Necklace: Frost Heart

Yesterday, I managed to finish up a necklace I've been working on. The necklace is a Christmas present for someone.
I decided to take a break from my Marie Antoinette piece and do this one. Well, I ran out of a bead color I need for that piece anyway, so why not take a break until I have them back in my stash again? :)

What inspired me to create this little heart-shaped pendant is actually the cat's eye tear drop cabochon in the center. I love that cab so much, and I actually got it in my collection by pure luck, from one of those cabochon mixes. I've looked, and the store I bought the mix from doesn't sell exactly this tear drop shape separately at all. I was just lucky to get it, heh.

I laid the cabochon onto my sketch book and began to doodle, until I had the heart shape.
When it comes to choosing colors, I ended up just with white for beads, but with different surface treatments on the beads (pearly, aurora borealis etc.). I thought that white would really compliment the cold blue color of the cabochon in a perfect way.

For once, I also decided to add the clasp starting from the pendant itself. I thought it would be a nice change to do something a little different.
As for the chain, I ended up doing a thinner chain with spiral stitch, using 11/0's as the core bead and 15/0's for the spiral. To add some dimension to the chain, I incorporated a quartz crystal bead in random places in the chain as I went a long creating it.