Trying Something New

So, a week or two ago I was looking at some pictures of beautiful beaded creations by Linda L Jones and was inspired by the beaded bottles, in particular.  Days later an idea was forming in the back of my mind and I decided I'd like to have a go at something similar.  I wanted to start small as I've never done this type of beading before and thought a miniature bottle of Mateus Rose wine would be good.  It's a nice shape and there's the added bonus of getting to drink the wine first. ;o)  Unfortunately, it seems that the local supermarkets only stock the full sized bottles now so I had to have a rethink.  We went to Ikea at the weekend and I came home with lots of inspiration in the form of a vase, some little jars and, my favourite find, a small wine glass.

I'm planning to bead the lids of the jars and keep my crystals in them, the vase will be beaded in bright colours to make them stand out against the black glass and the wine glass will hopefully become a jewelled goblet.

Some weeks ago I had a dream about making a beaded dagger.  I haven't done anything about that yet (I'm going to use a letter opener for the blade) but when I saw the wine glass I had a sudden image in my mind of the two together so that's what I'll do.

I started by beading around the stem of the glass.  After a couple of false starts I realised that I was trying to do it the wrong way.  I'd started from the bottom of the stem where it is straighter, thinking that it would be easier to bead around the straight bit.  In fact, I had to start in between the two rounded bits so that they kept the beads trapped in between them and allowed me to just bead without the beads moving up and down the stem.  Five hours later I had managed to get about half the stem covered.

After another two hours spent beading yesterday morning I ran out of the size 15 beads so had to order more.  Hopefully they'll arrive today or tomorrow so I can carry on with it.  This is where it's at atm.

I'm just itching to get on with it so I can start adding some teeny crystals and other embellishment.  I've ordered some dark purple crystals and pearls and I think I might add some red in there too.

I will blog again as soon as there is something else to show you.  For now, I can only wait... :o)