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