Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Secret Santa 2009

I like Secret Santas, and beady swaps online. I do tend to set my sights higher and challenge myself a little bit more too. I want to give away something GOOD. I'd hate to think that people would feel I'm giving them something 'not so special'.

For this year's forum Secret Santa, my person said she liked orange and green. Two colors I do NOT work with. But I thought I'd give it a whirl. I also decided to try a new technique. As a crisis motivated person, I waited until the last minute, and that bit me on the butt. I had gotten the book "Shaped Beadwork" by Diane Fitzgerald. At first glance, it was going to be easy, but I kept having problems with my corners and then the whole 'zip it together' thing. Which I've done hundreds of times, but managed to screw it up every time with these project. I have several components I did, before I settled on one kind I really liked. I rolled along without problems, until I read the REST of the instructions. Oh. Make a BACKSIDE to all the components. Well DANG. (When will I learn to read it all FIRST?) Since I did green and orange on one side, I decided to do orange and green on the flip. I think it looks very cool. Since they spin, you can wear green-orange-green or whatever combo you like. It was a small bit of whimsy on my part.

Once all the beads were beaded, stringing it together was the next mission. Of course I didn't think about this while I was making all the beaded beads, so I had to make that up as I went along. In the great stash, I had some very thin Accuwire in a coppery color, so I wove that thru the woven beadwork and added little tiny carnelian buttons in between. A toggle clasp competed the gift. I will make these again, maybe in varying sizes for a necklace.

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