Confessions of a Crystal Hoarder Blog

Happy December to everyone! And I’ve reaped some festive rewards from my Merry Treasure Box this month. We have a winner for the November Brooch Embellishment Challenge.......And, it's Pat Silber!!! Congrats Pat!

We all know that there are trends in jewelry styles, but there are also trendy techniques. All the sudden it seems there are scads of projects published, and articles written about a certain method or stitch.

I’ve been setting personal goals each month, and this month I wanted to tackle my aversion to stitches where you see a lot of thread. Since you all know already that I love vintage metal, my first choice was the group of copper links. But what fascinated me about them most was the hollow back side.

So perhaps it was kismet when after starting my first item from this month’s bit of Hoard I opened my beading magazines (and later my B&B Show class catalog) and found that this December, it’s beginning to look a lot like Brick Stitch!

I’ve been collecting a variety of Picasso finish beads as they’ve been appearing on the site, and it was time to break them out to use in conjunction with the links.

When making the starter row for circular brick stitch around a component, I’d usually just suck it up and choose a thread to see, and get going. But these links inspired me to use size 11 seed beads to fill the ditch in the links. Yes, I realize that what I did was to hide the thread…so I really hadn’t made much progress on my challenge.

The radiating copper pieces are long tube beads (which have since sold out) that I stitched in place and then squished with pliers after adding the next tube, that way I didn’t have to worry about getting my needle back through the closed end of the tube.

Using the copper tube beads lead me to my next selection: the bag of vintage bugles. Here I went back to traditional flat brick stitch, but instead of using multiple rows of beads to equal the bugles, I used a combination of delicas and short bugles.

This bracelet worked up in a flash! It is only 3 rows of brick stitch. The top and bottom are one bugle high and the middle row is two bugles high. The looser two-bugle row makes for the ultimate in size adjustment; the button closure fits anywhere you need it to go.

But this project hadn’t gotten me any closer to the goal of feeling good about visible thread.

It was time to use the little metallic Cheerios with the red wood barrel beads for some festive circular brick stitch. I was travelling when I started this, and unfortunately the flight attendants’ cart did not have Nymo or colored Fireline, so I used a red Sharpie to tint some of the crystal Fireline I had with me. (Which elicited even more curious glances on the plane than I usually get while beading.)

I also used an assortment of red 4mm firepolish beads. I always save leftovers, and this was a great way to mix in the red-ish odds and ends that I’d retained with a new strand I’d ordered to go with something else.

The return flight wheels got untinted line.

The final project was really out of my comfort zone:

Free Form.

I used one of the metal findings for the base. I thought they were scarf clips, but I now understand that they were hair pins. My hair’s not strong enough to hold them, so into a bracelet the piece w

I’d already used up all of my Cheerios, so the extra steel loops are washers. I also used some more of the vintage bugles from this month, and well as some of the brown ones from May, vintage gold from the site, and various selections from my personal hoard.

I’m not going to lie and risk getting on the Naughty list…free form may never be high on my list of methods. I guess I just like my brick stitch to be orderly- like bricks.

Whether your holidays are orderly, or much more free-form, I wish you festive beading