Russian Spiral with Jasper

I love the picture painted by this jasper - gorgeous abstract landscape, beautiful colors.

I added a small sterling silver and Swarovski dangle, then woven a large-caliber Russian spiral bail for it.

Using the same seed beads (an 8/0 Delica and an 11/0 round) I wove a Russian spiral rope to hang the focal from.

Bail detail:

Wavy Pearls

When new Beading magazines come out, we try to stitch up 2 or 3 designs from each issue, to show customers what the patterns really look like when made up. And I say "really," because they frequently look very different from the professional pics in the beading magazine - I don't know why, whether it is lighting, or color selection, or what. They just look ... different.

The April-May 2012 issue of Beadwork Magazine contains this design, which really appealed to me (I love herringbone!):

This was a fun bracelet to make, but it was also very challenging. It was interesting to see how varying the sizes of the beads in the herringbone makes the wave pattern. However, my bracelet puckers, a lot - and I know it is due to my stitch tension. I am a very tight-tension weaver, and cannot stand for my thread/FireLine to show between stitches, so I was really fighting with this pattern. Herringbone, by nature, requires a little bit of thread to show where it crosses over between the "Vs" of the herringbone, but add to that the huge variation in the sizes of the beads in this pattern (the 4 beads in the herringbone are a 15, an 11, an 8 Delica, and a 3mm cube) makes for even more thread showing. My instinct was to pull tightly whenever I saw the thread, drawing the beads into an even tighter wave. But it also made the 8 Delicas and the 3mm cubes ride up on each other.

I ripped out my stitching twice, trying to work the stitching with a looser tension, but finally settled for what you see above, on the 3rd go-round. As they say, "it is what it is."

The other challenge is the length of the bracelet. Before the freshwater pearls were added, the bracelet overlapped itself on my wrist, and I hadn't yet added the clasp. But adding the freshwater pearls drew each wave up tremendously, and left me with a bracelet that is a full inch to short for me! Should have stitched a couple more puckery waves!

I like the bracelet, I enjoyed the pattern, and would like to try a variation of this funky herringbone again. However, this particular pattern is too wrought with problems, like puckering and visible FireLine, for me to try it again.

I plan to make this cover bracelet, which is Russian Spiral on Memory Wire, later this week. I have just recently come to realize, by making up these designs in the monthly magazines, that the Beading Mags tend to call "Russian Spiral," "Spiral Netting." I can see where they get that, but it will always be Russian spiral to me!

Just for me!

Last week I bought a ($5.00!!) green and blue T-shirt at WalMart; green and blue are my favorite colors, and this is just the cutest shirt. So cute, in fact, that my friend Sonya, who also works with me, bought the same one (separately, and she also bought the same gorgeous grey and purple one I bought! Great minds think alike!) so now we have to call each other the nights before we work together to make sure we won't be twinsies!

So naturally, I needed some bling to wear with my new shirt, so I made this necklace, bracelet, and earring set to go with my new shirt:

Russian spiral necklace, with green 11s and blue 8s.



Rear closure, which IMO must be as pretty as the rest of the necklace!



 Matching green and blue fringe bracelet; nice and full., I used 6s, 8s, 11s, 4mm cubes, 4mm Swarovski bicones (in peridot AB), and 4mm Czech firepolish rounds. I have taught this fringe bracelet a couple of times, but have never actually made one myself, so this is my very first fringe bracelet, and I love it. Must make more!

Matching Earrings

Some lovely blue and green lampwork beads had gone unsold in the shop for quite a long time, and they matched the necklace and bracelet perfectly, so I paired them with some Bermuda blue Swarovski Cosmic rings to make these dangle earrings.

And besides the fact that I have this great set of matching jewels to go with my new shirt, I got an idea for a totally new design, that I hope to work on next weekend.

I'd show you a picture of the shirt, but it is wadded up in the hamper, plus the camera is over at the shop in Augusta. I'll try to remember to get a pic of the whole ensemble together.

'Til next time. TTFN!