April Challenge

Phew! Didn't think I would be able to finish this and also get a pretty decent photo of it.

I decided to join in with the April Challenge at "Operation Tackle That Bead Stash!", this month again.
This time the challenge was a bit more about interpretation. The theme was the "beach" basically, and the task at hand was to bead something that is inspired by the theme. The extra twist for the challenge was to incorporate shells in the piece, whatever it be beads, chips, real shells etc.

I started out with a pretty bright color scheme; I noticed this ceramic pendant in a sand-like brown color with some bronze color splashes, and with a golden luster when the light hits it. I then remembered that I had some shells stashed away that I had picked ages ago with my grandma and her husband when we were in Norway - last year I snatched some of those with me when I were visiting them during our vacation.

I laid the two shapes in front of me and began sketching out a silhouette, experimenting and sketching out something that looked good to me.
Now, the shape of the pendant was 100% clear to me, I just began to ponder what I should attach it to. I wanted something slinky and organic looking, and at first I though about making a twisted herringbone rope but at some point I felt that making a beaded rope might actually ruin that "slinkyness" I wanted.
In the end, I looked through my drawer and noticed some of the c-lon beading cord and found a silver grey and a sage green color which looked perfect together. So yeah, I decided on making a braided kumihimo chain for the piece :)

Necklace: Fairy

With mother's day approaching (it's always the last Sunday of May in Sweden so yep, that's the schedule I'm following, heh), I got this little vision of making a little pendant with a chain that wouldn't be too complicated, since I wanted the pendant to be the focus.  Since my mom is gonna be here during mother's day I wanted to make her something a little more special then last year.

What I did when I started the process is that I saw one of the Swarovski rose colored rivolis that I still had, which I already had made ready for using in bead embroidery. I wanted to use this one as the focal and then the plan was to pretty much after bezelling it with peyote, working around a pretty basic shape in free-form - see where it would go as I progressed.
At first I planned on using the freshwater pearls like I used in the bead embroidery earrings I posted a couple of weeks ago. I created a pretty basic flower shape, using the freshwater pearls as petals. However, the concept changed after I stitched down the very first freshwater pearl, and I decided to just keep one of them stitched down. I liked the silhouette so much and I felt that making more petals like that might have made the piece look overworked, and that was the last direction I wanted to go in.

I'm not sure if my mom will see this blog-post or not as I know she doesn't always read it, so I'm willing to take the risk that she's too busy to see it, lol.

Bead Embroidered Necklace I

About two weeks ago I got a request from a friend of my bf's who asked me if I could make him a necklace that would be a gift for his gf.
I asked him a few questions to know what sort of basic directions I could base the design of. He told me a budget, and gave me the two basic colors purple and black. He also wanted me to incorporate the letter "E". It's the first letter of his name, he told me that he wanted the piece to remind her of him. Obviously he gave me pretty simple things to go after, I mean I could basically do whatever I wanted sticking to those guidelines he gave me.

The first thing I did was to find a few focals/cabochons that I could use for the necklace, then I placed them out in my sketchbook and began to doodle a basic silhouette. After a few minutes and experiments I ended up with the silhouette you can see on the photo of the finish product.
I thought that using only purple and black would be a bit flat so I decided add gold into the design as well, makes it a bit more "royal" I suppose.

As for the chain the pendant is attached to, I didn't want to be too complicated so I layed out a pretty basic design on my design board; a single strand of round Czech glass beads in sizes 8 and 4mm. I also used 11/0 seed beads and just before the long strand of 4mm round Czech glass beads starts I added a 6mm round blue sandstone bead on each side to make the fading of bead sizes look more smoothly towards the end.

Bead Embroidery Ring II

Yesterday I was a bit bored and I wanted to get a little variation with what I was doing so I decided to take one of my 8mm hematite cabochons and glued it to some interfacing. After that I decided to play around a little bit with beads, using the hematite cab as focal for a little ring.
Nothing too complex really, I bezelled the cab using circular netting; since I've been giving netting a try when it comes to bezelling cabs in bead embroidery, I just sometimes can't stop so when I have a number of beads that is dividable by three I just can't help myself but to use netting, hihi.

The ring is pretty basic. The little edging, which I think gives it that little extra is created with different edging techniques combined in a way that completes the shape of it.
To attach the completed work onto the ring base I just used some E6000 - the ring is adjustable as well.

Something I know I have a problem with when I create rings is to determine the size... I mean we all don't have the same ring sizes, so yep... Even if I do love to wear rings myself I don't tend to create them that often, only cause of this. Think I should invest in some more adjustable ring bases to get rid of some of the cabochons I have in my collection that I just know I won't be using for anything major.

Necklace: Lickerish

The design for this necklace was pretty random when I started. What I wanted to do before I began to bead this one is that I was browsing through my little gemstone cabochon collection and I found this cab that stood out from the rest of them. Again, I have no idea what sort of gemstone it is as I've bought it in a mix pack. The things that attracted me to this one is the amount of details and shades the cab has, and I began to play around with a different set of seed bead colors to see what would look good along with the cabochon.

To give the piece a little extra flare, I decided to embellish the pendant itself with some labradorite chips. I had a very hard time capture it on photo and it doesn't really show, but each one of the chips have that shiney gather of colors when the light hit them in the right place.

I just get the feeling of some lickerish flavors when I stare at this piece, so yeah... That's why I named it that way, heh.

March Challenge Piece for OTTBS!

Yep, I realize that this post is about three days late, I apologize for that ^^ Been a bit occupied here, been having a terrible cold for more then a week and it's finally starting to clear out of the system :)

For the March Challenge at "Operation Tackle That Bead Stash!" the theme was to use at least three different pastel colors and that extra twist was to incorporate leaves in the piece.
When I saw the theme of the challenge I wasn't really too keen to participate in it as I normally don't feel that drawn to pastels, but for some reason, four days before the deadline I suddenly felt very, very inspired to create something using this theme. I found a kind of a limeish colored gemstone cabochon in my gemstone cab collection (I have no idea what gemstone it is, but a few months ago I found a picture that showed a very similar gemstone, and it was called lemon-quartz; again no idea if that is correct *shrug*), that looked great together with some of the pale lavendelish colored beads I had in a tube.
I began with gluing the cabochon onto some foundation, then I played around with the bezel which I created in netting. After that I began to play around with the shape, and see what sort of beads looked good and how I would place them onto the foundation to make it look just as I wanted.

When I finished, just to that point when you look at what you're creating and you have that little creative voice in your head telling you that "this is just perfect". That voice that tells you to stop, I've noticed that if you sometimes don't listen to it you can end up over-designing whatever you were working :P
At this point I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with this piece; A pendant? A brooch? In the end I decided on a pendant. I wanted to keep the chain as simple as possible so I just used the basic colors I picked out from the beginning and went with it. The chain is created with the simple Russian spiral stitch, and I used 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads for it, to make it so thin as possible.
Working a Russian spiral stitch with 15/0 and 11/0's, I think! Took the double amount of time it takes when I would work with 8/0 and 11/0's or with 9/0 and 11/0's.