Flower Fairy Free Jewellery Projects - Earrings

Hello lovely folks!

I have a few moo-velous tutorials to share with you. Inspired by the arrival of Summer and lovely flowers plus the delightful bronze findings from the Mad Cow Bead Barn.

These are my flower fairies. They are easy to make requiring only a few basic tools and would look perfect with a floaty summer dress.

I am going to give these to you as a series of short tutorials. Today we are starting with Earrings.

You will need

Tools
1 Pair Chain Nose Pliers
1 Pair Round Nose Pliers

Findings
1 Pair  Sheperds Crook Ear Wires
2 Bronze Tone Jumprings
2 Bronze Tone Head Pins

Beads

2 Bronze Tone Butterfly Wing Beads
2 10mm Frosted Lucite Bellflower Beads
4 4mm Glass Beads


In terms of skills you will simply need to know how to turn and wrap a headpin loop and to open and close jumprings. A fun easy project for a summer's day!

1) Gather your supplies! ( www.madcowbeads.com is rather helpful for this! )

2) Assemble your fairy by simply stringing beads onto your head pins. I chose a lilac and green colour scheme to compliment the bronze. You can use whatever colours take your fancy!

3) Hold the eyepin with your chain nose pliers and push the end over to create a right angle.

4) Swap the chain nose for round nose pliers and finish forming the loop, using your swan nose pliars to pull the headpin tight and close the loop neatly.

5) Voila!

6) Make another fairy (sister, brother, mother, 2nd cousin, whatever you prefer!)

7) Attach your fairy charms to the earwires using a jumpring and your first flower fairy project is complete!















All of the supplies used here are from Madcowbeads.com and we would love to see your flower fairy earrings on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/madcowbead so please share your makes with us!

The next flower fairy make is a charm bracelet - coming very soon!

Thanks for reading

Harry

Have you Herd?

Hello lovely folks, I hope this finds you well!

I would like to introduce myself.

I am Harry (Captain Purky) and I have been lucky enough to join the Mad Cow Herd (although I am technically a bull...)

Colour and design are huge passions of mine and over the next few months I am going to be bringing you lots of moo-velous things. Including exciting Pinterest boards, Youtube videos, blog posts, tutorials, hints and tips and lots more!

I am very much looking forward to meeting you all.

Have a brilliant Sunday

Harry x

Easter Bunny Bonanza

These very cute Easter bunnies are a fab way to use up orphan beads. They were designed for madcowbeads.com by Linda Jones from www.wirejewellery.co.uk

You can download the project sheet here

Have fun with the beaded bunnies this Easter!

Happy crafting
Georgie

Cute Cluster Drop Earrings

Hi!

Here's a quick and easy - but really effective - earring pattern. I made mine with plated findings and lightweight acrylic bicones, but it would easily 'upscale' with sterling silver jump rings and Swarovski bicones if you're an uptown girl!

Tools and Supplies:

4 7mm jump rings

4 5mm jump rings

2 ear hook wires

6 4mm acrylic bicones (2 in each of 3 colours)

6 head pins

2 pairs chain nose pliers (or 1 flat, 1 chain, or 1 jump ring tool and 1 chain)
Round nose pliers
Cutters

Method:

• Thread one bicone onto each headpin and turn a loop
• *Open 1 7mm jump ring
• Thread on 2 5mm jump rings and 1 ear hook
• Close 7mm jump ring, ensuring ends are tight and snug!
• Open 1 7mm jump ring
• Thread on 3 bicone loops (1 of each colour)
• Thread the 7mm jump ring through both 5mm jump rings and close the 7mm jump ring
• Repeat from * above - but thread on your bicones in the opposite order to ensure a pair of earrings when worn!

Wear, and enjoy the admiration :-)

Get the kids to make something for Fathers Day..

Something simple but useful - a great Father's Day gift that is easy to make.

I'm sure that Dad will be thrilled with this beaded bookmark and it's quick and easy to make for those with shorter attention spans. Best of all, it needs no special tools at all! If you're feeling flush, add a book. I find books about motor racing or vintage aeroplanes are very successful, but all Dad's are different!

To make this you need 1mm wax cord a few metal beads - we used drum beads but any beads you like are fine - just make sure they'll fit on the wax cord. You also need a charm - we used a suitably manly skull and crossbones for a Dad-Pirate, one jump ring and a foldover clasp

Cut about 30cm of wax cord and tie a knot in one end and pull it very tight, snipping the end close to the knot. Thread on a bead or three, and then tie another knot. I'm sure somewhere there is an amazing technique for knotting close to other beads, so if anyone knows it, please let me know - however, the 'tie a loose loopy knot and then wiggly it into position before tightening' method works well for me!

