Bead Embroidery Fractal Necklace II

So, yeap! I made another necklace using two of the fractal cabochons I created a couple of weeks ago. I decided to use two, since well, they are the same fractal I just decided to render them with different color scheme when I created them in Apophysis.
The fractals are placed against a black background so I decided to stick to black pretty much throughout when it came to my bead choices. I just decided to use some similar colored beads here and there + the fringe to give it a little extra something.

When it came to the fringe, I didn't want something too basic, so I decided to make a few strips in peyote, herringbone, spiral stitch and raw. It was fun doing the fringe like that as I could just play around with each one of the shapes in the fringe one at a time until I got something I ended up liking.

Necklace using my own fractal cabochons

So I ended up with this idea in my head that I wanted to make some really personal and unique pieces creating cabochons with some of the fractal artwork I've been making over the past few years.

This is the first piece I made, and I feel really encouraged to make more.

I'm including the piece I made a cabochon from. Saying that, I didn't use the whole image, but just a portion of it as I worked the resolution of ti really high and getting a lot of the details from it made the cabochon look a lot better. Sorry for the water stamp in the middle of the image, but I'm really paranoid as I've seen a lot of people making their own cabochons using other people's artwork and then make money from them! So yes, I would like to avoid that... A lot of work went into making the fractals, there are not just pieces that I tossed together but a lot of hours and ma thematic calculations went into making them.

So on to the necklace design...

I wanted to keep it fairly simple so I just used bead embroidery for the pendant itself, and then I added a St. Petersburg chain, which is one of my very favorite chains to make. And my stubborn arse wanted to make it very sleek so I used 15/0 seed beads for it, which, gah, made it took a lot longer to make.

 

Necklace: Novae

I just managed to finish up my latest necklace that I've been working on. For those that are following me on instagram, I've been posting some progress photos ones in a while as I've been progressing on this one.

When I created this piece I had both a plan and not a plan. As far as I had planned the design was where I wanted the dichroic glass cabochon to be and also where the five spangled glass cabs should go. I measured them out and glued them, bezel them and then I pretty much worked everything else free-form. I stopped when I had a shape I was happy with, which took a while as I kept on changing my ideas and trying out new ones.

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!

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

Necklace: Innocence & Nicole's Bead Backing

A few months ago I purchased one of the fabulous cabochon packs from "Wir War Kralen". The main reason really to why I purchased from them (haven't ordered from them before) is cause I saw that they have "Nicole's Beadbacking". Lots of ppl from the US. have been saying how great it is and how much more affordable it is compared to Lacy's Stiff Stuff, which is the beading foundation I use in my pieces.
At their site you could choose to either order an A5 or and A4 size format, which is great since the A4 is a lot bigger then the biggest piece they sell of lacy's.  Nicole's Beadbacking also comes in a variety of colors, which of course is the plus point; no more dying or permanent marker drawing.
Now... Comparing the prices, I did not find it to be more affordable then Lacy's. In fact including the extra costs I have to pay for shipping it over from Holland (I order my Lacy's from France) makes it really not worth it. Or maybe the store is just overpricing it? I have no idea. I would compare it with other suppliers of it if I could find another one in the EU who sells it. But so far, I have only found one.

So going over to the necklace I made with the Nicole's Beadbacking...

First off, the design concept for this one pretty much came over time, after playing around with the different materials that were included in the cabochon pack. I knew I wanted to make another necklace, so I first drew out a 14cm in diameter circle on a paper and calculated the center of the circle. Then I began to play around with the cabochons I had, placing them on various places and I also ended up adding some materials that I already had in my stash for some time that really fit with the rest.

