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.

Amber Project

Here's a little sneak peak of the project I am currently working on. I love amber so it should be fun to see what I come up with.

Winter Pearls

This is my latest completed peice. I really enjoyed making this jewelry set because it was something that I have wanted to try for a while now. I like to think of the necklace and earrings as old school Native meets new shool Native beadwork. Aaaih!

Anyways, I had been brainstorming about the necklace for a while now and I finally got the chance to try it out. The necklace is completely done with the peyote stitch. I love the tubular peyote stitch, but I have noticed in order to make a quaility necklace that will uphold to years and years of wearing one must do one thing. Do the tubular stitch around a piece of rope or jewelry wire in order for the tube to keep its shape and also as a way to put a clasp on it. I chose to use run of the mill beading wire, which worked out quite well.

I started the necklace out with the pearl section. After completing the pearl section I ran my beading wire through it and continued to bead with the delicas around the wire. The pearls are a beautiful gray with hints of purple and blue-green in them. I accordingly chose delicas that went well with the pearls.
After making the necklace I decided that it really did need some earrings to go along with it, so I made the earrings below. They were made with the flat peyote stitch. Of course they needed a few pearls dangling from them to finish them off.
All in all I am really happy with the necklace and earrings. I was really tempted to keep them for myself this time, but I had already decided to give them to a friend as a birthday gift. I did test them out all last week before I gave them away. I have a feeling that I will be making one for myself in the near future, seeing as I really did enjoy wearing them.

Bridesmaid Jewelry

These are some necklaces that I made back in November for a customer that just got married this month. Her colors were burgundy and champagne. She had asked for something simple and elegant in the colors of her wedding and she didn't want to go broke at the same time. So this is what I came up with. The necklaces are made up with an assortment of swarvoski crystals, swarvoski pearls, fire polished czech beads, and sterling silver delica seed beads. The pendant portion of the necklace has two sides, one with the pearl in the center and the other with the crystal in the center.

Blackberries in Winter

This necklace was made for a friend of mine who for the past few years has been giving me the coolest beading calendars every Christmas. So this year I decided that I was going to make her a super cool piece of jewelry. I didn't really know what I was going to do at first, but then I made the Drops of Water bracelet and decided that I wanted to do something like that and different at the same time. So I started rummaging through all of my beads until I came up with the bead assortment below.

Once I had all of my beads picked out, I began working on the first part which was the center beaded tube below. I used the tubular peyote stitch to achieve the shape and form that I wanted.

Once I finished beading the center piece I then started laying out the basics of the necklace to try and figure out exactly how the finished product would look. I knew that I wanted some more beaded beads mixed in with the stone beads and the bali silver, but I wasn't sure what kind, so I made some beaded beads with just the miyuki seed beads. That just didn't look quite right to I began to bead a few small beaded beads with the miyuki and glass drop beads and that worked perfectly. I really liked how the smaller ones looked like blackberries also. Once I had the beaded beads made I then went ahead a strung the whole thing together on Beadalon 19 strand .024 wire. The necklace itself wasn't too heavy, but I didn't want to take any chances, so I made sure to use the thicker of wire I had.

Grandpa T's New Tie

My Grandpa T. recently celebrated his 80th birthday this past month and we had a huge surprise party for him. My Grandma had asked me this past fall to make him a bola tie that she could give to him for the occasion. So off to work I went. I had never made a bola tie before, so this was something fun and new for me to attempt. My older sister Leora had made a few so obviously the first thing I did was to go to her for advice on what I needed to do. She had some great ideas and soon I was planning the design for the project.

Grandma hadn't given me a whole lot of instructions, just that he needed something that he could wear to church and for nice occasions. This was fine with me as I tend to do my best work when I get to just mess around and experiment as I go. Not too long after I was asked to make the tie I was in one of the local bead shops and I saw some green opal that just completely inspired me to make the tie. I bought the green opal and by the next morning I had dreamt about how I wanted the tie to look.

The stone itself looks as if it has a mountain scene on it with a spark of lightning coming out of the sky hitting the mountain tops. Below the mountains it looks like a river is running in the valley below. It's a pretty cool stone. So what I wanted to do was place evergreens in the four directions with a starry night sky above, seeing as we used to do a lot of camping with the grandparents when me and my siblings were all kids. I tried to keep the design simple yet interesting. I, myself, am very happy with the final product, in fact I am still trying to figure out how on earth I will be able to make something just as cool for my dad in the future.

My Grandpa T and me.

Drops of Water Bracelet

I made this bracelet this past weekend using the tubular peyote stitch. I started out with the regular tubular peyote stitch with the blue and aqua seed beads and then I began adding the glass drop beads where the aqua seed beads would have gone. The drop beads had a little bit of aqua in the bottom of them and it gave the effect of drops of water beading up on the bracelet. I really like how the bracelet turned out and I plan on trying it out in different color combinations in the future.