As I said in the last post, I've been finishing up some of the many things on my work table. Our beading group gets together at
Bead Soup about once a month and we work on a project from a book or magazine. Usually it's a component of some sort, so that means I come home and decide what I want to make out of it. The last couple of months I've made necklaces with them. Of course, life, and other projects get in the way and the projects pile up! Well, I've finished three necklaces in the last couple of weeks and I'm working on a fourth as well as my Beading Babes necklace. Busy, busy...
But, I love this necklace the most of all the ones I've finished.
It's Marcia DeCoster's Urchin bead. It's one of my favorites among her patterns and I was so happy to be working on it with our group. Everyone's looked so different in the different colors. I used my favorite bronze seed beads and the new Swarovski rose peach bicones in the AB finish. They are a great color and I love the way they look with the bronze beads. The bead isn't difficult to stitch. It's RAW and the only challenge is to watch the unit count for the RAW units because the bead sizes change. My friend Jennifer came up with a solution. She would take the correct number of beads for each row out of the pile and when she had used them up she knew she had the correct number of units. Perfect solution! I strung the bead on a spiral rope that Marcia has in her book for the Urchin bead. It uses a 3mm crystal as one of the core beads every 12 rows. It really makes a great variation on the basic spiral rope, which is one of my favorite stitches. You can get a glimpse of sparkle in the rope that is really pretty. As you'll see, I'm going to be using this variation of spiral rope a lot! I love this necklace and this bead!
The next project I worked on was Diane Fitzgerald's Gypsy bead from her new book. Here's what my necklace looked like when it was finally finished.
Kathy found some lucite beads that were the correct size for the instructions in the book. We still had to so some adjusting because some of them were a little too big or a little too small. But, it worked and once again everyone's looks so different because of the color choices. I think we worked on this in March and I was feeling in a spring time mood because we had such a warm March here in Maryland! So, I chose yellow to work with. It's not a color I use a lot, but I do like it for spring and summer. Kathy had gotten in some great new 11 seed beads in an aqua lined topaz that looked great with the yellow lucite bead. I was using a pale yellow crystal that I had in my stash and a crystal AB size 15. Again, I came home with a beaded bead and needed an idea to finish it with. After making the spiral rope with the crystals I decided to use that (see, I told you'd be seeing it again!) since I had enough of the yellow crystals left from the bead. I needed a way to attach the bead to the rope so I decided to stitch it to the ring of seed beads that joins the ends of the netting stitch around the bead. That worked but it needed something to cover the join. I ended up stitching a couple of rounds of peyote off the seed beads and then embellishing the peyote with the remaining crystals. It gives the bead a nice finish and is a good connection between the rope and the bead. This is a light weight necklace that I've worn on a warm day and it was very comfortable.
I feel as though I've accomplished something towards clearing up the clutter, but I still have one more necklace to finish as well as the Beading Babes necklace. I just love the Beading Babes projects this month and I can't wait to finish the necklace. I've worn the bracelet already and everyone compliments it. They are just great projects!
Well, I hope you have a good day. It's gloomy here but we need some rain, so I won't complain. I might actually make some progress on all my projects since working out in the garden isn't going to happen! Thanks for stopping by!
