Dark Sapphire Crystal Caged Octahedron

About a month ago the kind folks over at Artbeads.com invited me to join their blogger program, beginning with sampling some items from their Swarovski crystal line of products. I have a bunch of ideas for pieces containing Swarovski crystals that I've never gotten around to doing, so I was very excited at the opportunity to try these ideas out. This post is the first of a three-part series on what I created with these crystals.

For the first piece, I wanted to try an octahedron beaded bead pendant with round faceted crystals, in the same style as this pendant but in a different color palette. Here is the result:

I used 6 mm dark sapphire faceted round Swarovski crystal beads in combination with Japanese seed beads to create this piece. The crystal beads definitely give this pendant an extra sparkle compared to glass or gemstone beads, however the seed bead overlay is a bit loose on this pendant compared to the gemstone pendants that I've made with this design. This may be due to size variations in the gemstones that I used in the other pieces, which is much more common in gemstones than in crystals. I'll have to play with the bead count of the seed bead overlay the next time that I use crystals in this design.

I really like the color of these crystals, but unfortunately it's a fairly rare Swarovski crystal color. The dark indigo Swarovski color is a pretty close match though, so I'll be using this shade the next time that I use crystals in this color palette.

Full disclosure: The twelve 6 mm dark sapphire faceted round Swarovski crystals in this piece were received as a gift from Artbeads.com.