A little "big" ring

I know I'm myself one of those that love wearing rings, and of course I love making them. Nothing says as much about a person as a ring created in your own style in your own opinion.
Some of the very first beading projects I started out making were beaded rings. I haven't really been doing any beaded rings including bead embroidery to be frank, until now.
Why? Cause a ring is always personal and sometimes to make rings also to a consumer you need to know their ring sizes, and that I've noticed varies a lot from person to person.

Last month I decided to purchase some adjustable ring bases cause I wanted to go crazy with those "scrap" cabochons I have laying around, that I have absolutely no idea what else to make of.

So yesterday I looked through some of the resin cabs I've made and I noticed a bronze colored one which I've made using some bronze colored PearlEx powder. It was very hard to capture the real beauty of the effect that the PearlEx powder gave the resin, but the pigment really "swirls" around (not actually moving, heh) with sparkles.
I played with the cabochon on my ring-finger and thought it would look really cool as a ring even with it's giant size (approx. 2.5cm - 1"). I decided I would use some earthy tones and execute it in a simple way to make a bohemian styled piece. I've never really done anything in that style before so it was a bit like stepping out of my comfort zone at the same time even if the design is pretty simple.

I found creating these rings so fun I've actually already put some cabochons I want to use like this to the side, and some I've already glued on to some beading foundation and then I can start beading on them whenever I get in the mood to take a little break off of those bigger pieces I'm still working on.

Have you tried your hands yet on making beaded rings? If so did you enjoy it?

Bead Embroidery Pendant I

About a week ago I came over these three Swarovski crystal flat backs (a circle and two squares) in my stash. I'd completely forgotten that I had them and to be honest, I had no single clue what I should do with them. At first I had plan on doing something separate with each one of the pieces; like a pair of earrings with the square ones etc.
However, as I kept staring at the three pieces laying there on my worktable together I couldn't not help myself but to start arranging them in different orders and in different shapes together. I immediately scratch the earrings idea and came up with a pretty simple looking pendant piece. After I had ponder how I would also attach the pendant into a chain I remember that delicate looking silver-plate chain I had bought some months ago and decided to run with that. The chain wouldn't take away too much attention from the pendant and it would also keep the piece simple.

The pendant itself is created with bead embroidery a long with the Swarovski crystal flat-backs and 11/0 delicas and 15/0 seed beads by Toho and Miyuki in different shades of gray, along with some 1.5mm Toho cube beads in a gold luster amethyst color that looked very complimentary with the round flat-back. Also to add a little extra touch of color I tossed in two pieces of Malachite chip beads. After I'd played around with the shape I also added a little Swarovski tear-drop bead to dangle down.
The pendant ended up measuring almost 5cm (2") excluding the Swarovski crystal tear-drop.

Necklace: Forest God

So yes, I've been a bit distant from blogging the last few weeks. Well, the basic reason is that I've had my mother over from Sweden for 15 days, so I haven't really been doing anything jewelry related as of late :)

However, the moment I got some spare time to work on one of those bigger pieces I decided to finish up everything on the "Forest God" necklace I've been working on. I don't think I've posted any "teaser" or w.i.p photos of it, so I suppose this is gonna be a bit of a "surprise".

I didn't really have any "main" plan in mind when I did this one. The thought I had when I began to doodle out the design was that I wanted to make something in green, a necklace preferably; the pantone color of the year 2013 being emerald and all, and since I've already done a bead embroidered cuff last year in that color I thought a necklace would be refreshing.
I had a few green focals in my stash that I wanted to use for this one, and the main one I wanted to include is the green dyed abalone in the very center. After I began to play around with the ones I had and created a template that would work and places out the different cabs on places where they would look good.

Okey...
After working on it I ended up seeing a freaking dragon's face in it, and I still cannot get that out of my mind when I stare at it, lol. I asked my mom for an opinion when she was here and she saw something completely different; a butterfly...
So I'll just leave it at that and let everyone decided for themselves what they see in it, if they see any odd-looking-shapes-or-faces :P

Finally I also managed to find a wonderful jewelry bust display that measures 35cm in height, waaaay bigger then what I had laying around. I think the biggest I have is about 20-25cm in height so those extra 10cm is like a blessing. I found it from a retailer at the German Amazon site, and yes I am very, very happy with it :)