A New Twist on Wire Knitted Jewelry

I've been making wire knitted jewelry for a while and I've been jotting down ideas for different designs.  At the end of last year when I entered the Bead  Mavens Ice Queen Challenge I decided to knit a necklace with a cascade of Swarovski crystal snowflakes, columns and rounds.  I blogged about it at the time.   Since then I've had other ideas for changing the basic necklace/bracelet.  One of the ideas was to combine my love of freeform beadwork with the knitted base.  This is the first bracelet I've made using this combination of ideas.

Except for the MOP rings, all the beads were part of a kit I bought last year from Ellen at Eathfaire.  Ellen has wonderful bead knitted jewelry kits with great combinations of beads.  This one was intriguing because of the shells that she incorporated, along with those rather new peanut beads, and some wonderful colors of seed beads.  But, those shells, while being really unique shapes, some look like little roses, had sharp looking holes and the thread Ellen uses is a metallic embroidery thread.  The color was great but I was concerned that eventually the shells would fray the thread.  So, the beautiful bead soup sat in a bowl on my work table for a year while I decided what I wanted to do with it.  I had decided right away to use wire to knit the bracelet.  I strung the beads and shells they way I normally do, but I didn't like the way the finished bracelet looked.  So, I took  it apart and let it sit for another several months!  In the meantime, I found the MOP rings at Michael's and the color and the MOP went with the bead soup and shells so well that I knew I  had to use them in the bracelet.  Finally, I thought of doing freeform beading over a wire knitted base.  It has opened up a new path for my wire knitting!  I love creating this piece. 

I began by wiring the rings to the base and then using Fireline to begin the stitching.  I attached the Fireline to the one of the rings so that I wouldn't have the tails or starting knot showing on the reverse side of the bracelet.  From there I just let the beads and shells tell me where to go, which is the best way to do freeform beadweaving in my opinion. 

I'm very excited about this pairing of two of  my favorite techniques.  I had a great time making this bracelet, and I have enough bead soup and shells left over that I'm thinking of making a necklace to match. 

Here's another view of the bracelet. 





I hope you have a wonderful day.  Thanks for stopping by.