Herringbone Stitch Necklace

So I promised this necklace, and here it is!

What I still find incredible is how colors change once you put them on a thread. At first glance, these colors didn't match up very well, but with the limited array at my local beading store it was enough for my satisfaction. Once I began stitching them together, I noticed that because both colors are in the "silver-lined" category of delicas, they worked together perfectly! I am so proud of this necklace because I took the original design apart completely and redid it with small changes and improved techniques. I hope you enjoy it as well!

This design is from the Creative Beading Vol. 2 book, and the biggest changes I made are to the clasp, and how the ropes finish. I highly encourage trying your hand at this pieces because you get a lot of practice with increasing and decreasing  peyote stitch.

Cabochons

My guilty pleasure: I love, love, love cabochons, and bead embroidery. There's something magical about how the stone is surrounded by beads and stones of different shapes, sizes, and colors. In the past, I've made cabochon necklace with just one focal stone, such as these two examples:

But this time, I decided to go for it and see what I could do with a small arrangement of stones. To be correct, this wasn't something I had in mind doing until while wandering my neighborhood bead store I came across some beautiful amazonite cabochons at a decent price. The consistency and richness of the color was too beautiful to refuse, so I decided to buy not just one, but three.

The most wonderful part about in-person bead shopping is you get to see how the colors work with your own eyes at that very instant. So there, I went, buying all the materials I could think of needing.

That was three days ago. Here is the finished product, sans clasp.

Something new this time around too is the style of the bezel I have on the cabochons. The original how-to book I read called for the style of the first two, but the raise on these stones was very high so it made more sense to perform a peyote stitch.

I hope you enjoy my piece! Next post I will show the end result of the herringbone stitch necklace!

Delicas in herringbone stitch can be tricky: An easy way to keep thread tension.

I'm going to go right ahead and apologize for promising something I cannot post. I will be taking pictures soon of my fire polished/seed bead products, so those will be up later this week. (I need to start posting more)
So with that, let's turn to thread tension. I worship Nancy Cain's words mostly because she realizes the importance of thread tension and uses it to her complete advantage in all her pieces. Proper thread tension is always a complicated matter and almost an art to do it correctly. I know I'm redoing pieces I did years ago because I didn't keep proper thread tension and the piece didn't look as good as it should've.
With this piece, which needs a two tier tubular delica herringbone rope, I found the best method to maintain thread tension.

It might be a little difficult to see, but if you look carefully I'm holding the piece between my index and thumb, while my third finger is pulling on the thread and holding it against my second finger.

 Go through the herringbone as you would, holding that thread against your finger.

 Last step to arrive in the "up" position again (this is very important to keep the tension) pull the thread through the work until it's snug against your third finger. Pull your third finger away at the same time as you pull the thread.
This way, the work's flexibility is consistent and the beads are snug together, limiting the possibility that the piece wears down.
Another piece of advice with this piece, is to make weaver knots when adding new thread, instead of sewing in, knotting, and sewing in a new thread. The reason I had to redo this piece is because some of those junctions got a little loose and the beads were spacing apart. The structure as a whole is much more sturdy if you make it one whole thread.
If you don't know how to do a weaver's knot, here is a great website:  http://www.weaving.cc/leasesticks/knots2.html

Happy beading!

Mother's Day Gift

It's finals. I have this test to study for, that project to turn in, that laboratory report to finalize, and ah! It's Mother's Day in a bit. I thought I was going to go bonkers because my beading projects usually are very time-consuming and require a lot of teeny tiny beads to complete.
So I turned to my arch-enemy: wirework.
I like wirework, don't get me wrong. The issue here was, we didn't work together. My bead stash has skeletons-that is, skeletons of copper wire that were involved in a project gone wrong. Lots, and lots of skeletons are in that box, and with that crazy thought in mind I decided to attempt another wirework piece.
My inspiration was from the fusionbeads.com website, and I quickly began making a bracelet I thought my mom would like in colors that went with the dress she got at Title Nine that is essentially her most favorite thing in the closet. The project turned out like this:

It didn't take that long, about 45 minutes tops, but I redid it because I added too many wrapped loops to the project and the bracelet became too big. So almost 2 hours total.

I did well on finals too so I feel pretty accomplished.

Also, right now I have jeweler's block. I have 4mm fire-polished rounds, and a 5-color 11/0 seed bead mix. Tried several different things and failed. If it goes well in the end I will post and publish.

The next post will be concerning embellished woven beads and how to make a spiral rope look good. See you guys soon!

Crystal Light makes for excellent bead storage

Hey all, what's up? It's only my second post, and I'm swamped with school so instead of talking about what I haven't accomplished in my beading life I will talk how I organize my beads.

Like almost every beader, I have a huge problem with organizing. I pull things out, put them back in, and after a couple of months it looks like a mini tornado swept through by storage box. Amazingly, I only have one.

About three months ago I started mixing my water with those crystal light tea mixes so it would force me to drink water (apartment water isn't the best, even when filtered) The plastic boxes I bought looked like this:

When I was finished with them, I took the wrapping off and used them to organize current projects. This worked great because I'm never doing just one thing at once (which is probably bad) but so far I'm super happy with the result. The taller boxes even store the longer beading tubes, making it easy to pack several beading supplies. Also, they're translucent, which is almost the best part because I'm not playing "guess which one is the one I need" games with my organizer.
That's not even the best part. THE BEST PART is that the cap can be used as a bead holder as you make your masterpiece! I was so excited when I figured that out! Now if I have a break between classes and I don't want to study, I can just pull out one tube and work on a piece no problem.
Here's some shots my work and organization:

So there you go. Crystal Light makes your water taste better, and it is a useful bead organizer.

Patience isn't one of my virtues,

I can't help it. I get my order of materials in the mail, and everything else in my life is placed on halt until I finish opening that package and fingering though what I bought. If it's something that can be made quickly, well, that gets done too. My desk was perfectly clean when I started but cluttered within the next five minutes.

I made a simple pendant necklace on a whim with a mother of pearl pendant hung on a bail, with a black silk cord and sterling silver clasp. I hope to post this on Etsy soon, most likely tomorrow, if there's nice light coming through the window. The donut you see on the right will be a necklace soon, I just need to order another clasp, and wait some more. It's the waiting that is the worst.

On another note, I spent the whole afternoon spying on the mainstream jewelry going up in stores around the Mall of America. What disappoints me the most, is how cheap they are. Not necessarily in price, but in materials. They want you to think it's gemstone, but it's really just plastic. All plastic. Silver isn't even sterling silver anymore. After I have spent so much time buying the finest quality goods as I can for my jewelry, I find it impossible to be able to purchase any jewelry at these stores. Once you feel cubic zirconium or amazonite in your hand, you never go back I guess.

If you are reading this, I thank you because it's my very first blog post ever as a jeweler. It's a little scary, writing my thoughts for the first time for quite literally anybody to read. I hope you enjoy them as they continue.

-F.C.