Lindy's Designs: waxed linen

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Waxed Linen - I think I'm Hooked

Waxed Linen Stack

A few years ago I discovered the term "arm party" - well doesn't that just sound like fun! There is a trend that has been going on for a very long time of stacking or layering your jewelry. In my travels to South Carolina and Georgia over the past 10 - 12 years while my children were in college I used to admire the ability of those Southern Belles to stack many bracelets on one wrist - most of the time they were gold charm bracelets and gold chains of various styles. Never finding the right mix of chains to suit my taste, I just could never quite pull that off. So when I saw a blog post about "arm parties" a few years back, I was intrigued by the way gals were wearing not one, two, or three bracelets at a time, but four, five or six bracelets. All styles of bracelets were being stacked. Well, my daughter has a sense for fashion, actually she graduated from college with a degree in fashion design, and has always had the ability to layer bracelets together. Mom not being quite as hip had to struggle with this stacking idea but I sure gave it a try. During my following of these "arm parties" on various blogs across the internet I stumbled upon an arm party blog hop hosted by Tracy Statler of Make Bracelets, using your own jewelry creations. Well I definitely was going to participate in that one and my daughter and I began to stack them on. I guess the rule to good arm stacking is to mix mediums - some beads, some leather, some chain, some fiber - you get my drift.

After participating in the waxed linen blog hop last week I got the itch to try some more designs with waxed linen. What better way to try different designs than to try layering several together. I had a day where I just wanted to make something but didn't want to pull out all my beads and supplies - easy solution, waxed linen thread and a few beads. I pulled out some gorgeous natural colored waxed linen that I purchased from White Clover Kiln on Etsy and a few beads that I had in my stash and started creating. The first bracelet I did was a simple flower design that I found on Beadaholique's website. I modified it to the beads I had on hand. The second bracelet is a braided wrap bracelet that was found on a blog post on I Always Pick the Thimble. After finishing these two bracelets I was going to make a third waxed linen piece but I found a bracelet that I already had in my collection using similar beads to the flower style that I had made using a tutorial picked up from The Gossiping Goddess's blog. I was so happy with how these turned out, simple but fun. I think I may have to make some more "stacks". For more inspiration on stacked bracelets and waxed linen, you might want to check out Erin Siegel's blog. She is the waxed linen queen and has many inspirational tutorials and ideas on her site. You can find my post on stacked and layered here and a peek at my "arm party" blog post here. Keep in mind that some of these arm party stacks in that last post are maybe a little overboard, but a 20 year old wrist can pull off just about anything. Inspiration for some of these bracelets was found on Erin's blog as well. Enjoy - I know I sure did.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

First a big Thank You to Diana Ptaszynski of Suburban Girl Studio LLC for hosting this blog hop. I usually shy away from doing blog hops because I always feel like what I design is never going to be good enough or measure up to the designs of the other designers in the hop. When Diana suggested a blog hop using waxed linen I decided to bite the bullet, overcome my fears and join in. I really needed something to spark my creative juices and I definitely needed more practice with waxed linen

NECKLACE MADE WITH TUTORIAL BY STEPHANIE SERSICH

I usually shy away from doing blog hops because I always feel like what I design is never going to be good enough or measure up to the designs of the other designers in the hop. When Diana suggested a blog hop using waxed linen I decided to bite the bullet, overcome my fears and join in. I really needed something to spark my creative juices and I definitely needed more practice with waxed linen.

My only experience with waxed linen up to this point had been a few simple knotted bracelets strung on waxed linen and a necklace that I made 7 or 8 years ago following a tutorial written by Stephanie Sersich found in a beading magazine. With a little help from my son I got some basic macrame knots down.

This first piece is the Stephanie Sersich piece that I had totally forgotten about until I started taking pics for this blog hop. I've always admired earrings with the waxed linen fringe and I made two pairs for this hop. Next I had some sea glass that I thought would be perfect for a summer necklace with waxed linen in various shade of blues and beige (reminds me of sand and sea). I'm still undecided on the focal for this piece but I had a large piece of undrilled sea glass that I stumbled upon while looking for the drilled sea glass. Well that in itself created a challenge because I had no idea how I was going to turn this into a focal. I pulled out some silver wire that I had, found a You Tube video and gave wire wrapping a go. On the plus side this piece is long enough that it can double as a wrap bracelet as well.

The last piece was a last minute piece using a tutorial I found online. I'm not sure that the weigh of my waxed linen was sufficient for this piece as I don't feel like I got enough weight in my knots but for my first try I'm happy (and since ripping out knots in this waxed linen is next to impossible).