Even though the first project for our bead along is not due until October someone has already sent in a picture. Here's the first pic. Great job Robin!

Robin Peterson
I used Robin's egg blue, green patina tila's, with Turquoise 11/O and Gold 15/0. An antiqued gold toggle to finish it off.

New Bead Along Books and FAQ

What is a bead along?     A Bead Along is simply a group of beaders from all over the world working on a designated project all at one time. Everyone works on a project on their own time, with their own color choices for a 2 week period of time.

How does a bead along work?  First of all, buy the chosen book   At the beginning of the Bead Along you will be given a list of projects to complete and the dates that each is to be completed. Once you have the first project done you email me a picture of the finished product along with a list of colors that you used. As pictures arrive I will post them here on the blog for all to see.

Why participate in the Bead Along?  The whole reason for doing a bead along is to learn new techniques. Beading isn't any fun if you never learn anything new! Doing a bead along pushes you to try new techniques or projects that you may, at any other time, might not choose to do.

What if I don't finish a project before a due date or life gets in the way?  No worries. There is no cost to do the bead along and no penalty if you don't get a project finished on time. If you don't get one finished or you finish late just email me pictures when your done.

Important Notes from Kelly:
1. All pictures are to be emailed to me at off_the_beaded_path@yahoo.com. You can email them to me at any time.

2. I CAN ONLY POST WHAT YOU SEND ME! If you don't send me your name or your color info I can't post it. I had someone get mad at me last time and tell me that I was prejudice because I didn't list her colors used. I had never met the person or even seen the person before. So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE understand that if you don't send it to me I can't put the info on the blog.

3. This is supposed to be a fun bead along so don't stress and just have fun learning. I will not be doing video tutorials on the projects because of the design infringement but I tried to pick projects that looked fun and easy but at the same time challenging for some.


Bead Along #1: Great Designs for Shaped Bead Work by Anna Elizabeth Draeger
I tried to pick out projects from this book that the materials wouldn't be hard to find. Some of the materials used in some of the projects were harder to find so that'l why I chose what I did.

Page 13-15  Marvelous Mosaics Earrings    Due Oct. 1st

Page 16-18  St Pete Meets Tila                     Due Oct. 15th

Page 48-50  Ring-a-ling                                Due Oct. 29th

Page 80-83  Dainty Daisies   (You can do either the necklace or bracelet)  Due Nov 12th

Bead Along #2:  A Beaded Romance by Kelly Wiese

Page 24-31  Victorian Circles (Necklace or Bracelet)   Due: January 8th 2014

Page 53-61  Fringed Bracelet                                      Due: January 22nd 2014

Page 97-106  Beadazzled (Necklace or Bracelet)          Due: February 4th 2014

Page 33-38  Picot Petals Ring                                      Due: February 18th 2014

Next Bead Along Book choice!

Ok everyone...  I need your help.....

I am working on getting the next Bead Along set up for October and November.  I have three books that I have chosen:

(1) Great Designs for Shaped Beads by Anna Draeger

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Designs-Shaped-Beads-Peanuts/dp/0871164957/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375479681&sr=8-2&keywords=anna+draeger

(2) A Beaded Romance by Kelly Wiese

http://www.amazon.com/Beaded-Romance-Beadweaving-Patterns-Projects/dp/144023213X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375479739&sr=8-1&keywords=beaded+romance

(3) Mastering Peyote Stitch by Melinda Barta

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Peyote-Stitch-Inspiring-Projects/dp/1596686332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375479778&sr=8-1&keywords=mastering+peyote+stitch

Please leave a comment below letting me know which one you guys would like to do.

Project Runway.....LOVE

My one great vice is this world is the show Project Runway. I love that show! I love to see all the great designs that the designers come up with. It gives me such inspiration to see all the color choices and blockings that they use. I finally got caught up today and watched the first episode. I was blown away by the winner of this weeks challenge. The contestants had to use a parachute to make a garment out of. Here is a picture of this weeks winning design:



The designers name is Bradon and his work is amazing! The dress flowed so pretty and the colors used were amazing!

