Jubeads box

Monday, May 24, 2010

24.5-20.7.10 Two Herringbone Bracelets

Thanks to Daffi's mom, I started teaching beadwork to a new student that was found to be in love with herringbone.
So we started with 2 herringbone bracelets.
The first one is based on the B&B edition book "Basic Beadwaving Herringbone Stitch" with the "basic bracelet" designed by Julia Gerlach, appearing on p.7. However, we used only 11/0 seed beads to simplify.
For the clasp and toggle, I made a stick and donut also based on Herringbone. Unfortunately, I don't know who should I give to the credit for the idea of the beautiful donut. The stick ends were a development of mine.
I was very satisfied to learn this simple trick of adding a bead to the end of the herringbone row that serves as the turn to the next row and also decorates nicely the bracelet.

Again, I don't know who to give the credit for the following 4mm cubes and 11/0 seed beads herringbone bracelet pattern.
The button is based on the "Glitzy Button Bracelet, variation of netting" from Alice Korach 's "Beading with cubes and triangles" book, pp.19-20.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

6-20.5.10 A Freeform Circle Bracelet for Daffi

As far as I can remember, this is my 1st freeform jewelry. Daffi asked me to make her a bracelet that will fit her special Montana blue Italian dress for a special family occasion. We then chose the colors together and went mainly on the shiny and AB seed beads that Daffi likes very much. The dress rosettes served as my inspiration source for designing it, while the most difficult part of this challenge was to place them in such a way that it will still remain harmonious, but yet interesting. The first half of designing the circle elements on the basis of 8 was quiet fun and gave me several ideas that can be used in the future for other jewelry. The 2nd half out of the 11 working hrs I spent on, was the most difficult one, as I had to sew the elements, decide and choose which to put next to whom. Omer was a great help here, as I was nagging him to hear his opinion for each possible combination I thought of.
Daffi was very happy with the bracelet and that is a great satisfaction :-)

16.8.10
Daffi kindly sent me this great picture of her,
ta da...

Sunday, May 16, 2010

13-16.5.10 Fontenay aux Roses and the "Tarte au pommes Normandaise"

During the "Shiva" on grandma, Ariane, my cousin's partner, was just our great guardian angel.

She took care of us for the stay, the food and all that we needed.
She is full of beans and taught me how to make the "Tarte au pommes Normandaise"!

and yes, it WAS a success!

so here is the recipe:

Ariane's Normandy apple tart

The ratio should be of about 200g "liquid" slim white flour : 100 g butter

Ingredients for dough
• 315 g white flour
• 40 g white sugar
• 125 g soft butter cut into small pieces approximately of 2 cm
• carefully and gradually add a quarter cup of cold water - to harden the soft butter

- Add the ingredients and mix well with your hands to create a bloc. Add water if necessary. The dough should not be too crumbs, but more consistent.
- Leave to rest between half an hour for two hours
- Roll a circle out of the dough on a map with some flour, in order to reach a thickness of about 4 or 5 mm
- To fix the holes if there are any, take some water and use it to add external dough parts to merge to the circle
- Fold the circle into 4
- Move to a round baking dish, by putting the circle on a cookie sheet and deploy again when inside the dish. You can move the sheet a little better to put the circle nicely in the middle.
- Cut the excess and use them for decoration over, such as for tart bands

Ingredients for the filling
• About 8 small apples, peeled, pitted and sliced to segments
• a packet of vanilla sugar
• white sugar
• bleached sliced almonds

- Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius degrees
- Add the apple slices from the outside towards the inside,very dense, almost standing on each other. Depending on the size of the baking dish, you can reach up to 3 circles plus/minus
- Scatter over the apples the packet of vanilla sugar and the sugar (about 3 or 4 tablespoons)
- Decorate the tart
- Add butter pieces on top of the tart

- Put in the oven at 180 Celsius degrees about 20 minutes or until the apples soften when you prick them with a toothpick
- In a pan, fry the sliced almonds in butter. When dropped from the fire, scatter some sugar and mix.
- Disperse the roasted almonds on top of the tart before serving

Bon Appetit!

Some pictures of the inspiring apartment of my aunt with a beautiful view on the surrounding.

The bag above is apparently a Dutch Knitted bag with tiny vintage beads (I think even smaller than 18/0), that my aunt bought in some Antique shop. It is just beautiful!

My aunt gave me as a present a superb antique German lace-crochet book ""Irische Spitzen" from 1900!
When will I have the time to explore all its content?

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

27.4.10 My 1st Publication In Print - The Flame Tree Flowers Earrings

About almost a year ago (27.5.09), overwhelmed from the magnificent Brachychiton acerifolius blooming in my surrounding, I decided to immortalize that moment by beading flowers that will not wither.

This is how the Flame Tree Flowers Earrings were born.

Today, I got 2 copies of the Jun/Jul 2010 Bead&Button magazine, issue #97. One of them with a kind note, that something I might be interested in appears on p.48:

and indeed very interesting ;-)

As you can see, I prepared several versions in order to test if my instructions were correct and how I could improve the design.

I can't express how much I appreciate the work done by the B&B team from the very beginning of all this process till the moment I got the earrings back.

When I saw the 1st draft revised by the Editor Julia Gerlach who tested my project, I had one thing in mind. How PROFESSIONAL you are! No words and just a pleasure to work with people like these that know how to present and write so nicely, clearly and concise.

This is my first ever publication and this leaves me with a good feeling. I never managed to publish when I was in Plant Science Research, so this is for me a great opportunity to compensate on that with this article :-)

Additionally, it was great to receive B&B newsletter and see the promotion of my earrings handmade by Julia Gerlach:

Finally, I surely hope you will enjoy beading them and surprise me with your versions of it!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

17-21.4.10 Baroque Spades Necklace Inspired by Varda's Netted Necklace

My friend Varda kindly sent me a scheme of a netted necklace she had designed. I haven't seen the necklace yet, but she asked me to try the scheme and tell her how it goes.
I opened the file and saw the first row, which seemed to me at 1st sight to be the whole necklace. I made one element and found it very nice. However, it looked to me too "simple" to repeat this element to the circumference of the neck. A flow of ideas ran through my mind and I decided to flew with them to finally come up without too much hurdles with my own design of the necklace you can see above.
Ammusingly, while chatting with Varda, I discovered I had actually missed the 3/4 of the scheme and related only to the 1st row out of 6 or 7 of them!
Thanks a lot Varda for being a source of inspiration to me!
I gave the necklace today to Nomnom for her coming birthday and another excuse for celebration... She will have to buy some purple clothes now - I know she is not so much excited about that ;-) ...