A Game of Chess

Chess, a thinking persons game. One of strategy, ambush and forward thinking. I love the game even though I am terrible at playing it. To win I must first choose the right opponent - you know someone who doesn't play!

I've always wanted a beautiful Chess set and a few years ago I saw one that had a Dragon fantasy theme, alas it was beyond my meager earnings. So it got me thinking, what if I beaded one instead. My mind was full of ideas.

So........ A few months ago I started on my journey to make a beaded chess set. I googled it to see if anyone else was as crazy as me to do this and I found only a few. I knew I only wanted a small set, this way it could be a travel game as well.

With just an idea I started beading, it took me a few tries before perfecting my central part of the design, then the individual pieces evolved naturally. The Knight was the most difficult, but after about 5 attempts I finally found a way of making it and is one of my favourite pieces.

The board I designed on BeadTool and then tweeked it as I made it - the board itself took me about 2 months to make as I would only do a few lines a day. The board measures only 20cm x 20.5cm.

The colours to choose for my set in was the easy part - Purple and White! After all what other colour is there????

I have played a few games with the Hubster and out of the 3 so far I have won 2 :)

I am currently in the process of writing a Tutorial for the Chess Set.  This will be available hopefully by the end of September.

I will also be running a giveaway of the Tutorial from my Facebook page once my Beads-Jewelled page reaches a 1000 likes.

Cheers, Bye for now

Battle of the Beadsmith 2015

Wow it's been a while since I did a blog post! Time flies when your having fun I guess ;)

Well I did it. I sent in my application to Steven Weiss of the Beadsmith to participate in the all Beady Goodiness that is Battle of the Beadsmith 2015. Group C Battle 29.
Once I knew I was on the list - panic of course set in.
What the hell was I going to do. I knew I wouldn't be able to make anything as good as those other's specially when I don't do the embroidery bit - I'm  a bit of a bead weaving purist in that respect. So my piece had to be great but woven!!!!! Not easy.
I formulated an idea to link me back to New Zealand - home of the long white cloud and the NZ Christmas Tree, the Pohutukawa.
So idea formed, now for the execution.
No mean feat. It was going to have to be individual components that would then be joined together to look like one.

It took quite a few attempts to get the Pohutukawa flower parts right, but I managed it.
Then on the long white cloud - that was the easy part.
A few leaves, pieces of Paua and PauaKawa was ready to be assembled!

Before it was all sewn together I played around with how I wanted it to look, which once decided meant I had to make more 'flowers'.

I am very happy with I made, but I know it doesn't come close to the visual impact of my battle buddy for round 1.

           

 Voting has of course started for Round 1  Group C Voting  Group D Voting - Get in quick.