One of my favorite designers this year is:


He is deaf and uses an interpreter. Cool part is...He's from NC! Gotta support the local folks! His design this week was the pink dress above. It was sssssooooo pretty. I would actually wear the dress! I love the pink and black together. If you get a chance you should catch a couple of episodes it would be worth your time. You will get some great color ideas!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Last Bead Along Projects

Well the bead along is officially finished! Here are some pictures of the last projects I received. If you haven't finished the project yet be sure to send me a picture when your finished so I can get it posted. A big THANK YOU to all who participated. I know a lot of you who attempted the projects learned some new techniques and are getting better at reading patterns. Since Grayson is due in August it may be awhile before we start another bead along but rest assured that I will be looking for a great book in the near future.

Jan Crosthwaite - Wallasey U.K.

I used 8/0 silver lined gold seed beads for the peyote band and 11/0 silver lined crystal seed beeds for the netting.

Jen Amaral

The colors I used for this project are black and raspberry seedbeeds.

Pat Jones - Huntsville AL

Here are my earrings, size 11 and 15 white seed beads with crystal volcano foil back chatons. You can't see it on the back...but I also used a light purple seed bead with the white so I could keep track of the increases. For me, this one was a definite challenge!

Kelly Dale - Forest City NC

I used 11/0 Duracoat Galvanized Egg Plant. Instead of using a different color seed bead I added a 3mm Swarovski Crystal. 

Cake turned out great!

So I got up this morning and made the icing for the cake. It's more like a sugar drizzle. It smelled so good but cutting and eating a cake at 7:00 am didn't seem like a feasible thing to do.

Sammy and I went and picked up his grill and when I came home I could no longer resist. I cut the cake and had a slice and it was wonderful! It was super moist and the strawberries tasted so good. If you get a chance I would highly recommend trying this recipe!

Staycation

A lot has been happening in my world over the last week or so. I was so excited because Friday I went to the Orthodontist and ended up getting my permanent retainers put in. I'm on the books to have my braces taken off July 22nd! I'm so excited and can hardly wait. Since I've gotten pregnant I've been hoping that I would get the braces off before I had Grayson and it's happening! Going to have to wear a retainer at night for the rest of my life but it's totally OK because it's pink and my new straight smile will be worth all the money.

I also had to go have my eyes checked last week. As always my eyes had gotten a little worse so I had to purchase new glasses. They ended up having to order my glasses but I'm looking forward to having new frames.

I had an Anesthesiologist appointment this morning. I had to go and talk to him about my pain options during birth. I really don't want to have to use him but it's better to be safe then sorry. After the appointment we were supposed to leave for the Beach. Sammy's whole family is there this week. After much thought though we decided to have a staycation instead. There is so much still to be done before Grayson gets here in August. Did we want to spend over 1000.00 on 3 days vacation or did we want to invest that money into the house? In the end the house won so we have been busy working from home today. Our first big project this week is the front walkway so we'll see how that turns out.

Tomorrow we have to go and pick up Sammy's new grill. We go to a church called NewSpring on Sunday nights about 40 minutes from our house. For fathers day they were giving away a 500.00 prize to one lucky dad. Well Sammy ended up winning! We were so shocked because there were about 600 dads at Sunday nights service! We go pick up his new mac daddy 5 burner grill tomorrow and then they will be delivering steaks to our house later this week. Sammy's first official Fathers Day was pretty awesome!

I went to the Grocery store today to pick up ingredients for a new recipe that I found on pinterest. It is for a Fresh Strawberry Yogurt Cake. It's pretty simple to make. The prep time is about 20 minutes but then it has to cook for 1 hour. I made the mistake of deciding to start making this cake at 9:00pm so by the time I got it out of the oven a few minutes ago I was ready to go to bed. I'm going to let it cool tonight and then add the lemon glaze tomorrow. I'll let you know how it turns out. You can find the recipe here: http://www.aspicyperspective.com/2010/05/farmstand-fresh.html  Here is what the cake looked like when I took it out of the oven a few minutes ago. It's all I can do not to dive right into it right now! I'll finish it tomorrow, post pictures, and let you know how it tastes. I love pinterest but sometimes things are not always what they seem. Some recipes look so easy or look like they will taste so great and when i make them they don't seem that easy or seem to taste that great. Anybody else have that problem?