Necklace: Marie Antoinette

It's Done!!!!

Managed to finally finish up my necklace, inspired by Marie Antoinette yesterday :)

I must say it's been an interesting journey, completing this piece. I think I started on it sometime around June/July. I had this brass cuff collar that I bought some time ago from "Robin's Beads" and I wanted to make something on a scale that I've never done before. In short I wanted to make a big two piece necklace, with a piece that would be attached to the collar.

I decided to begin my journey with focusing on the part that would be attached to the collar, and cause of the inspiration, I wanted to make a baroque inspired silhouette for it. The main colors I had in mind from the very beginning were mainly pink and peach in different shades. After doing the bezels for the cabochons I already had glued down, I ended up with an artist's block, so I felt that I had to put it away for some time.

I took it out again when the inspiration sprouted out again, and this time I actually decided to add some more colors to give the piece a lot more contrast; moss green iris, lavender and amethyst with gold luster beads.
I ended up finishing this piece in a couple of weeks after working on it. I actually posted the w.i.p photo's on my facebook page as I went a long, and they are still there for those who are interested in having a peek :)

I actually had a living hell making a template for the collar, lol! No, really. It's so big and wide and already shaped so I kinda had to use sticky tape, double fold it and attach it onto the collar and carefully press it down on a paper AND THEN draw around the edges of it onto the paper.
The biggest sample of Lacy's Stiff Stuff actually isn't big enough for this collar model, so I had to improvise. After I drew out the shape from my newly made template onto the beading foundation I took another piece of foundation and angled it next to the other one. I added some E6000 to the edges of each one of the two foundations and pressed them together, and I smoothed out the glue over the area of where two pieces met to make it extra secure.
My experiment actually worked and after the glue had dried the two pieces ended up together as if they'd always been there.

 I took a small break at this point, before starting to work on the collar. I wanted to make some Christmas presents to send up to some special ones, home in Sweden, making sure that they would have them on time before the 24th (we celebrate Chrsitmas EVE in Scandinavia, not Christmas Day like most other countries do, heh), and they received their gifties last week :)

When I started on the collar, I knew I wanted something sparkly and not too many details, as the other part has a lot of details. I incorporated a couple Swarovski rivolies as the focal point for it, and then I began to pretty much work from there. The design of it evolved as I worked on it. At some point however, I decided to also add a smaller feather on each side of the collar that would match up with the big feather I created on the first piece.

After finishing the collar, gluing it onto the brass piece and edging it with brick stitch I went back again to the first piece to create a fringe. One of the things I personally find hard to create is a really good fringe, lol. I find myself sometimes in a bit of a problem when doing this, depending on how the bottom shape of whatever I'm fringing looks like.
In the end I managed to come up with something awesome. I wanted something more irregular, so I chose what kind of beads I wanted to add and how; freshwater pearl, swarovski bicone crystal, 4mm firpolished bead and 3mm firpolished bead. Going from there I decided to add some 11/0 seed beads in the rose tea AB colored beads, and when I would turn up again to secure the fringe I worked peyote stitch on the seed beads laying in between those focal beads I mentioned earlier.

When the fringe was completed, it was time to finish the whole piece. After some comparing I ended up attaching the pieces with two 11/0 seed beads and an 8mm south sea shell pearl in between them.

I'm probably not gonna post another blog update before Christmas, I'm not sure :) 

But in case...

♥ I wish you all a wonderful Christmas ♥