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As you may have noticed, I've been doing a bit of chain maille recently and have been trying different types. I was told that Jens Pind was simple but it seems like it's taken me forever to get this necklace done. I think the difficulty was that I was advised by someone with a lot more experience than me to try a slightly smaller copper jump ring. Next time, I'll go by what my book says and use 1 mm copper wire wound on a 3 mm mandrel for the jump rings. The beads i made ages ago and thought the copper would go well with them. The toggle hoop and bar are handmade too.

I'm practicing faces and this is the latest. She's 40mm high.

and I did another "Chaos" bead last night to keep my hand in.

Time for something new. I've recently become interested in maille work to be used in jewellery. That is, joining jump rings together to make either chains or flat pieces in different patterns. The Wikipaedia definition of chainmaille can be found at Wikipedia
and there are various sites with very good tutorials. A guide to these can be found at Blue Buddha Boutique.

I made these before going to Morrisons for shopping this morning.

I'm only just posting as I visited Dizzy Di at her Studio in Wat Tyler Country Park for a few hours. We swopped tips and she tried out my silver bead corer bought from Dave at artintheround in America.

I've decided to make up some of my older beads into jewellery and this set of lampwork beads was made about 18 months ago. They're not very adventurous and I picked up the green in the beads with the seed beads. They still looked a bit plain so I added the fringing at the bottom.

So - I officially have come 'News' with a capital 'N'. Thursday I had a promotion interview. I don't know how it works at other companies but at mine you have to put a pack together all about you and why you deserve it. The first part covers your career to date, your training history, your CV - stuff like that. The next part is all about why you deserve it. You have to select up to three pieces of work that prove your ability and tick all the boxes on the company promotion criteria tree. You have to write a page about each summing up all the things that tick those all important boxes.

Here's my first attempt at a spikey seed bead spacer. These have been used by seed beaders with lampwork beads to add interest to jewellery by providing a range of textures. I must try one without the black triangle beads sometime. The red ones are Delica cylinders which are a great but pricier bead because of their uniformity. They work exceptionally well when making a bead picture.

Once a month I go to a seed bead group meeting in Colchester. The project last night was these earings. They're a bit fiddly, but don't take long to make, maybe a couple of hours.

I hope to be able to combine my lampwork beads with seed bead ones in future jewellery.

I've wanted to try one of these spiral necklaces for some time and found a pattern for a bracelet in one of the beading magazines. I just carried on beading and made it long enough to fit over my head with no clasp so that the spiral was continuous.
When I wanted to start, I found I didn't have the size 6 beads for the outer spiral so had to rush down to Dizzy Di's studio to see what she had on offer.

I've ummed and ahh'd over this necklace as I can't decide whether there are too many lampwork beads in it.

I've been experimenting with mixing colours in the lentils and still have some green and white and some blue and white ones to make up.