For the first time I felt that I wanted to make a bead soup and use it as a primary material in the bead embroidery. Now, if you've seen any of my previous pieces you can pretty much see that a lot of them are color blocked in some basic way (basic in my opinion lol). I wanted to jump out of that comfort zone again and give myself a little bit of a challenge. I'm a bit of a perfectionist in the way my head works, so just starting to mix all the different seed bead colors in a bunch really scares me. What is worse is when I began to pick up the beads is that my brain is telling me pick up that color then that color after etc. when what I should really be thinking is "nothing" and just pick up the beads in random order.
Well, I followed those guidelines I put out for myself, noticing that I was actually struggling with it as I was working. Still I think I did a pretty good job, so I'll give myself a little pat on the back, heh.

Necklace: Lady of Time & Glass Eyes

I realize I haven' t been blogging very often lately; I have to admit that I haven't really been in the mood. I've also been doodling off on a few larger pieces which I don't really find worth blogging about as it's nothing major.

A few weeks ago I got my hands on that face silicone mold from Sculpey and I ended up playing around with them and made a couple of faces from it. One of the bigger one, I ended up embellishing with some more clay and cogs, to end up with a bit of a steampunk style.

I really felt, after I had finished it that I wanted to make a necklace of it, but I was stuck on what kind of necklace I wanted to make. So after picking out some matching materials and laying them out on a circle template I played around with the placement of the materials along with the face until I saw exactly what I wanted.

I'm absolutely in love with the Khaki iris (#2035) beads by Miyuki since I decided to stack up on that color in different sizes and shapes. I thought the color was a perfect complimentary color, not only for the polymer clay face but also for the other main materials I had chosen to work with.

Something that has, or is still going around are those gorgeous eye cabochons - I just LOVE them myself and I've purchased a couple of them from some sellers on Etsy.
I've been wanting to try to make my own, but I haven't really had the required mats until now. I found a few sellers on Ebay whom are selling those clear glass cabochons for a very nice price/bulk so I decided to get myself some of those.

And now I've also got my photo printer working, and got my hands on some Canon photo paper so I decided to play around in Photoshop to make my own. Printed them out and glued them. I actually though that the ink on the paper would get smeared out from the glue, but it doesn't. I think it might have to do with the photo paper, not sure. Anyway, it was a success and thought I would share a photo of them.

Polymer Clay Cabochons & Necklaces

Okey, so I've been taking some interests to those fabulous polymer clay cabochons with flower motives that I've been seen going around the web, and being used in different types of jewelry and accessories.
I've been curious on how to make my own, and when I did some research about them I've noticed that they're either called filigree or "embroidery". I would guess that they're called embroidery cause you pretty much use a basic needle tool that you work with clay to "attach" a small piece of clay into the clay base you want to attach them on...

So yes, I finally took some time and decided on making my own. As I did I also thought I would use the Premo Poly Clay instead of the FIMO, which I've always have been using so far. Darn! I love Premo, and I wish I had a lot more. I found the Premo in Perles & Co.'s webshop, as the reason to why I have a load of FIMO is cause that is the most common brand they carry in hobby stores over here.

I'm sharing a few pictures of what I've made in polymer clay way...

I've also used two of the ones I created so far. They ended up as pretty simple necklaces. I didn't want to make something too complicated, as I know that too much can distract from another pieces; in this case I wanted to put focus on the polymer clay cabs so I kept it pretty simple design wise.

Currently I'm also working on a little different project where I also ended up using one of the yellow/green gradient flower cabs I made and posted in this blog-post. But I'm not gonna post any preview piccies of it, so I'll just wait until it's completed :)

Hair Clip: Siren's Song & Rizo Beads

Yeah, I just couldn't help myself...

I still had the materials out on my bead mat from my previous piece; Necklace: Siren's Song. The materials were really shouting at me inside my head that I should create a hair piece with them, in the similar style as my necklace. I haven't create too many hair pieces, and I ended up choosing to make a hair clip. I kinda had a silhouette in my mind that I wanted to bring to life - using a few of those mother of pearl discs that I included in the necklace.

I liked how the cube beads layered up and gave a lot of shine and a different kind of texture, the way I placed them in the necklace, so I wanted to keep that in the hair clip.

