Custom Orders: Beadwoven Earrings

It's been a banner week for custom orders - here's the first:

Remember the flat spiral necklace?

A customer loves it, and wants to send her husband in to get it for her for Christmas, but she wants matching earrings.

So this is what I made:

These circular peyote earrings use leftover beads from the necklace (which I never put away ... duh, and yay! I didn't have to go hunt for them!)

And they match the clasp on the necklace:

I think she'll like them.

Circular Peyote Earrings

These earrings are each made from 2 circular peyote triangles which were then stitched together. One triangle is large, and the other is slightly smaller - they are joined at the widest part of the earring as you see them hanging in the pic above.

Flat Spiral Necklace

This necklace represents my first attempt at flat spiral; I have seen it done a lot as bracelets, but never as a necklace.

I used 8mm Picasso Czech glass beads, in sage and sand, for the central portion of the necklace, and graduated down to 4 mm Czech firepolish for the sides. Bronze seed beads really make the earthy colors in these beads pop! Swarovski crystals add some sparkle, as do the champagne-colored firepolish beads, which have an AB finish.

Yesterday, I made a "beaded button" type of clasp for the necklace, using circular brick stitch and one of the 8mm Picasso beads:

After reinforcing it, I went on to make a loop for it on the other side of the necklace:

I finished it just as it was time to go home, and was not crazy about it. I stewed on it last night, and decided to take it out and try a peyote loop this morning:

Much better!

Here is how the clasp looks, closed:

This necklace would look great dressed down and worn casually, but has enough sparkle and elegance to be dressed up, too.

And it has just been added to my Etsy shop!

Tila Flowers

I like the new 2-hole Tila beads from Miyuki - I have made quite a few patterns with them, and am always on the lookout for more.

One of my favorite things to make are Tila flowers (circular peyote + herringbone) - these are so versatile! You can come up with such a huge variety of color combinations, but also the composition and shape of the flower changes when you switch up the bead sizes that you pair with the Tilas - lots of fun!

Here is a bracelet/earring set that I created with Tila flowers, using on of my favorite Tila colors: matte black AB. This color isn't black at all, but a gorgeous blue iris with hints of bronze, gold, and purple. Love it!

These posts chronicle my love affair with matte black AB seed beads.

Here is another piece I created with Tila flowers - this one for the Bead Soup Blog Party Hop last fall:

Detail of the tila flowers stitched to the peyote ring

The Tila flowers use a lot of different sizes of seed beads, although you can control this a little bit - for instance, instead of using 2 or 3 different colors of 11/0s, you could limit it to one color. In the green and red flowers I made, I added a 3 mm Czech firepolish bead in place of an 8/0 - so you really can change it up quite a bit, you just have to vary the number of some of the other beads you use, so that no thread shows. These flowers work up super fast - so they are nice projects when you need a break from something!

Wednesday Worktable

I feel like I have been working on this Cellini Spiral project forever - I really want to be done, now.

Sometimes I feel like my pieces are the beading equivalent of tsunamis; they start of small and simple, and then, through no fault of my own, they build up steam and intensity and turn into these weeks-long statement pieces. I always love the results, but I still can't quite figure out why this keeps happening!

This Celllini project started as a simple Cellini spiral tube necklace. But it was too stiff to bend, so I had to turn it into something else. This was the beginning of the tsunami.

Then I decided to add a beautiful lampwork focal bead to the mix, and the wave started to build. How to connect the Cellini tubes to the focal? How to cap the ends of the Cellini tubes? How to finish the back of the necklace?

And, as with all my "project" pieces, I solve one problem, and believe I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and am nearly done! That's how I felt last week, when I started to add the skinny spirals to the back of the necklace. I'm almost done, right?

Or not. Because as I was stitching the first skinny spiral, I started thinking about the clasp. What to use as a clasp? No ordinary clasp would do! Plus, I didn't really have anything available that was a good match, metal-wise.

So, I guess I have to stitch a clasp. Feel that tsunami building, again? I knew I could stitch a toggle and bar, using the same seed beads as in the spirals, and obviously it would match. But I developed a bad case of "been there, done that" last Friday, so I decided I needed to do something new. And the wave is getting bigger! Where is the light at the end of my tunnel, now? See how this is through absolutely no fault of my own? The project is "speaking to me." What? You can't hear it? Am I the only one hearing voices coming from the beads....?!?

I decided to see if I could bead around a plain old ordinary button - I started stitching (freeform circular peyote) on Friday, stitched all day Saturday, and only managed to get the top of the button done. Then I took a break Sunday and Monday, and worked on something different. I started in on the button again yesterday, and haven't quite gotten the sides done. (In my defense, I had some repairs and some ordering to do yesterday, too).

So today I hope to finish the button - I am decreasing hard, trying to cinch up the beads and get a good tight cover on this button!

This is the top of the button - it is a little off center, and very loose because I haven't managed to stitch over the sides fully, yet.

Here is the side view:

Still a couple of rows away from getting over the side and around to the back of the button.

And then there is the next issue - do I make a simple seed bead loop to go over this button, or something else? Simple just doesn't seem to be in my vocabulary anymore! LOL!

Wednesday Worktable

Today I am working on 2 beadweaving projects I started at home on Monday.

One is a Cellini spiral, with galvanized gold, silver, and bronze beads, and some gorgeous metallic Czech firepolish beads. It is meant to be a necklace when it grows up, but only time will tell.

The second project is a geometric peyote bracelet, which you may recognize as having the same design as this (former) bracelet. This time around there will be no issues with insufficient contrast in the bead colors!

I seem to be having some creative ADD lately - these are just 2 of the projects I am actively working on right now. I want to have my hands in everything, and keep starting projects, then moving on to something else. But as long as I finish a few of them here and there, I'm OK! Right?

Oh My Stars!

This design started with some gorgeous 8mm teal matrix jasper beads that I had been hoarding. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with them, and one day I just cut the strand apart, grabbed some Fireline and several coordinating colors of seed beads, and just started playing.

This was a situation where the beads dictated the design, and I started making rounds of circular peyote, and when I "finished", I had a blue-green star. So I made as many of these stars as I could, and then started playing with how to build them into a finished piece.

I noticed that the stars' edges lined up geometrically to produce this pattern, so I started connecting them together, adding some Swarovski crystals for a little "oomph".

Once this piece was joined, I needed to figure out how to turn it into a necklace, and settled on a beadwoven spiral, using the same blue and green seed beads that went into the stars components.

Then I found a perfectly-matching glass toggle, and the result is this striking bib necklace.

And I had 2 stars left over for earrings:

I haven't decided yet what to do with this set; they may go to my Etsy shop, or they may stay in my collection - The bib was such a labor-intensive piece, and these are my favorite colors! Some pieces are SO hard to part with!