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?