Portokali's Beadweaving

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Geocaching and Beadweaving - The Portokali's Beadwoven Bug is out there!

I like beadweaving. And I like geocaching. And so I put these two hobbies of mine together...

Patriotic coin purse! (competition entry)

The past few months have been quite hard, you know, between changing diapers and brestfeeding and the work there's not really much time left for the hobbies. A while ago a Czech bead supply shop koralky.cz came up with a competition for the 95th anniversary of our country - create a piece in the national colors and use the Czech Preciosa beads. That was a challenge I couldn't miss. I like beading with Preciosa, you might say that there seed beads aren't as regular and neat looking and Toho or Miyuki but when you get into it and start working with them, you'll see why so many (especially Czech) beaders like about them. They have their charm, they come in a huge variety of sizes and colors and for us Czech beaders it is of course a question of national pride as well :)

It didn't take me that long to figure out what I'd create for this competition - I wanted something practical, something one can use in the everyday life and since I'm crazy about coin purses, I decided to make yet another one.

Moemoea - my B.O.T.B. 13 piece

Here it is, the THING for which I gave up most of my sleeping time these past two months...

We haven't had much sun these last few days. I read about the floods in the capital, we're lucky to live in Brno and not to have them here but the weather is nothing to envy us either.

I felt like making something that would at least remind me of the spring. And that's actually the whole story of this piece.

Enjoy more photos here.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

B.O.T.B ´13 - Beading under pressure and with a newborn in my arms

I have mentioned to just a few of my friends that I'm participating in an international beading contest. I didn't say much more but I feel I should make it right at least now when the deadline is approaching.

Orchids, the first big thing...

It was in 2011 when I decided it was time for my first big design. I had seen many rich flower necklaces and I really wanted to make one myself. I wanted the piece to be elegant and since I hadn't tried to make many flowers before and the orchid was one I was sure I could make (and it certainly is an elegant flower), I decided to go with orchids.

Meadow necklace

If you're at least a little familiar with my work, you have probably noticed that I enjoy flower designs. It started with brooches, continued with bobby pins and I wanted to make also a necklace which would give the impression of one of these flower wreaths you make from freshly picked flowers and put them around your neck.

I decided to go for the flowers of soft colors which can typically be found on a meadow - bell-flower, bindweed, thistle - and add one sharper color, that would be the poppy blossoms. Making the bindweed and the bell-flowers wasn't anything especially difficult, since these designs are used to create so many things. The thistle is a combination of a beaded bead and a simple "fringe" top. I have seen beadwoven plants similar to these three before so it wasn't a big deal to figure out how to make my own and of a little different shape and color. What I'm especially proud of are the poppy blossoms which I designed from zero. I know, it's just brick stitch but to make the petals and assemble the blossom actually takes a lot of time as well as shaping the blossom well.

The rope should be quite soft and fall around the neck rather than hold a regular shape, therefore the herringbone tube was a clear thing. To stay with the meadow theme I decided to create a grass imitating fringe on one end, which would be passed through a loop on the other end. It looks really good but it wasn't enough, so I added a small magnetic closing a few centimeters over the ends and under the flowers.

As for the material - everything's the Japanese TOHO beads but the lower part of the thistles, that's Czech glass beads Preciosa.