STENCILING ON METAL WITH PAINT!

A couple more metal projects using stencils and paint -- so much fun!  Thanks to Heather at Humblebeads for inspiring me to try this technique - she does incredible, fun projects and takes us along to explore new art dimensions.  It just takes a steady hand (hard as you get older!!), a piece of metal, some Vintaj paints, and a stencil.  So many options to explore with stencils... I love these sets.  I added some chain and some danglies for the necklaces and assembled some darlin' earrings to go with.  Dress em up or down.  My daughters-in-law look great in these darlin' sets!  Just like new fall clothes, you gotta have a new fall set for your ears and neck too!  :) 

MORE BRICK STITCH EARRINGS!

My new love of brick stitching around a component has me entrenched!   Here are my latest earring designs. I love the creativity in color and design this provides me.  On the first version I added five different colors of lentils near the bottom, and offset my rounds using 8/0 sb, along with the hex and 11/0 sb.  On the second version I used an 11/0 mix of colors, a pinkish 11/0, the 11 hex and 4mm fire polish, and didn't do a dangle, but simply wire wrapped a metal flower.  These are light and truly lovely!

 

SHERBET COLORED LENTIL BRACELET +

It's been awhile (2011!) since I've stitched this lentil pattern, so when I heard it was going to be offered again (thx Sue!) at Bead Street, I jumped at it. Why not?  I love seeing Bead Street owner and beading guru extraordinaire Eileen, love her store, and all my beading friends... It's an awesome place to be on a Saturday afternoon!  So, I was ready to make something in a mixture of orange, pink, turquoise, and metallics, so this bracelet worked into my plan perfectly.  I started with a base using 8.0 seed beads, and from there used a mixture of 8.0 and 11.0 seed beads, lentils, 3mm rounds, drops and orange shell rounds for my "sherbet" lentil bracelet!  I stitched through the bracelet twice to get my desired fullness - I love this color combination.  Dang, but I could not get a picture to show the "true" colors no matter what lighting I used, so unfortunately, these shots do not show the absolute yumminess of this bracelet.  Have to see it to appreciate it, but you get the idea.  See what you think...

PLUS, I do love to alternate the types of projects I'm working on, so here's my previous project.  A pattern I found on Fusion Beads website,  using two-hole lentils with beading wire instead of fireline.  Fun change and very versatile.