Another Heart

After seeing Mummy's absolutely gorgeous Sabine Lippert Sweet Heart earrings I simply had to make up a heart of my own.

The pattern was extremely easy to bead but my goodness by the end of it my needle was totally mangled!  It's quite a deceptively clever little pattern that relies on bead sizes for turning the tube into a heart with a strategically placed increase and decrease. 

Weaving in the ends was quite a feat because this heart is quite small and with the tiny 15 seed beads in the internal curves I was worried about breakages!  Happily I didn't break a bead so all was good.  Also, tension is a huge factor when making these hearts - if you have a sloppy tension then it just won't lie flat and be a heart, you have to make sure that tension is good and tight, which is lucky for me because I'm quite a tight beader!

I decided that it really was its own feature so I simply used a heavy gauge jump ring threaded through one of the size 8 beads on the curve and hung it from a length of chain with a nice chunky toggle clasp.  I thought about adding some crystals and maybe some other dangly bits but with this one, less is definitely more!  It has quite the impact!