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.