bead shop/internet cafe later I managed to find what I was looking for. Nymo D beading thread. And best of all they had a choice of colours at reasonable prices.

I have never tried Nymo thread before, but so far it seems to be going quite well. I have only had very small, easy to untangle knots, caused by the problem of needing such a long piece of thread for the project (the end of the thread seems to have a mind of its own), at this stage. If I was going to be making a lot of these little amulet bags I would track down a set of colours of this wonderful thread. Besides this current amulet bag, I have been playing around with wire. I have a chain maille necklace sitting in a little pot waiting to be finished. Its part silver-ish Byzantine chain, part gold-ish Box (Queens) chain and will have three disk like beads joining the sections.

I have also been making a variety of pendants that I will eventually put on chain to sell. Some are just basic swirly things I made using my WigJig board and a couple I have sculptered free-hand using my round nose and nylon jaw plyers. The latest wire thing I am doing is making a set of roses for a broach to give to my mum for her birthday (on the 17th Dec). There will be 2 each of copper, gold-ish and silver-ish in a bunch. They are sort of wire mess tops (that look like roses) with stems that somewhat resemble a helix (or perhaps a double helix like the DNA strand). It means though that I need to stop in at where I get my wire so I can get some more copper and green if I can. Got to work out how to connect the stems yet still keep the helix look about them.

Must go for now.

Will post again when I think of something else I need to write.

The Guardian of the Forest