Beaded Bracelets - Book Review

I was a lucky winner of this book and a Bracelet Kit, but all opinions in this review are mine.

With the "Stardust" bracelet, but what I am calling Snowflake Bracelet

Beaded Bracelets, 25 Dazzling Handcrafted Projects, written by Claudine McCormack Jalajas.
 Fist off, can I just say this book is beautiful!  The pictures are fantastic, I go over them and over them, so pretty to look at,  my daughter also enjoys looking at it and each time we do, we decide on another bracelet we like, it is so hard to pick just one favorite.
But I have had beautiful books before, what matters is are they understandable in the directions, because after all you want to make the projects listed, right?  This book does a fantastic job of teaching you how to make beaded bracelet, I am a complete beginner and look at my first try.

Annabelle Bracelet (flowers)

 This bracelet kit came with the book, so I made it right away, while waiting for the supplies to arrive to make some of the other ones, I got enough supplies to make 4 of the Snowflake bracelets.  The Annabelle bracelet is going to a friend of mine along with the Bella clutch it is sitting on in the above picture, more pictures can be found here.
Book Contents:

1. The Introduction is fantastic after reading it, I feel like I know the author, she is very down to earth.
2. Tools and Materials: what makes this new hobby so great is that you don't need a whole lot of tools, and the materials you can buy based off of what project you would like to do, she even tells you what shops and the products that she has used to make the bracelet pictured.
3. Where to buy, brands and considerations: Claudine mostly buys on-line, which is great because I have to also, we definitely don't have any of this stuff in my small town.
4. Special Note: about the materials, now this is where the book had a few issues, when listing the materials, you could tell that some things were mixed up and when I say some things I mean in just about every bracelet pattern.  For example in the Stardust pattern (my snowflake one) she says in the material list that she uses a lobster clasp and yet in the picture of the bracelet in the book uses a magnetic clasp.  I am such a visual person that the written material kind of threw me off track, I had to look up what a lobster clasp was just in case I was using the wrong term, but in fact the book was written wrong.

   

   I decided to go with a magnetic clasp instead of the written lobster clasp.

5. The Bracelets!!!! Beautiful bracelets and just so fun each one different, you will find something you like in this book!  The steps are in detailed graphics, making it really easy to follow along and make the bracelets.  I need pictures so this helps a lot, they are also color coded which I think is just brilliant.

   

   I blurred out the words just in case of legal issues, but great written directions along with graphics.

6. Basic Techniques:  This is a very short chapter, I wish it was  little bigger and more extensive.  In each bracelet pattern she tells you what technique you are using so for the Stardust (aka snowflake) it is with the right angle weave (RAW) technique and the Annabelle (flower one) is also with the RAW technique, so I guess I have learned that technique, but there are many other techniques in the book,  herringbone, tubular herringbone, peyote, two drop peyote, triangle and  ladder, but most are done with the RAW technique, yippee.. for having that one down.  I think.
7. Acknowledgments
8. Index

I give this book 4 stars, I took one star off just for the many written typos.  But I would whole heartedly tell you to go out and buy this book if you have any interest in making bracelet jewelry.  Claudine gives you permission to be able to sell any bracelets you make with her patterns which is awesome, because some book aurthors do not and well I think that sucks.  So on that note, on Monday I will be having a giveaway, you will have to wait and see what it is, but it's a good one!  So I will see you then, hugs.  Mara. 

 

The Purge and A Book Review

My friend Shirley of SimpleSew gave me the Sew & Stitch Embroidery book by Alyssa Thomas a few months ago, and I started working on the fold over feather clutch pattern inside the book (page 111).  I finished the feather over a month ago and then it sat, you see I wasn't that happy with it.  2 issues:

• I used a jean like material and it was very stretchy, so there ended up being some fabric distortions.
• Said jean material is dark in color so I used tear away stabilizer to get the pattern onto the fabric.

Here is how I played with the fabric distortion:

I added a little pleat to cover up the stretch and to make it a design element, I added 3 pleats to the back of the pouch.

The second problem was a little more harder to fix, I couldn't get the stabilizer out, I tried my best and got most of it out, just little bits of white here and there.

