Saturday, August 21, 2010

Bead Deals This Week

Some of my favorite online bead stores are having some great sales this weekend:

Friday, August 20, 2010

Photoshop Tip: Removing a Color Cast

If you do a lot of jewelry photography and have Photoshop, you may be interested in my latest Photoshop tip, Removing a Color Cast, at my sister site, EspressoGraphics.com.

When it comes to photographing my beadwork, I often end up with an annoying color cast even when I photograph the jewelry using a light box, turn off the flash, use an Ott-Lite for lighting and fiddle with the settings on my digital camera. I have found that the quickest and easiest way to get rid of that color cast is to convert the image to Lab mode in Photoshop and tinker with it there.

This Photoshop CS3 tip shows you how to go from this:


to this:

Thursday, August 19, 2010

New patterns uploaded

I just uploaded two new patterns:

the Tuscan Bracelet, $4, at Bead-patterns.com and AroundTheBeadingTable.com:



and the matching Tuscan Earrings, $2.75, a personal favorite, at Bead-patterns.com and AroundTheBeadingTable.com:

Monday, August 2, 2010

The big fat cuff

I've always been attracted to some of the big fat cuffs some beaders have created and wondered what would happen if I added a third row to the Pebbled Bracelet. I also attempted a bead clasp:


To make the bead clasp, in Step 46, I strung three seed beads, a 6mm glass pearl and a seed bead. Then I went back down through the seed bead, the 6mm glass pearl and the seed bead that I just strung. For Step 47, I strung two more seed beads and then went down and around through the seed beads highlighted in RED. From there, it was just a matter of going around through these beads to strengthen the bead clasp:


To make the loop attachment on the other end, I strung twelve seed beads and then went down and around through the seed beads highlighted in RED. I then went around through the loop of seed beads several times to reinforce it: