Sunday, February 24, 2008

Fire & Ice


Fire and Ice, that just sounds so cool, doesn't it. Luckily the day I finished the piece we had a little bit of fresh snow fall, so I was able to take some pictures in the snow. Thank you, Toni for the suggestion of fire and ice, the photos turned out great.

I made this necklace a few days ago for one of the guys that works upstairs from me. His wife loves amber and, as he told me, she really likes handmade original gifts. So here it is. The amber cab is the focal piece in this necklace and it almost didn't get here in time as it was on back order. Had I known this to begin with I would have ordered another size or something. It arrived just in time though and I was able to set it and bead around it just in the nick of time. I used delica seed beads to start with and switched to smaller silver seed beads at the end. On the outside of the cab I then used amber drop beads around the base of it.

As for the backing I decided to use the peyote stitch to bead back of the cab also. I started with the dark amber beads and ended in the center with the lighter yellow delicas. This gave the piece a nice finished look to it.

The necklace itself I beaded on my thinnest beading wire. I decided to use the thinnest wire for two reasons; one amber doesn't weigh a whole lot and two the holes in the beads were very narrow. For the necklace part I used an assortment of amber beads, delica seed beads, and round sterling silver spacer beads. I decided to make the necklace with a two strands of beads for aesthetic purposes. For the two strands I used a sterling silver slider clasp that allowed for two strands.


6 comments:

MillieDog Designs said...

wow! very pretty!

Rach said...

Thank you milliedog, I like your site, I will have to visit some more.

The Hand Made Product Directory said...

I like your blog and your work. It is very interesting. We would like to have it listed in our Directory.
If you would like your blog listed in The Hand Made Product Directory, go to http://www.dmpmc.net/THMD

Linda B said...

This is beautiful. I'd like to learn how to do this project someday.

Linda Blatchford
Jewelry Designer
http://lindab142.etsy.com
http://www.linorstore.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

This is beautiful!

Rach said...

dm production- thank you for the offer I will check it out.

Linda- thanks, it just takes a little practice. Now that I've beaded this cab, I have a few more that I want to try out here in the future.

April- Thank you, I love amber and it was hard to make it knowing that I couldn't keep it, but it went to a great person and I'm sure she will enjoy it just as much, if not more.