New Jewelry in the Shop

I listed a few new pieces in my Etsy shop this week:

This pair of earrings is in the Double Bubble Jacks design. I've made a pair similar to this one before, and I love this color palette so much that I had to make another pair:

This pendant uses light grey drop-shaped freshwater pearls, and is in the Bubble Box design. This design seems to be quite amenable to unevenly-shaped pearls such as these, especially considering that these particular pearls didn't work as well as other drop-shaped freshwater pearls in the Double Bubble Jacks design.

Finally, here's a pendant in the Disco Ball design. I think it looks like a sweet ball of candy:

Tutorials for all of these designs are also available in my Etsy shop if you'd like to make your own.

New Tutorial - Disco Ball Beaded Beads

I just finished my newest tutorial - the Disco Ball Beaded Bead.

I actually came up with this design over two years ago, long before I conjured up the guts to post my work on the internet. This beaded bead is in the shape of an icosahedron, a regular polyhedron constructed of twenty equilateral triangles. The sides of this structure are decorated with tiny 15/0 Japanese seed beads, which can be woven in different color patterns for very different effects. This design is a relative of the Light Clusters beaded bead, and in the variations section of this tutorial I discuss how to apply elements of this design to the Light Clusters design. I've previously posted the result of this hybrid a few times, as I tend to make copious amounts of earrings out of them. Like the Light Clusters, this design is hollow and completely self-supporting.

In addition to the pieces I've already posted, I made a new pendant in this design using lots of metallic colors:

I originally made the following necklace over two years ago with silver-lined topaz seed beads and a gold-plated clasp, both of which were showing signs of serious wear. So I ripped it all apart and completely reconstructed the beaded beads using high-quality gold-plated seed beads. This necklace features a Disco Ball beaded bead, two smaller variations based on both the Disco Ball and Light Clusters designs, and two beaded bead variations based on a rhombic dodecahedron structure (although these turned out much more egg-shaped than I had intended). It also has three small all-seed-bead beaded beads. Venetian gold foil beads, large Japanese seed beads, and a shiny vermeil clasp complete this necklace.

This is one of the fanciest pieces in my collection, and while I don't wear it often, it usually gets tons of attention when I do. I hope that you like it too!




You can see more images of these and other designs in the gallery of my website. As always, if you use this tutorial, I'd love to see your creations!

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Birthday Gift for my Great Grandmother

My great-grandmother is 100 years young this week, and as per her preference I set out to make her a pastel pearl necklace. Even though I had recently gotten the Double Bubble Jacks beaded bead to work with drop-shaped pearls, I wasn't quite ready to try pearls in the Teardrop Bubbles beaded bead anytime soon - I was afraid that it would require too much tinkering to get it to work. But I wanted to make something really special, as my great-grandmother is the crafty genius of the family, excelling in crochet, needlepoint, gorgeous french-beaded flowers, and yes, beadwork, since long before I was born. Plus how often does your great-grandmother turn 100?

So I started with some drop-shaped cream-colored freshwater pearls which are about the same size as the drop pearls in the beaded beads in this necklace. To my surprise, the result was very encouraging the first time through. The only adjustment that this beaded bead needed was the addition of a large core bead to stabilize the structure, mainly because the holes of pearls are smaller than those of Czech beads, so the finished freshwater pearl beaded bead cannot be satisfactorily stabilized by filling the holes with thread.

I strung the finished beaded bead as the necklace focal, and rounded out the necklace with more drop-shaped freshwater pearls. Here's the finished piece, in dedication to the woman from whom I inherited the crafty gene:

Happy Birthday Mimi, and Rock On

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.

Disco Ball Pendants and a Necklace

I made some new pieces using a new beaded bead design. It's in the shape of an icosahedron, a regular 3D structure consisting of 20 equilateral triangles. While there are a couple of pretty icosahedron beaded bead designs currently out there in the beading community, I decided to spice mine up with an outer layer of tiny 15/0 seed beads. The result is an elegant, tactile, and very detailed beaded bead. I think it looks kind of like a disco ball.

Here's one with deep blue freshwater pearls:

And another in red and silver, to match a pair of earrings currently in my shop:

Finally, I made a necklace with one large and two smaller beaded beads, made to match the beautiful lampwork beads from fellow Etsian and SATeam member Melissa Vess. I love color-matching beaded beads to lampwork beads; it's a fun exercise to pick a lampwork bead to serve as the color palette for the piece.

The smaller beaded beads are in the same style as the disco ball beaded bead, but these are octahedral, or eight-sided, instead of 20-sided. I've made many pairs of earrings in this design.

These pieces are now listed in my Etsy shop. A tutorial is in progress...

SATeam Promotion Preview and New Earrings

This holiday season, the Etsy SATeam is having a fun promotion! The details are still being worked out, but the basic idea is that everyone who purchases an item from a participating shop will be entered in a drawing for a bracelet containing many different charms made by members of the SATeam. The bracelet is still being constructed, but here's a sneak peek of the charm that I contributed:

I also made a matching pair of earrings, which are currently available in my Etsy shop. This pair is included in a gorgeous treasury curated by TwoSilverMoons!

I also listed two additional pairs that use the same construction but in different colors. I sold a similar pair in this style recently so I decided to make another pair. I like how these earrings are festive and elegant, yet not so holiday-oriented that they can't be worn year-round:

I just love the shade of the green Czech beads in this pair:

I have some ideas for other pieces using these three color schemes. I can't wait to try them out!

Double Bubble Pearl Experiments

After my successful pearl experiment in which I was able to incorporate peacock pearls into one of my Bubble Box beaded beads, I decided to dig into my stash to try drop pearls in my Double Bubble Jacks beaded bead design. I found three strands to try:


For my first experiment I tried the small, light blue pearls. These are slightly smaller than the Czech drop beads used in the original design.

I wasn't too happy with how this beaded bead came out for a few reasons. The irregularities in the shapes of the pearls made the resulting beaded bead irregular, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because this can look neat if it's the desired effect. The main reason why I'm not satisfied with this bead is that it's too squishy for my tastes. I like my beaded beads either completely solid, or with less than a millimeter of squish when squeezed on two opposite sides. This one has about five millimeters of squish.

For my next experiment I tried the shiny peacock pearls, which worked quite well in my Bubble Box design.



This bead came out much better. It's a little irregular, but it has a much more acceptable level of squish for my tastes.

For my last experiment I tried using the purple pearls. These are wider at the base than the Czech beads in the original design, but they're still about the same height.



I was really happy with how this beaded bead came out. It's very solid, regular in shape, and it's also a bit bigger than the original design. The drop pearls in this beaded bead do not have high luster, so I compensated for this by using matte metallic seed beads. A big advantage of using these pearls is that they have larger holes than the other two types that I experimented with, so I was able to pass through the finished bead multiple times to stabilize it.

I liked this beaded bead result so much that I made five of them and incorporated them into this necklace, and put it up in my Etsy shop.



So, to summarize, I found that the drop pearls that work best in the Double Bubble Jacks design are regular in shape, slightly larger than 4 x 6 mm Czech drops (especially at the base), and have larger-than-average holes. I also found that since pearls can scratch very easily with say, the tip of a beading needle, I had to be careful to avoid scratching them when I weaving the beaded bead.

I'm looking forward to using freshwater pearl beaded beads in other pieces!