I used Vera of Negligent Style's Tutorial to add the strap and she also recommended to go to a hardware store for snap hook and D-ring, which is fantastic since I am all out of those things in my sewing room.  So this is the best my hardware store could do,

It's not the fanciest hook, but I think it will work.

The book is pretty nice, it has a few embroidery patterns I would like to try, but this is my favorite pattern from it, I think I will make a few more, just not on dark fabrics.
I'm linking up to The Purge, first linky party, cause I am sending this to a new home and it won't sit lonely in my house, I look forward to doing some more purging in the next weeks, you should join too!
Update:  It is in it's new home and she LOVES IT!  The interior is to her style with skulls, I only had small irregular pieces of these fabrics so I made a QAYG style lining.

 The awesome Vera, mentioned above sent me a skull zipper pull to put on the pouch.

Not only did Jenna in the UK get the feather pouch but she also got  a bird bone mini quilt, you can see it here.

and also The Craft Book Sew Along.
buttons on the right side of this blog.

TGIFF, phew!

 I think this is my second time linking up to Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday.  Now this wasn't a big project, but it was a lot of little pieces, 2" squares to be exact AND I did some FMQ, which of course scares the crap bee-geezers out of me, and that's what takes the longest getting up enough nerve to "play" with the finished product.

This is for a swap through a group on flickr called Super Swaps, they do about 4 swaps a year and it is always fun seeing what everyone makes.
My girl said she liked yellows, pinks and light greens, I added the blue because it fit :)  She also wanted it to be a size 20x24, which I think is huge, so this started out as 20"x24" but with the sewing it ended up as 15"x18 1/2".

I added some 3 dimensional butterflies, with this cute butterfly fabric from Momo "Just Wing It" on the bottom, I got this as a piece of scrap fabric, love it.

I wanted to put buttons in my "flowers" (pinwheels) but I hid the button jar because the kids were playing with it, and now I have no idea where I hid it,

quilted with some Variegated Aurifil Thread.

I'm really good at hiding things, I couldn't find my precious Aurifil Threads for 2 months, finally found them in a drawer underneath some books, good hiding place from both me and the kids :).

I quilted some swirls, trying to be like Angela Walters in the book "In the Studio" pg. 26, lol, I need to work a little more on my swirls, but I love them, check out the back.

with the 2 fabric triangles on the back to hold a rod.

Linking to TGIFF,  really glad it is Friday and this was mailed out, 1 swap item down, 1 to go.

Craft Book and A Finish

I was the lucky winner of my very FIRST real paper craft book (other than my massive amount of cookbooks and one digital craft book).  A Signed copy of "In the Studio" by Angela Walters.

It is filled with amazing advice and she even talks about stitching in the ditch which is good, because I didn't have a free motion quilting foot until a few weeks ago.  I got my foot and tried out a little quilting on a pillow cover that I made following Melissa at Happy Quilting's Star Surround QAL

I did miss a spot in my quilting and as you can see my binding could use a little more "work", lucky for me I have many more projects I need to work on.

Traveling along the seam (yellow HST) in order to quilt only on the white, is discussed in the book.

Although this project is not in the book, she does have 10 modern quilt projects you can work on, I only have interest in making 3 of them, but it is her knowledge in quilting that is so invaluable.

Here is my quilting foot being put on my machine for the first time, I tried to follow her chapter on "Quilting Creates Depth and Dimension", lol, like I said I need to work on it a little bit.  Angela's chapter on "Focus on the Piecing" is about Stitching in the ditch and she gives some awesome tips, I was unable to follow the tips for this project since you need to do it while you are piecing the top, but I am doing it for my next project.

I also love this chapter "Quilting Adds Movement"

I am going to try it on this block that I made, that will be a tree on the right, I want to make swirls to look like the wind and make it look like it is blowing that 1 leaf around and then going behind the tree.

This book is filled with so much great advice and I love it.  Thank you Angela Walter's and AGF fabrics for gifting me with this beautiful book.

Linking to Craft Buds Craft Book Month

and A Lovely Year of Finishes for my Star Surround Pillow

and