This Necklace was inspired by the Graceful NEcklace on page 49 in the Bead Fantasies III book by Takako Samejima. I really wanted to make this necklace, and you would think that with all of the pearls that I have that I would have some suitable for the design. My little pearl flowers looked horrible. What I do have however is a plethora of swarovski Crystal bicone beads. I’m also not so sure that the seed beads that I used are the right size, but I wanted a fun summer necklace in this color to match an outfit of mine. I just decided to go with what I have.
I started by making the flowers and I did it exactly how it is done in the book. I used 4mm white bicones for the petals and a 3mm bead for the center. I think they look cute. 
Because the beads in my flowers are a different size, and it is also likely that my seed beads are the wrong size I had to guess on how to space my flowers. I put 15 size 11 seed beads between the top two flowers and then 25 on either side. On the bottom strand I put 15 between the flowers and then 25 on the outer sides as well. I ran both sets of strand through a 4mm,8mm and 4mm bicone. I then finished out the sides to make them a good length for me to wear. The necklace looks quite a bit different from the one in the book. It was simple to make and went together quickly and it looks great with the shirt it was made to go with!
These earrings were inspired by the ones that can be found on page 63 of the July 2008 Issue of Bead Style Magazine. The designer for those earrings is Stacey Yongue. I say they were inspired because I didn’t really follow the directions. I also ran in to some issues with my wire and decided to make a modification.
First off, I didn’t use metallic colored beads. My reasoning for this is that the only wire I had that was thin enough to pass through the coin pearl was copper. I did not have any copper colored beads. That alone I think changes the look of the earrings. I found some colored coin pearls at Michael’s that I want to make these with. Ill probably pick up some metallic beads to go with those.
I threaded the seed beads on to the wire and threaded it through the coin pearl. That part was easy enough. I missed the bit about wrapping it at the top though. I have seriously got to learn how to follow directions. At any rate, I held the two wires in place and wrapped them around the end of my pliers. I like that the double wire gave the piece a bit more stability, as my wire was very soft. I then wrapped the wires around the base of the loop. There were two issues with this method. First off, my wires weren’t perfectly aligned. Secondly, I found the wrap job to be a bit messy. So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. If you look at the two earrings above you can see the two different methods used to make them. I made the one with the coral colored beads first. For the turquoise one, once I brought the two wires together at the top of the pearl I twisted them together. It brought the two wires snugly up against the pearls, provided the strength I was looking for, brought the two wires together for the loop and also gave the wrap a neater appearance.
Woo Hoo! I haven’t abandoned the site, I’m just taking some time to see some friends. Check back with me next week.
I purchased a soldering kit while I was up in HIllsboro. I got to camp at the Oregon Country Fair over the weekend. Let me tell you, hippies make some of the best artists. I’m not even going to call it a craft fair. There was some of the most beautiful and inspiring art I have ever seen there. In the next few days I am going to head out to a glass shop. It is somewhere out on the coast in Newport Oregon. I hear they have some really pretty stuff and I am excited to see what they have. I suspect I’ll come home truly inspired to play with that soldering kit. 🙂
I hope they’ll let me take pictures. I am also going to comb the beach for glass and pebbles. Hopefully I’ll find some neat stuff that I can turn in to pendants!
This is the Crusader Ring found in the “Beautiful Beaded Rings book. One of the girls in my local Joann’s was wearing a beautiful ring. I don’t normally get in to beaded rings, but the one she was wearing was gorgeous. Of course I had to ask her where she got the ring and she directed me to this book. I’ve sat down and looked through the book and there are some pretty patterns in here. I had trouble remembering which ring she was wearing (I think she made some modifications) so I decided to start with the Crusader Ring.
I anxiously awaited my order from Amazon (along with another bead book and an ice cream maker: Yay!) and gleefully went down to the local bead shop to snag some supplies. This is where I ran in to some trouble. The instructions called for rocaille beads. That is fine and dandy, but I don’t know what size seed beads rocaille beads are. As luck would have it, neither did any of the girls at my local bead shop. So, I made this ring with size 11 seed beads. I hope that was correct. It came together very easily and was pretty quick to boot. The one thing that I had trouble with was the outer edge of the design. It does not look anything like the photo in the book. That always frustrates me.
I wore the ring last night when I went to my favorite Indian restaurant. It sparkled beautifully in the candle light. While I sipped on my chai I decided that I was going to try to modify the pattern a bit. I was looking at the photo in the book this morning and I noticed something. In the book, the pattern clearly shows 6 beads between the 3mm bicone beads. If you look at the second photo above, you can see the 6 seed beads. However, in the photos in the book, there are only 5 seed beads between to the two 3mm bicones on the outer edge. I think this really affects how it lays. So now I have two tasks. I need to try to remake the ring so that it looks like the photo in the book, and then I also want to try to modify the pattern so that the ring is not as large.
All in all I like this pattern. I never thought I’d wear a beaded ring, but in this case I think I might!
