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.

The Ice Queen Challenge

The Bead Mavens are having a challenge this month.  The inspiration for the designs was the Ice Queen.  I love the Ice Queen.  As  you probably have gathered by now, color is my thing!  I love color, but there is something about the icy, frosty appearance of the Ice Queen, and her many incarnations, that is so appealing to me.  The sparkle of all that white dusted with frost is so beautiful.  So, I decided to enter a necklace into the challenge.  The picture above is what I came up with.

I thought a wire knitted piece would be fun because I could make a bead soup of crystal, clear and white beads to knit.  The cascade in the middle is a variation on my wire knitted necklaces.  I've been looking for a way of changing them up a bit and a cascade of snowflakes and beads seemed perfect for the Ice Queen.



I was excited to have a reason to use Swavorski's snowflake and column beads.  I love the column beads and I thought they would work as  icicles in the cascade.  I also used some 8mm round crystals in clear and AB to fill in.  I knitted the necklace in two pieces and joined them together in the middle with the wire ends.  I then used jump rings to attach the snowflakes, columns and rounds to fine silver chain.  The chain was attached with jump rings to the necklace.  I was pleased with the overall effect, and the cascade worked just the way I wanted it to.  Today is the final day for entries, so I was happy to have finished it a few days ago.  I didn't know if it would be completed in time because of the holiday rush.  But, I made it! 

Visit the Bead Mavens site and check out the entries.  There are beautiful pieces of jewelry to be seen! 

I hope you've all  had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Ours was wonderful, spent with good friends and family.  Now on to Christmas and all the preparation for that joyous time!  Thanks for taking time to visit with me.  Enjoy your day!