rose is a rose

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rose is a rose is a rose, whatever the material used.

Time to make a rose spray after my first trial here.

Huh, turned out the coloured paper I’d bought had lots of coloured square sheets but only 3 of each colour. And each rose requires 3 sheets to make. It was either send hubby back to buy more, or simply go with the white rose. Why not? The first one did look good. And the theme seemed to be white (white saree, silver/white wrapping paper).

I found the video for DIY paper rose. It is by Dreamy Posy here. 

Also found an 'easy' rose bud video. Hmm, my fingers couldn’t turn out one as nice as in the video. Patience was hard to come by :-( 

Leaves are simple, as before, except for a spikier rim. Folded for veins.

A spray needs baby breaths! Watched this video by tsuku cafe and tried. Ugh, it was a horrendous job with glue & tissue sticking to my fingers. Not happy with the green taping either, but well, job done. (the 'well' is displaced ;-P).

Overall it looked fine. Hubby thought it was an overkill. More importantly MIL loved it and is going to use it to embellish her friend’s birthday gift in a few weeks' time ;-D

If we were geographically closer, I would’ve offered to make a better spray. I'm going to try my hand at crochet roses/flowers for next time. 

drop it around the neck

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In crafting, nothing goes to waste! The ice drop here was a second attempt. The first attempt, too pretty to discard, is now a pendant!

Download Jane McLellan’s Elana ice drop pattern from her blog (listed on right panel).

I had 2 reasons for setting it aside as an ice drop : 

1. the perle cotton is not stiff enough it’s shape with the weight of the glass pebble unless stiffened later.

2. I forgot to link adjacent motifs (which is why you see 2 green beads between the motifs)! Clearly they would’ve started flopping even more as the round was completed.

The threads had not been snipped off for want of a decision at the time. So I finished the left side (as seen in pic) with a chain of 10ds, secured it properly to previous round, then continued with a pearl string.

On the right side, I pulled off a length of thread, inserted it through the base of split ring and repeated as above.

Both pearl strings were tied off with relevant findings and thread ends needled back through the end beads before snipping off closely.

I hand-sewed pearl & green seed beads on the top part of the pendant later. Obviously one can simply string the beads beforehand and tat regularly with beads in place of picots.

This picture shows the overlapping motifs clearly. But with mere 4 repeats, this pendant does not require stiffening.
So that’s the story of the incomplete ice drop! Crafty, eh?! ;-P 

The green glass pebble used here is 2cms in diameter. Anchor Pearl size 8 (≡ Lizbeth 20) white thread.

curled and celtic

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Overcoming the lethargy to work with beads means I take the opportunity to work a few projects in quick succession! This time it is Ninetta’s ice drop with curled rings. Well, it does have another round with treble hearts, which changes the circle to a square. I stopped at 2 rounds since this appealed to me even more.

The variegated didn’t quite turn out as pretty as I'd visualized. And as you can see, using it for the curled rings makes it look too busy. Went with silver (on right) and snipped off the earlier part.

TIP : To get the curled ring to look like a heart, insert the ring (the picot end) from below and fold/curl from above. This difference is clearly visible between the first 2 curls on the left.

As recommended, I chose a 2cms glass pebble. Yet for some reason it looked like 8 repeats would be too tight a fit, so a 9^th was added. No, didn’t need it!

I like the clever way she used 2 motifs to interlace and trap the cabochon within! Faux Celtic along with curled rings and more – nice!! You can see the underbelly in Ninetta’s post – I forgot to take a pic. 

I have one more ice drop pendant to show you next time ... stay tuned :-)))