My Favorite Color in Micro Macrame and Giveaway Winner!

This week's theme for the Year of Jewelry Project is "My Favorite Color" and the instructions are to make a piece of jewelry in a color that rocks your world.  There was no question which color I would choose.  I'm just a teal sort of gal.  I did want to have a little fun with it, though, so instead of using one or two colors, I used six colors of cord and five colors of seed beads to knot this micro macrame bracelet.  And added a seahorse charm just because.

I really like how the colors move through the bracelet.  As a little experiment, I made one in white, too.  The two pieces look very different, even though the pattern is the same.  What a difference color makes!

And now for the big announcement!  The winner of this kit & the eClass to go along with it (insert drum roll here)...

And the winner is:  Crystal Thain!!!  Congratulations, Crystal!  If you didn't win this kit and class, don't despair!  I have more kits listed in my Etsy shop and the eClass is available at CraftArtEdu.com.

Year of Jewelry Week 18 - Pantone 2013

The "assignment" for this week in the Year of Jewelry was to make something in one of the Patone colors for 2013.  I chose Vivacious, a bright shade of fuchsia which is part of the  Pantone Fall 2013 Color Report.  I wanted to do some ombre shading, so I chose the cord range in the photo above.  So far, so good.

 I messed around with the curvy pattern again - its sinuous lines really intrigue me and the shading is such fun.  If you follow my blog and saw my last crash and burn on this pattern, you'll be glad to see I started with LOTS of cord this time.  (If you don't read my blog regularly, you can find out what I'm talking about in this post.)

Oh, and the "failure" piece?  You don't have to worry about him any more - he found a home with a lady who has a 5.25" wrist.  All's well that ends well.

Failure 101

So, I was messing around the last couple of days, trying to learn how to knot this scallop pattern.  I have had to really think about each knot, which is something I haven't had to do much lately.  I even had to switch off my ridiculously cheesy sci-fi shows to concentrate on the knotting.  I started off fairly well, if a bit slowly:

The color looks a bit more blue than teal in this photo because of the lighting I used last night, but here's where I was.  I used five different shades of cord to get the ombre shading.  I couldn't wait to get home from work this afternoon so I could work on it.  I knotted and knotted and knotted:

I'm absolutely fascinated with the undulations and the color gradient.  I'm admiring my handiwork, when it starts to dawn on me that I'm running short on cord.

And no matter how hard I try, I'm not going to get this bracelet past 5.5".  I've had some suggestions for adding some beads to one end before the clasp and I may have to explore that option.  It's not a total loss, though.  I did get a handle for this knotting pattern, I think.  And I will definitely be trying it again.  If you want to try your hand at this one, I found the video here.  Be warned, though - she doesn't explain the actual knots, just the pattern, and it's not in English.  Or if you'd rather see a bracelet in ombre shading that didn't fail, check here or here :)

Year of Jewelry Week 7 - Off the Cuff

The theme for Week 7 of the Year of Jewelry was "Off the Cuff".  I debated all week (read:  procrastinated) and rejected idea after idea.  Then *bam!* this morning it just hit me.  I dug out several shades of purple cord:

After playing around a bit, I made some end pieces to anchor my knotting out of darkened steel.  It's got an interesting rustic look to it that works well with my design.

Some solid knotting on both ends made the piece more stable and the strand of spirals in graduating shades of purple makes for an interesting texture.

You know what's interesting about this piece?  No beads!  I rarely do macrame without beads for some reason, but this piece just didn't seem to need any.  I did add a dangle just for a bit of movement, but it's not knotted in, so I'm not counting it.  (Hey, it's my blog - my rules.)

Crazy about ombre?  Check out my bead weaving version here.

Ombre Beadweaving Bracelet - Year of Jewelry Week 4

I've had this design dancing around in my head for a few weeks now, which is darned inconvenient when there are other things to be done, but I guess that's the way of it.  I wanted to do an ombre shading piece going from pitch black on one end to stark white on the other.  I thought about how I would do it while I was trying to fall asleep at night:  black to white fading through multiple shades of gray.  And I wanted the transition to take place naturally with no harsh lines or obvious changes.  So I dug through my stash and found these:

I made a square stitch base with a mix of the colors and forgot to take a photo of that step, but you can see it here:

Then I started making loops of seed beads over each of those base beads.  I started using only black in the first rows and then sprinkled in just a few of the dark charcoal color, letting the colors blend. As those ran lower, I added in a few of the next lighter shade of gray and continued all the way across the base until my last rows were pure white.

I added a few interesting beads on the tops of the loops, just to add some interest.  There are hematite stars, some Czech firepolish and a shiny Swarovski crystal butterfly.  I couldn't decide what to use for a closure, so I auditioned a few different buttons:

My first instinct was the button on the left, but I really liked the idea of a pop of red.  The only red button I had on hand was the flower above and I just didn't like it with the piece.  I really liked the look of the stone cab (the last piece in this photo) but in the end I decided it was just too large and the loop it would take would make the bracelet fit "sloppy".  As you can see, I ended up using my first choice:

In the end, I couldn't be more pleased with this bracelet.  I love the weight of it, both visually and the weight of it on the wrist is lovely.  The loops add lots of subtle movement and the color gradient is exactly what I wanted.  I think I may have to attempt another one of these - maybe next time in teal!

If you enjoyed this week's Year Of Jewelry piece, I hope you will take time to check out the previous ones:  Week 1 Renewal, Week 2 Grace, and Week 3 Music.