Small Good Things

Happy Friday, everyone! Today’s tutorial is about everything I love – pearls and bows, simple yet playful. When I found this gorgeous necklace from PEARL INTERNATIONAL, I fell instantly in love.

This is the original version, sold at ¥12,600 (about £100 /$160) at SHIPS but now unfortunately sold out (photo credit: SHIPS).

I love the black bows, but since I have lots of black clothes that I want to wear the pearl necklace with, I decided to make lots of bows in different colours, and make them detachable. So… here is the tutorial :)

What you’ll need:

(for the necklace)

• pearls (I’m using 3x12mm, 12x10mm, 52x6mm,34x4mm glass pearls)
• bead cording and a needle
• 2 crimp beads
• 2 jump rings
• 1 clasp
• 2 round calottes
• a pair of round-nose pliers, flat-nose pliers

(for the bow)

• trim / felt
• clear elastic cord, 7cm for each bow
• crimp bead, 1 for each bow
• needle and thread

Instructions:

1) Let’s start by making a necklace. Thread the needle, and add a crimp bead.

2) Slip the crimp bead onto the end of the bead cording, leaving a tail of about 5cm, then thread through the crimp bead again to form a loop, and pull the thread snugly.

3) Repeat the step to make a loop one more time.

4) Using a flat-nose pliers, squeeze the crimp bead.

5) Trim the excess cording, and thread it through the hole of a round calotte.

6) Close the calotte with flat-nose pliers.

7) Thread all the pearls.

8) Add a round calotte.

9) Repeat step 1 – 4 to make loops with a crimp bead.

10) Close the calotte with flat-nose pliers. Now the both ends look like this.

11) Using round-nose pliers, curl the end of the calottes to make loops.

12) Add a jump ring on one end, and jump ring and a clasp on the other end. Yap, the pearl necklace is done!

13) Stitch the ends together to make a loop.

14) Stitch the middle of the bow together.

15) Accordion fold along the middle to create the pleats, and stitch the centre.

16) Cut the elastic cord in 7cm length, and thread a crimp bead from both end to create a loop. Make sure that the loop is slightly smaller than the diameter of the pearl! The loop in the photo was a bit too big and I had to re-do it later…

17) Using a flat-nose pliers, squeeze the crimp bead. Trim the excess cord.

18) Add the elastic loop to the trim, and wrap the trim around the centre of the bow.

19) Stitch the ends of the trim together. Repeat the steps to make as many bows as you like.

20) Attach the bows to the necklace, and you’re done!

I love the idea that I can choose which and how many bows to use, and where to put them.

I love the black ones, but these colourful bows are my favourite. I think I’m going to wear it with casual black-and-white stripey tops – oooh, I can’t wait to try it on!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, and have a lovely weekend!

Since getting my hands on bead stitching for the first time in Sachet with Peyote Bezel Tutorial last week, I got hooked and I was all over the Internet to learn more about the stitching techniques.

As I was searching for clear and easy instructions, I came across this brilliant articles on beading how-to, hosted by a Japanese beading shop called Beads Factory. The instructions are created with Flash animations, and are perfect for first-time bead stitchers!

Since the website is entirely written in Japanese, I’ll guide you through it:

First, click here to enter the site.

There are instructions for 8 different beading techniques: I added the English titles for each stitch in blue, on the right side of the images. Click the brown, oval buttons next to the images to see each instruction.

So, shall we have a look at Peyote Stitch instruction? Click the oval button, where it says ‘click here’ in pink.

This is where the magic happens! Click the pink oval button, where it says ‘click here’ in blue.

Aren’t they so brilliantly easy to understand? Hope these will help you learn some new techniques!

It’s been quite a while since I did a knockoff tutorial, and I’m really excited to introduce today’s knockoff earrings from Les Nereides. Well, it’s more of an ‘inspired’ version rather than a knockoff, but hope you’ll like my version, too :)

These are the original version, a gorgeous pearl drop earrings (sold at €85 at Olivolga: photo from Olivolga.com). These enamel flowers add so much elegance and wow-ness to simple pearls, don’t you think? Well, if you are tempted, here is the tutorial!

What you’ll need:

• 2 pearls (I’m using 12mm glass pearls)
• a pair of earwires
• 3 bead caps
• 2 headpins
• glass glue

(not in the photo)

• rhinestones (I’m using rhinestones for nail art)
• small piece of Styrofoam
• 2 pins
• flat-nose pliers, round-nose pliers and wire cutters

Instructions:

1) Cut and separate the leaves from a bead cap.

2) Set the pearls in place on the Styrofoam with pins. Place bead caps and glue them on each pearl. Wait until the glue is set (the glue I used needed about 1hour in the sun to set).

3) Glue the leaves on the pearls.

4) Add some rhinestones, and set aside until the glue is set.

5) Place the head pins, and bend them at 90 degrees angle.

6) Using round-nose pliers, bend the pins into loops.

7) Assemble the loops to the earwires, and you’re done!

So, what do you think? I never thought of cutting motifs out of bead caps, but I think they complement the pearls really well. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

Happy Monday, lovelies! This week’s nail art is inspired by the brilliant nail art shown at Vivienne Westwood Autumn-Winter 2012/13 Red Label collection.

These designs are custom made by Minx nails (both photos from: BELLO).

I was dying to try the design, but I couldn’t find any nail art pen at my local shops – and then Mr T gave me an alternative idea, in order to prevent me from buying more nail art stuff online. He handed me a pen, his precious fine-tip permanent marker. And guess what, it worked just fine :)

What I used:

• miss sporty / French Manicure 03
• permanent marker
• black glitter (not in the photo)

To get the look:

1) Apply a top coat.

2) When the polish is dry, doodle on the nails with the permanent marker.

3) For your ring finger, sprinkle black glitter while the polish is wet.

4) When the marker is completely dry (very important), apply a top coat.

Have you prepared something special for Mother’s Day yet? I already ordered nice flowers to be sent at both my mum’s and my mother-in-law’s in Japan. But being a crafter, I also wanted to make something – the problem was that my mum-in-law was gazillion times better at most crafts than me… Oh, the pressure!

So, after a long thought I decided to make something useful, and something she wouldn’t think of making herself (or so I’m hoping!). Sachets with cute peyote bezels, here they come! Read More

First of all, my hearty apologies to my dear readers for not posting much these days. I was head-banging a thick, cold blogging wall – although I was happily creating something pretty much everyday, when I questioned myself if they were blog-worthy or not, sadly the answers always seemed to be ‘no’. I’m still head-banging the wall, but hey, here I am with a bloody forehead :)

Let’s move on to my darling new hair scrunchies, shall we? I love both making and wearing hair scrunchies, and since my hair is now long enough to actually wear one, I decided to make new versions (you can find other scrunchie posts here and here). They are both pretty straightforward to make, and I think they would be a cute little present for Mother’s Day, too. Read More

Happy May, dear readers! I can’t believe that it’s already May – it feels like I just had my Christmas dinner last month!

For this week’s nail art, I’m using the same handmade decal technique which I introduced in previous posts (triangle tutorial here and zigzag tutorial here), but with an extra help from a new crafty tool I brought back from Japan. Read More

Happy Monday, lovelies! Today I’m going to share you some photos of Miyama, a small village in Kyoto. Read More

Continuing from yesterday’s ‘Kyoto in Pink’ post, today I’m sharing some photos from Shogun-zuka and Nijo Castle. Read More

Hello lovelies! I’m very sorry for my long absence; I am finally back from Japan, and yes, I’m suffering from severe jet lag and the thought of editing nearly 300 photos (I’m not kidding here) makes me want to stay in bed forever… Read More