Hello all

Well we’ve had loads of amazingly great and diverse  entries. From jewellery to dolls as well as papercrafts . digital and altered items , its a real pleasure looking through the weeks entries, and again being inspired to try something new ourselves. So as the whole point of This Thursday is to see differnt items entered to the challenge we can safely say that its already a resounding success. So thank you all for helping us to get This Thursday off to a flying start.

We’d also like to thank our very generous sponsor Daisy chain beads and our great Guest designer Marina for making challenge 2 a great success

So here are our 15 favorites this week, and again it was amazingly difficult to decide which ones leave out.

as you can see. So many absoloutly stunning peices that we had to get rid of many more we loved.

And this weeks winner chosen by the random numner generator is Louise Crosbie creator of one of my very favorites

Congratulations Louise as soon as we get your addy we will be posting the great prize donated by Daisy Chains beads,

Bye for now

This weeks challenge was influenced by the prize

 which has been kindly offered by our second brilliant sponsor

Daisy Chains Beads specialise in selling beads in smaller or rural communities that have less access to bead shops. We love to get out and about and meet beaders , experts and beginners alike. I  see so many beautiful beaded pieces, our customers are a real inspiration. i have a bit of a dream to invite them to come and display their work at an arts centre in Powys, maybe in 2009 or 2010. It will take a lot of organising and some grant aid, but perhaps it will happen one day.Our stock is very mixed, from Swarovski to plastic, Murano to delicas to ethnic wood. We also like to keep a good stock of threads and findings. Our main speciality is probably our clearance lines, I think most of customers are very pleased at our prices ! Recently we have had strands of 8mm glass crackle beads for just 95p each. I can’t promise there will be any of them left at future sales, but there will be other excellent buys. We open from 10.30 – 3.30 and admission is free. For more information see www.artsandcrafts.co.uk. You can find us over the summer at the following venues;
  

Sunday 22nd June 2008       10:30 - 3:30       Gresford Memorial Hall,  Gresford, Nr Wrexham	Sunday 29th June 2008       10:30 - 3:30       Bartestree Village Hall, Herefordshire
Sunday 20th July 2008       10:30 - 3:30       Uckington Village Hall,  Gloucestershire	Sunday 27th July 2008       10:30 - 3:30       Hatton Village Hall,  Warwickshire
Saturday 9th August 2008       10:30 - 3:30       St Isan Church Hall, LLanishen, Cardiff	Sunday 24th August 2008       10:30 - 3:30       Chalgrave Memorial Hall, Nr Luton
Bank Holiday Monday* 25th August 2008       10.30 - 3.30       Tackley Village Hall, Nr Oxford	Sunday 6th September 2008        10.30 - 3.30        Powick Village Hall,  Worcestershire
Sunday 28th September 2008      10.30 -3.30      Minerva Arts Centre, Llanidloes, Powys

Tracey here , if you get the chance you really should go, I went to a recent one and bought all the beads I used in my button shank braclet. The selection and prices were brilliant, oh and I bought a  few strand of the crackle glass beads for 95p

So thats our sponsor and what a stunning prize. I know i have been drooling over it since it arrived.  I now have all of them on my too buy list . The lucky winner will enjoy playing with these

So todays challenge is Beaded Beauties, you can use beads (and for definition we will allow gems in as flatback beads) You can use images of beaded ladies etc. You can use the title, if you make art beads you can enter those . If its beaded and you have made it it can be entered. You can use digital beads.  If you can relate it to the title then you can enter it, Good luck we can’t wait to see what amazing peices you come up with after last weeks entries. All the beads in the examples are available from Daisy Chains beads either on their site or at their fairs

Our Guest designer today is Marina talented crafter and designer and owner of Cherry Pie Art stamps . A few words from Marina about the challenge

When I accepted being a guest designer I didn’t know I was up for real challenge. I’m a stamper and painter before anything else so it was a surprise to hear I’d be working with beads! I love beads, but I can’t consider myself a beader. A collector of beads… yes!
Anyway, I decided to add to it another challenge by using another medium I never used before: aluminum (alluminium in British English?) sheets. And third challenge: do something I can hang on a wall and wear too!
I started with cutting a rectangular piece of aluminum sheet (the thin kind you can emboss and cut with your scissors).
Then I cut strips of it on the short side leaving them attached to the long side. I didn’t pay much attention to cut straight or cut them all the same size. Then I took silver wire, put some beads in and started weaving
through the cut strips. One strip up and one strip down. One bead or two on the upper side until I reached the end and then the same again each row but alternating beads and aluminum. (hard to explain……… ouch! Does it make any sense?)For the last row I folded the endings inside.
Next I attached my beaded “thing” to black cardstock, more alluminum background and a black frame.

This same piece is flexible and it can be shaped like an armband. (see photo)

Tracey here again , I should also point out that Fiona and Susie both took a deep breath when they found out what the challenge was and have been beading outside their box this week, as neither have used many beads before, and Susie has made her 1st  jewellery a lovely set of earings well done, I’ve only been beading myself for 2 months and I made my 1st earings too,  and with no more addue (if thats how you spell it). Here are the design teams examples

All the design team went Wow when we saw Marina’s art peice, I think she rose to the challenge really well you can see more of marina’s work at http://zneiscrafty.ning.com/profile/marilenz and http://www.ebsqart.com/Artists/cmd_6212_profile.htm

Don’t forget that you can find us in the Chatroom this evening between 8pm and 9pm gaurenteed and later if we really get chatting .

I  was going to do a photo tutorial on my bolt of fabric bead, however , my 1st attempt at a photo tutorial did not go well, so I will be linking to a tutorial and just giving a few tips on how to acheive the bolt of fabric bead   , and there is a great collection of blingy paper downloads as seen on  JAKE The our little diamond digi lo,  on our freebee page.

Good luck to all who enter here Lol