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.