Next, put your cord into a book to make sure the length you are planning works. If you've bought a special 'Dad book' for Fathers Day, then use that one. The top of the bookmark should hang down along the spine of the book. Tie another another knot and wiggle it to about 1cm down from the top of the book. Thread on another few beads, and tie another knot.

Still with me? Good - Cut the wax cord 4cm below the last knot that you tied. Attach your end tip or clasp. I squashed a foldover clasp into a rounder shape and used a dot of superglue to make sure it was stuck!

If you're raiding your existing beady stash rather than buying new supplies, feel free to substitute. We made some with coloured veggie suede which looked rather funky.

These bookmarks also make excellent makes for charity or fetes - they're quick to make and need only a few good value materials so they don't use up loads of valuable time and beads, while producing something really cute and saleable.

Instead of a charm at the end, you could use a cute doll bead and then just tie a knot. Remember the dolly needs to be upside down on the bookmark so that she hangs right way up in use!

All of my heart(s)

With a nod to the classic 80s hit (yeh - ABC - how cool were they?)

All of our (Swarovski) hearts..

Our entire Swarovski Elements range is now in the madcowbeads clearance - you can save up to 20% off Swarovski sparkly things. What this means is that every 14mm Swarovski heart pendant is £1 or less in our fabulous sale, and if you fancy a gigantic 'heart of the ocean' size 40mm heart, then they are ridiculously cheap too.

Which is pretty handy. Valentine's Day being mere weeks away and all that.

Saturday - a bit of rest for the wicked...

It's Saturday, so I had a bit of a lie in and didn't do the horses until 7.30am. Then brekkie with a friend at one of those oldy fashioned cafes with ketchup bottles on the wipe clean tablecloth and all the tabloids to read. Marvelous!

That seemed to use up the whole morning. I usually have a bit of a rest at the weekend - except in the run up to Christmas where if I stop, I can't catch up again! This time of year is great for stock checking and ordering new lines so that's what I'm doing. I'm also stocking my new website. This seems to take ages, but I'm pleased with how its looking and can't wait to be fully open.

I also wrapped a batch of parcels as to me, there is nothing worse than getting to work on Monday morning and climbing the 'parcel mountain' all day. I prefer to do it in batches of a couple of hours everyday, so that Monday isn't horrible. I guess this is a throwback to previous lives where I had to get into the office by 8.15 and have a dreadful meeting on Mondays! this way, my Mondays are stressfree :-)

There is a HUGE spoil of silver tone chain sitting in my stockroom and it's calling me(!) That's my next job - chopping it into batches. I've got this pretty much off pat now. It's quite repetitive, but quicker started, quicker done!

Have a great weekend all!

Well Here Goes!...

I'm a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to new technology type things... but finally the news of blogging has reached georgieworld. Never mind eh? Better late than never!

My aim is to use this blog as a diary of a bead seller to give you a little insight into the people behind the beads(!) I'd better kick off with the introductions now...

My name is Georgie (you'd never have guessed that!) and I run a home based business selling beads findings and craft items on eBay. This is my fulltime job. The other fulltime jobs I have are looking after my horse and cats - oh and my husband. When I'm not packing beads, writing listings, marketing my site, making jewellery and sourcing new sparkly stuff(!) I enjoy horse riding and compete in dressage.

I have 2 fat ginger cats called Tabby and Corrie and a beautiful horse called Harry who is sadly very ill at the moment. He has an operation on July 11th, so all paws are crossed for that. The cats get very cross because they are not allowed into my sparkly bead room. They sit outside meowing when I go in to pack parcels!

I'm married with no kids. My husband is a farrier, so that's quite lucky for me as the horsey gets free shoes. He has his own website now: www.troythefarrier.com I've dragged him kicking and screaming into the 21st century! He has email and everything :-) he's staying with friends in Texas at the moment, so I have a little peace(!) .. not really!

What did I do today? Well aside from all that parcel wrapping, I did some work on my new website www.madcowbeads.com - it's not completely stocked yet, it's a work in progress - a little each day so I can make sure it looks nice and works properly. I also took some photos of a new batch of pewter charms ready to list. They're very funky - I think you'll like them, well... I like them!

I ran to catch the last post and arrived with my sack at our little local Post Office at 4.59pm - talk about leaving it a bit late. I managed to beat the postie through the door, but sadly, he informs me that tomorrow morning is a postal strike and nothing will go until Saturday. That's very annoying. I hope it doesn't go on too long!

Stock levels are the bane of a bead seller's life, so tomorrow is counting day. I have the problem of selling on eBay, the website and also face to face (a few local ladies pop round and buy their supplies!) so stock control is my biggest hurdle at the moment. I manage to keep a handle on it by frequent recounts, but it does get tedious - I'd much rather be looking for new shiny things to buy!

Anyway, enough from me for today. To keep up to date with this blog, you can subscribe via RSS.

Have a great evening!
Georgie