Necklace: Child of Night

As most of you probably know by now, I'm a sucker for everything fantasy related. This time I also chose my source of inspiration to come from the world of film.
A couple of my favorite movies are the "Underworld" movies (at least the three first ones). A few weeks ago I bought a druzy agate cabochon with a titanium coating from Fabby Dabby Stones on Etsy, and John has a lot of unique designer cabochons in his shop so I definitely recommend those that are interested in that to have a look ;)

Anyway, this stone I bought just screamed "Underworld" at me when I got it in my hands so of course I had to do something related to that.
Main idea for what I had in mind was to put some focus on blood, as the blood is very important on both the vampire and the werewolf side. I used a mother of pearl disc bead to give some hint to the werewolf aspect as well, as blood is most related to vampires in most sagas.

I wanted the piece to be wearable with just a simple t-shit and jeans so I made the chain longer, approx. 60cm (23.6").
It's been a while since I've worked with gunmetal colored beads, but I really enjoyed going back to that as I'm personally a sucker for metallic colored beads in general, heh.
I actually enjoyed working with this piece so much that I ended up creating a matching ring that goes with the theme, mainly using those 8,6,4mm round Czech glass beads in gunmetal. It really created a cool texture scalloping them like that :)

Necklace: Grendel & Free-form Process

The inspiration for this necklace comes from the story and also from the 3D animated movie Beowulf. A lot of it is focused around the monster aspect of the story, therefore I choose to call it "Grendel".

I want to share my process with you, my lovely readers, my experiences when it comes to working with and creating a free-form bead embroidered necklace. I'm gonna also explain how I worked the free-form bead embroidered bracelet I posted some weeks ago and how I took what I learned from that and made it work for a necklace.

The first thing I did when it came to the bracelet is that I decided to use one of the cuff templates I have for when I put a metal cuff blank in-between the beading foundation and the backing. I wanted it pretty tight and neat for where I was going to add the clasp, so I added about 2.5cm (1 inch) extra of the fact that the metal cuff is a bit smaller.
I then used that template and drew it onto the foundation. Why did I do this for a free-form piece? Simple, I wanted to see how far I could work to have it somehow end up perfectly on the wrist. That is the only guideline I had, the rest is 100% free-form. I chose a focal I liked then some smaller cabochons which I liked with where the design was going.

So for the necklace!
I principal is pretty much the same. The only difference is that I cut out a 14cm in diamater circle and drew that out on my beading foundation. What's it circle for? The circle determines where the neck is gonna be on the necklace. What I did was also to measure out the center of it, so I would have some sort of idea where to go.
I placed the focals I had chosen on places where I personally thought it would look neat and glued ONE piece down, and then I began to bead. When it comes to free-form and placing focal pieces such as cabochons, I always choose to glue them down one by one, and with that i mean that after I glue down one I let it dry and then I bezel it with beads (ex. peyote). After that I move on to the next focal. See, when I was working free-form I hadn't decided where anything would be at all and therefore I chose to place my materials down slowly.

You can probably see on my "Grendel" necklace that there are two separate pieces and not one solid. After I had finished the left side of necklace I began to look at the piece and experiment with the focal pieces I had on what I wanted to do for the right side, and I ended up making them separates. Just an impulse decision!

Some New Polymer Clay Cabochons!

Earlier today I ended up taking a little break from the necklace I'm working on, and I ended up playing with polymer clay.

For these ones I had a pretty basic idea that I started out with; I just wanted to make a sort of marbleized effect on some basic oval and round shapes. So what i did first was use some scrap clay and first put those in molds. Then I took the colors I wanted to work with and mixed them up and then ran them through the pasta-machine a couple of times till I had a nice surface I wanted to cut out.
Then I ran the clay again without folding it through setting 7 and got it really thin. Then I covered the scrap clay cabs with that thin layer of color mix I just made. I basically got this idea from a video of "Beads, Baubles and Jewels" - I can't remember which episode it was, but pretty much all of the episodes of the latest series of that show is purchasable from http://www.interweavestore.com/ from about 2,25$, less even during special sales event.

So what then?
The cabs really just looked plain at this point, and I ended up being in the mood to do something different with them. I took some of the new clay tools I recently purchased and ended up playing with different types of textures. And in the end... I ended up embellishing most of them with some 2.2mm Swarovski chatons - who can resist a little sparkle? lol...
And yes, working and trying to place those small 2.2mm chatons was really just annoying sometimes, lol.

I would also like to add in this blog post that I read every comment I get, and I appreciate them very much. Sometimes I'm in that mood where I'm not always in the mood to make a reply. 

I also read every single one of the blogposts that are made from blogs that I'm following, and I really enjoy reading them and seeing what the bloggers have been making. Again there, I've been very down and it's one of those periods where I haven't been in the mood to make a comment at those either. 

 

Video Slideshow and Free-form Bracelet

First off, I would like to wish everyone a happy 2014! :D

Second, I put together another video slideshow of the pieces I made following the period from this summer to the end of 2013.



I've also been in the mood for quite some time to create a free-form bracelet with bead embroidery, I've just been lazy. Meaning I have figure out the basic size so it would actually fit around a wrist.

Since it's a new year and due to the facts that I had completed all the creations I wanted done I ended up taking one of my templates I have for creating bracelets that goes over a metal cuff. What I basically did was putting the template around my own wrist and eyeball how many extra centimeters I would be needing to add so it would look good and fit perfect together with a slide clasp.

I mainly measured out the center of the template and choose a focal I wanted to work with, in this case an Abalone cabochon. Then I fiddled through the glass eye cabochons I'd made myself some weeks ago. Yeah, I decided that to me, it's more affordable to buy clear glass cabs and then create my own eyes in PS since I have the skills for doing that + I have a really freaking awesome photo-printer, lol.
For the pictures, I also got to use my brand new photo-tent that my sweet bf bought me last month. I don't have a table really where I can put it in my little studio, so I put it together for the moment at one of the living room tables, where it won't stay, obviously :p