In the necklace I also added those (relative) "new" Rizo beads, just to experiment, and really see what sort of texture they could bring into bead embroidery. I know, the Rizo bead has been around now for at least some months now, but I'm always careful when I buy a new type of bead (don't ask me why, I just am), I mean... Questions starts to pop up in my head: What can I use them in? What colors should I pick? How many grams should I buy? etc. Sometimes I just go on instincts when I buy my beads and sometimes I actually has a plan when in comes to bead colors. I must admit I had exactly the same dilemma when those Twin beads were out last year. I only bought a couple of different colors and some of them I ended up using, some of them I still haven't touched. See were I am going with this?
I've always found it handy to have a big stash and I still do, but what if you would end up getting that question in your head when you're about to buy beads; Will I ever end up using them? I mean, having beads stashed away that you'll never probably gonna use is just taking up unnecessary space.

How about you? Do you sometimes experience dilemma when buying beads? Have you ever given those "Rizo" beads I mentioned a try yet or are you planning to?

Necklace: Siren's Song

Yesterday I managed to finish up my latest necklace piece and get a pretty decent photo of it...

I had been having a vision of a necklace with Turquoises a few months in my head before I actually started working on this piece. My dilemma was that I didn't really have many turquoises in my stash so if I wanted to create this piece I would have to have patience and wait till I could purchase them. One thing I learned when I did my purchase of a load of turquoises in both bead for and as cabochons is that they are one of the most expensive gemstones you can get your hands on - I already knew they were expensive before, but I learned that the polished stones are even more expensive then tumbled stone, hah.

I wanted to try something a little different when I created this necklace. Looking back at some of my previous designs I noticed that I've barely created any piece at all that contained a lot of stop stitch; when I've seen other bead artists creation I've noticed that the stop stitch provides a lot of texture to a piece and that is what I wanted to accomplish.

I also got my hands on some of those new Rizo beads and I wanted to try and see how they would look in bead embroidery if I would just basically stitch them down to the foundation. The result is pretty neat and it definitely created a whole new type of texture, almost like fish scales. Think I need to get my hands on some more of those and in different colors cause they really put me in the mood to experiment a  bit more with 'em.

I also spent some hours at creating myself a new logo I could put on my photos ones they are ready and approved by myself to be put out on the internet, heh. So yeah, I actually had some fun going back to PS to play around and doodle with different ideas and then put them together into something I felt could last for quite some time.
I created two different versions of the logo; the smaller version with less text and then a version that contains a bit more and is bigger.

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 :)

Bracelet: See Me

I wanted to share with you (my readers) the most recent piece that I created. A bracelet, yet again, created with bead embroidery. Yep, yep... Bead embroidery is definitely the medium of beading that has got me hooked! I'm probably repeating myself about that ones in a while in some posts, but that's just cause I feel so passionate about it! ^^;

So yeah, this bracelet...

First time creating a bracelet like this without using a brass cuff sandwiched between the beading foundation and the backing. Why? I wanted to make something different. I've been having it in my mind for some time that I wanted to create a bracelet which uses buttons as a closure, but in a way so that the bracelet itself would overlap and hide the buttons. You probably get the picture of what I'm trying to explain...

The first thing I did before beading was to play around and create a pretty basic template that I could work with. I first cut out a strip from an A4 paper, I measured how wide I wanted the bracelet to be, then I used that strip and put it around my wrist and began to measure it out until I found it just perfect.

I knew that I wanted to use different shades of blue colors in the bracelet so what I did first, naturally, was to pick out some cabochons that would look nice to play around with. Since I didn't have a specific design in mind, I simply just put the cabs in random places and stopped playing around with them until I felt that they were in the right position. The exception with the randomness was with the 18mm Swarovski rivoli though, as I placed that in the middle on purpose.

I'm definitely going to create more bracelets like this one in the future. I've already got the inspiration in mind for what I want to create next. However I think, well I will put out the basic rule for myself - I'm not going to start on another one of these bracelets until I've finished at least one of the big collars I'm working on, lol!

Do you also have a bunch of different projects going on at the same time? That just keeps piling up?

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.