February Challenge

It's a blue and a green theme this month in the challenge at "Operation Tackle That Bead Stash!" and I decided to create a pair of Swarovski bezeled rivoli earrings.
To get directly to this month's challenge, click here.

I've been wanting to create these specific earrings with a frame like a star around the rivoli for a while, but I haven't really found any tutorials for it, so... I took an afternoon and began sketching it out, and experimenting on how I could make a star-like pattern. After some fiddling and calculating I finally managed to get it right.

When the shape of the star was completed I had to try my way around to attach the flat back stud-earrings behind the rivoli without trusting glue. Of course I used a little bit of glue to keep them in place. After it had dry I began to work on a decreased circular peyote stitch to embed the needle of the flat-back stud-earrings into the beadwork so it would also look nice from behind.


After I completed the backs of each earring I began to add some extra embellishment around them. I decided to use up those gorgeous capri blue 4mm bicone crystals from Preciosa and some of the 15/0 light blue frosted AB seed beads that I had used for the star frame in the center of the earrings.

I also got to use my only thread roll of K.O beading thread. I bought it just to try it out, to see what the differences were compared to Nymo. The only difference I noticed immediately was that the K.O is a bit harder and stiffer than the Nymo. I know some people say that K.O fray a lot less then Nymo, but I couldn't really tell that, it just frayed at the same amount as Nymo, heh. I might buy more of the K.O in the future though, since I actually liked working with it, and the K.O has different kind of colors then the Nymo.