Bead Embroidery Necklace

Been some time now since I had time to blog last time, my apologies :)

A few days I managed to finish up another bead embroidery piece, but we've been having it really dark and gloomy, weather wise, and I prefer to take my photos using the daylight rather then a lamp etc. So yes, I've been waiting patiently for the weather to clear up a bit so I could get a somewhat decent shot of this necklace. I have to admit tho, that I really had a hard time getting great photos of this necklace, maybe cause it has a lot of black and white? *shrug*

The idea from the beginning when it comes to this piece came a bit random to me. I was cutting out the new template I made for another bead embroidery collar I'm working on, and one piece of paper which I cut out ended up with the exact silhouette as this necklace has. I liked the shape of it so I decided to take it to the next level and make a, yeah, as you can see... A necklace :P

I've been wanting, for some time now, to create a black and white piece and that was the idea I had in mind. But indeed, as I worked I ended up incorporating some greys and some faceted red roundel beads. When I was playing around with the red beads in various places I couldn't help myself but to incorporate them, cause they were really "screaming" at me.

I also, finally, got to use the patched up shell cabochon I bought last year from an Etsy seller in the US. The person has two separate shops and he/she sells almost the same stuff in each of the stores; Balibagus & Cabcabana, I strongly recommend for you to take a look, especially if you're interested in hand-cut gemstone cabochons and hand-carved bone, the selection is wonderful and the seller keeps updating with new products at least ones a week, if not more :)

Bead Embroidery Earrings V

I've been a bit busy lately and haven't really had too much time to either bead or blog. I just found out that my mom is coming over in May and will stay with us for about 15 days before she travels back to Sweden again.
We're also starting to plan a bit more things around the house, for instant... We're finally getting shelves on the walls on the second floor which I'm very, very happy about.
We're probably not even gonna travel up to Sweden this year, as we'll be focusing more on getting the house in order etc.

While I've been working on a few different beading projects, I've also finished up a pair of bead embroidery earrings that I had a bit of fun with.
I kept them pretty simple, a basic silhouette. I kinda fell in love with the colors white and garnet red when I was playing around with some red garnet cabochons I have stashed away, so I decided to pair them up with the opal finished beads by Miyuki. Then I added some extra sparkle with some Swarovski crysal bicones in a garnet red color.

Bead Embroidery Earrings IV

I started these earrings a few days ago, after I figured out the silhouette I wanted to work with. It was pretty simple, I wanted the little acrylic flower cabochons to be the base for the posts, as I wanted to create a pair of post earrings.

That is the only thing I had planned out with these, the flower shape around the 14mm Swarovski rivoli just came up by an accident when I was playing around with different beads, placing them out around the rivoli. What I ended up with was placing out the mint/green dyed freshwater pearls, that I felt were perfect in my design, around the rivoli, and the irregular shapes of the freshwater pearls made the shape into a simple flower one.

I normally don't work with these colors together, but I felt that the turquoise really complimented the paradasha colored rivoli and the light coral acrylic flower cabochons so well I couldn't resist but to use them.
The rivolis I bezelled with 11/0 delicas and 15/0 seed beads by Toho. The light coral seed beads are Czech glass seeds by Preciosa and they worked out wonderful in the design.

Necklace: Hekla

In my previous post I posted a little preview on what I was working on, and yesterday I managed to finally finish up the "Hekla" necklace I mentioned a few words about. Today I also managed to get a few nice photos of it that wasn't totally wrong.

For those that aren't familiar with what Hekla is, she's a volcano on Iceland, the biggest volcano there to be precisely.

The way the inspiration to create this piece came to me was when I had a conversation with a friend about the other big volcano, Ejafjallajökull, that erupted a couple of years ago and interrupted pretty much all the flights worldwide.
We were talking about how some biologist, on the news, mentioned that normally it shouldn't take too much time until Hekla follows Ejafjallajökull, and erupts, as it has been like that before.

The idea of this necklace was to make a volcano silhouette, upside-down with a huge fringe of crystals falling down from the crater.
God... Describing the inspiration in a language that isn't my main one is really hard; I find it hard enough to do it in Swedish, but I do hope you understand where I'm going with this! XD

The materials I used are a load bunch of different beads in different sizes, shapes and finishes in black color. I also added a few gunmetal colored beads here and there to give the piece some depth. For the fringe I used mainly 3 and 4mm Swarovski crystal bicones in red/orange/yellow shades and some red and orange silver lined seed beads as company.

For the clasp, I used an antique gold plated hook clasp, seed beads, 4mm Swarovksi crystal bicones, 8mm round glass beads and two 12mm lava stone beads :3

So what's up?

For this past two weeks I've been working on pretty three different bead embroidery projects at the same time, and thought I would share a little work in progress pic :)

I've been having one of these projects in mind for quite some time, I've just never dared to start on it cause I know for a fact that this is gonna take ages to finish; a bead embroidered clutch! I've actually been thinking about either a classical handbag or a clutch. I figured that I would give the smaller "clutch" a try, since I actually want to design the whole thing. I mean as in designing the silhouette myself as well. I've seen a lot of other beaders doing bead embroidery on a bag, but those I've seen I've noticed that they already took a completed bag and then embellished it with bead embroidery. I have background in sewing, and I just love playing around with a sewing machine, and the work I was involved in before I moved to Belgium was in a sewing studio. Although I'm just gonna hand-sew the clutch as the machine wont be able to cope with the beads, clearly :P

The other, bit thing to the right I've been working on, which is almost completed is a bead embroidered collar. I took a different toll design wise when I wanted to make this one.
The inspiration came pretty when I was thinking back to a couple of years ago when that volcano in Iceland erupted "Ejafjallajökull". What I heard on the news from a biologist, normally it doesn't take too long before the greatest volcano on Iceland, "Hekla", erupts as well. Cause according to him each time the other one have erupted, the bigger one follows.
Watching the fantastic and beautiful photographs of the lava sprouting out from the volcano (I went back and watched 'em) gave me the idea for this necklace.

The little bead embroidery project in the middle is actually another pendant, which will be in the same style as the two previous ones; "Forest Sprite" and "Twilight Sprite".